This protest was organized by the Vem Pra Rua group (vemprarua.org.br) which is backed by Fundação Estudar, which, in turn, is backed by Jorge Paulo Lemann, one of, if not the, richest Brazilian citizen, and the Movimento Brazil Livre, which is backed by the Koch brothers.
One of the organizers of the protests (definitely not the only one) is backed by a rich guy. So what? Does that make the claims of millions of Brazilians invalid? Are we all "the white elite"?
On the other hand, most people I knew voted for Lula and Dilma because they actually benefitted from their policies. When Lula left power his approval rate was something over 80%, which was better than any other president before him. And yet, if you asked the right people, you'd the country was about to explode because people were so unhappy.
Still, it's funny to call this the "Protest of the 0.5%"
So there's what the "left hand" media says (generously sponsored by government money) and what the people say, and it's not the same thing.
John Oliver has put it very well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51W2N68zckY
but no one wants any of these guys in charge.
So therein lies the quandary.
Also, both situation and opposition have a very similar agenda.
The president was reelected on a campaign of lies, and is now doing what she accused and claimed her opponents would do, in one of the greatest cases of electoral embezzlement ever seen.
No, people are not happy with this government, and no, it's not only the rich.
So yeah, this sounds to me like the grumblings of the typical political discontents who would credit Fernando Henrique Cardoso and the PSDB for anything good that happened in the country, even after 8 years of PT presidency.
Also, mind you, the impeachment has no legal basis as it can only be based on misconduct that occurred during the current term. This doctrine has been tested and established right after the reelection amendment was introduced.
And, finally, this is the first time the fire alarm sounded, despite the fact we had numerous immense fires all over the place (we all know that, right?). Do we really want to shoot the person who turned the alarms on? For the first time we actually seem to have a fire alarm and teams actually assessing its extent and causes. By running to the lifeboats we'd turn our backs on all that, as the people who would run the country are the very people at the center of the fire.
"Acts of the President against the Constitution, and, especially, against the guard and legal use of public money".
The definition of "against the guard and legal use of public money" is given as, among other things,
"neglect the collection of rents, taxes and fees, as well as the conservation of national patrimony."
Futhermore:
"Are crimes of liability against the probity of administration: (...) Not make effective the responsibility of his subordinates, considered manifested in functional offenses or the practice of acts contrary to the Constitution."
and
"Constitutes an act of improper conduct which infringes upon the principles of government action or omission that violates the duties of honesty, impartiality, legality and loyalty to the institutions"
I'm not sure what you mean with your fire alarm allegory, but I suppose you're trying to say that all the investigations are only happening because the government (and the President in particular) let them happen. This is false. The Federal Police and the Public Attorney's Office are independent of the government and do not require it to allow any kind of investigation.
Edit: by the way, weather the impeachment is legal or not is irrelevant to the point of weather the protesters are representative of Brazil's population (they are). You seemed to imply that somehow due to who organized part of the protests, they are not, but then nothing in your latest reply addresses that.
I agree this law has its issues, but this is what's written.
Again, I am not sure the protesters are that representative. It's much harder to generate a positive response from people who are between neutral and satisfied than it is to obtain the same response from people who are dissatisfied. While approval rates are as low as they ever were for Dilma, strong disapproval like this is not unprecedented. Add to that that the reasons for protesting were all over the spectrum: from stronger economic action in the trickle-down doctrine all the way to "we want our dictatorship back". More than 80% of the protesters declared themselves voters for the candidate who lost the election and most of the protesters were white upper urban middle-class professionals.
I live in São Paulo, and, as difficult as it may be to grasp that, I must understand what I see around me is not typical Brazil. I live in a bubble.
The current popularity numbers are another indicator that the protests are representative, much like the protests in favor of direct elections in the 80s. We're those not representative either?
By the way, her approval rates are as low as they have ever been for any president since Collor, who was impeached, and the numbers are low in all segments of society. And that's by Datafolha's numbers, an institute known to publish numbers biased towards the government.
I can only speak for the protests in Rio, of which I took part. I've seen people from all social and cultural spheres. I saw bus and truck drivers honking in support, and people waving Brazilian flags from their windows. I also saw the pan and pot protests that happened while her ministers were on TV giving the same old disconnected from reality speech.
I think it's this government that is living in a bubble, and hopefully it's about to burst.