The most radical thing I ever did was to stay put.

I think most people do not imagine how things can change. In Detroit, there are community gardens that are only an indication that the country is coming back to the city. And that is something that actually is necessary to stop the real imminent danger of the extermination of our planet.

I think people are really looking for some way whereby we can grow our souls rather than our economy. I think that at some level, people recognize that growing our economy is destroying us. It's destroying us as human beings, it's destroying our planet. I think there's a great human desire for solutions, for profound solutions - and that nothing simple will do it. It really requires some very great searching of our souls.

I think that rebellions arise out of anger, and they're very short-lived. And a revolution has some sense of a long time frame, millions of years that we've been evolving on this planet.

A rebellion is something that is developing as an explosion coming out of the righteous grievances of a community of people.

The standardization and specialization of industrialization was being undermined by globalization. When people in Bangladesh could produce things much more cheaply than anybody could produce them in Detroit, we no longer were the world capital of industrialization.

I think of what's happening in Detroit as part of something that's much bigger. Most people think of the decline of the city as having to do with African-Americans and being in debt, and all the issues like crime and bad housing. But what happened is that when globalization took place, following World War II, Detroit's role as the center and the symbol of industrialization was destroyed. It wasn't because we had black citizens mainly or a black mayor; it was because the world was changing.