Ebook: 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."