Today I write this text with a heavy heart, reflective, and I choose to address a subject that is uncomfortable for me, aware that many people hold different opinions. I was in Porto Alegre last Monday, the first night after the rains left many people homeless.

Now I follow the chaos from afar, the human and material losses and the fading of hope as I watch possessions, won through effort and time, swept away by the waters and by the lack of infrastructure. The pain of losing loved ones in the rains is unimaginable.

I invite you to reflect with me on public management and on what we really need from the group of managers of our cities, states and country.

Management is not the exclusive responsibility of one mayor, one governor or one president; it is carried out by a group of people who must move in step and aim at the same goals, as in a company.

But what, after all, are those goals? We must respect our Constitution; provide resources to meet the population’s basic needs, such as health, housing, education and work; and ensure human rights and decent living conditions for every individual on this planet.

Year after year, I witness investments in urban beautification, misuse of financial resources and decisions that favor small groups or aim to keep power and control, as I have mentioned in earlier texts. Selfish management drags us down with the current and buries us in landslides.

Projects that can mitigate flooding problems in Rio Grande do Sul are structural and, at first, invisible to the public eye, which may leave those managers in the background, but they are crucial for many other needs of the population.

We need people with a cooperative vision, willing to give up their own greed, personal growth and enrichment in favor of collective needs, people moved by love, touched by the struggle of those who, on a single minimum wage, work miracles to pay rent, water, electricity, gas, food, transportation and education.

In my view, we need structural and complex changes, reforms of the system, in which disparities of wealth are not encouraged by our main system of management and by all who are part of it, directly or indirectly.

To you, reader, as responsible as I am for building and maintaining this society, I ask: what have you been doing for collective goals?