A frase do título é de Van Jones, autor do livro “Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots“, e o entrevistado da AlterNet na matéria “The Future of Cities: How Sprawl and Racism are Intertwined“. Abaixo, o trecho final da entrevista.
Q. You have said that “We are the heroes we’ve been waiting for.” Can you discuss what “going local” means in terms of creating big change?
VJ: I believe it’s a both/and. I believe in both “bottom up” and “top down.” Focusing on the local is great, but you need federal government on your side to make the big changes; we learned that in the civil rights movement. The federal government has got to be provoked into action. The local economy can’t solve the problems by itself, and some problems are too big to solve by local action alone. Change is bottom up and top down. The grassroots have to push, and the top needs to push. It’s sort of an inside-outside strategy. Everybody is going to have to do some work. There is no magic answer, no silver bullet. It’s going to be a group effort, cross-organizational. We need to share and play well with others; be flexible and learn from each other. The big change is going to take 20, 30, 40 years. Hopefully, in terms of ecological collapse, we’ll get it together enough in the next 10 years to buy us the time we need to do the work that will take longer. But we’re going to have to do it together.
