A simple action is frightening Brazil’s elites to the point that President Dilma Rousseff is convening meetings about it, and business owners are trying to get court injunctions to stop it:  Poor people are taking “rolezinhos” (“little strolls”) through shopping malls.

The occasionally rowdy gatherings are organized on social media, like flash mobs, with the hashtag #rolezinhos.  And they’re exposing Brazil’s difficulties with issues of public space, entitlement, and race relations in a society in which living standards for the poor are improving and social classes are in flux. 

“Kids from the lower classes have been segregated from public spaces, and now they’re challenging the unwritten rules,” said Pablo Ortellado, a public policy professor at the University of Sao Paulo.

The rolezinhos are generally made up of large gatherings of dark skinned youth from the favelas, and challenge racial profiling at the malls.  Earlier this month, 3,000 youths took got together to walk through the Shopping Metro Itaquera in Sao Paulo – the response was cops, tear gas, and rubber bullets, but very few actual arrests.

The kids aren’t the only ones who think that response was idiotic.  Officials in Brasilia are warning regional governors against using force.

“I don’t think repression is the best way forward, because everything done along that line is like throwing gasoline into the fire,” said Gilberto Carvalho, a top aide to President Rousseff.