Our environmental movement is taking the lead because we are the only movement in the country with a systematic critique of the model. The following is Sara's response to the question of future priorities for the movement. We badly need a politics of hope. When people lose battle after battle in the struggle to stop the polluting of their communities, the invasion of their lands, and the piracy of their resources it is difficult to maintain the inspiration and hope that they are really capable of changing things. We have cases where pollution is so bad that children are warned not to engage in physical activities.
Many children are sick from the pollution and babies are being born with deformities.
It is humiliating and demoralizing, as well as infuriating. There are so many ways peoples' lands are expropriated. A company may come into a valley and tell people it is going to build three or four dams and they must move. They try to make the people feel they have no recourse and must simply submit. One of my main challenges as a person and a member of this community is in the face of all this adversity is to help people maintain their sense of inspiration and hope-their confidence in themselves and their trust of one another.