Community Technology

Adams-Morgan is a seventy-block neighborhood in the center of Washington, D.C. For five years Karl Hess worked with hundreds of people in this neighborhood striving to make it self-sufficient. There were fish in basements, vegetables growing in once vacant lots and on rooftops, self-contained bacteriological toilets to unhook the community from conventional sewer systems, a newsletter, plans for a methanol plant to convert local garbage into fuel, and a shopping cart to handle most heavy moving chores. Most important were the weekly town meetings: "After tasting a participatory democracy," Hess says, "I would never want to trade it for a merely representative one."