SAO BERNARDO DO CAMPO, Brazil – Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva launched his final reelection campaign on Sunday from a storied stadium where he stood on a table to address some 60,000 striking metalworkers in 1979 without a sound system. reelect

The homecoming in the “May 1” stadium in Sao Bernardo do Campo, a once-thriving factory city on Sao Paulo’s industrial outskirts, is a tribute to the labor movement that eventually propelled Lula from factory worker to Brazil’s first working-class president.

“I thank the working men and women of this country who, at one point, believed that someone like them could do more for them than someone different from them,” Lula told a crowd of around 20,000 supporters, many wearing the red associated with his Workers Party (PT), on Sunday. Five decades later, however, Lula is grappling with how to rally a new generation of digital app-based gig workers with little connection to the unions and factory floors that once formed the backbone of PT.