COMMUNITY TECHNOLOGY

by Karl Hess ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 28, 1979

When Karl Hess (Dear America, 1975) turned his back on bigness and anonymity he turned toward his own sliding Washington, D.C., neighborhood, Adams-Morgan. There, around 1970, ""something began to stir in the debris"": a community government, founded not just on talking but on doing. Hess and his collaborator-housemate Therese Machotka discovered, however, that everyone didn't share their dedication to participatory democracy: reports of work accomplished and proposals for new projects rated cheers--but no participants. Blacks, particularly, wanted ""to have power in, not power to change the system."" This ""cultural bias"" also led blacks and sympathetic whites to dismiss discussions of crime as racist; and robbery after robbery drove Hess and nervous, country-bred Therese to West Virginia. ""If the culture of poverty is to be broken in any black neighborhood,"" he's convinced, ""it will be broken by black people, not by starry-eyed whites talking soul patter."" But he's also convinced that people are not naturally sheep, that local liberty is not unattainable, that if it's to have a political meaning it must have a material base--hence, community technology. In Adams-Morgan, Hess and Therese focused their efforts on local food production (rooftop gardens, basement fish-tanks) with impressive, if short-term results; but he has a vision of a new Washington--dotted with solar collectors and wind generators, local health centers and law courts--as totally self-sustaining; and he has a galaxy of proposals to substantiate his major contention that any community can develop a technology appropriate both of its needs and its resources. A brief, upbeat book for the action-minded.

Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1979

Categories: NONFICTION