This essay is about a particular way of constructing social militancy, in which Prof. Alfredo Bosi was involved, during the 1970s, among young immigrants in boroughs of Osasco in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. It was not a matter of indoctrination but of emancipation. Nowadays, those young people, now elderly, are still engaged in social movements for the community and they remember with fascination those solid roots on which they developed as citizens.