Page 2 RAIN November/December 1985 RAIN Volume XII, Number 1 November/December 1985 Coordinating Editor F. Lansing Scott Managing Editor Ralph Coulson Contributing Editor Steve Johnson (on leave) Circulation Manager Alan Locklear Intern Connie Cohen Contributors Mira Brown Alfred Glossbrenner Rebecca Foy Golden Kim Klein Morgan Miller Mark Roseland Kirkpatrick Sale Stephen Schneider Ethan Selzer Graphic Design Susan Applegate Printing: Argus Printing Typesetting: Irish Setter RAIN magazine publishes information that can help people make their communities and regions economically self-reliant, and build a society that is durable, just, and ecologically sound. RAIN is published six times a year by the Center for Urban Education. RAIN subscription and editorial offices are located at 3116 North Williams, Portland, OR 97227; 503/249-7218. Subscriptions are $18/year ($12.00 for persons with incomes under $7,500 a year). For additional information on subscriptions and publications, see page 39. Writers' guidelines are available for a SASE. Editorial and advertising deadlines are two months prior to publication date. RAIN is indexed in the Alternative Press Index and New Periodicals Index. Copyright © 1985 Center for Urban Education. No part may be reprinted without written permission. ISSN 0739-621x. Cover: A wind-powered water pump designed by the Center for the Investigation of Appropriate Technology in Nicaragua. RAINDROPS "Hey, look! RAIN's got a subtitle again!" Yes, it's true. We have a subtitle for the first time since we abandoned "Journal of Appropriate Technology" in late 1983. (In fact, our cover hasn't carried a subtitle since January 1980.) We've felt the need for a new subtitle for some time now; "RAIN," by itself, is just a little too cryptic. Several possibilities were considered and discarded: "Resources for an Ecological Society," "Ideas and Resources for Community Innovation," "Access to Alternatives," "Journal of Community Self-Reliance," and others. We found it difficult to convey what RAIN is all about in just a few words. Most of the subtitles we considered either seemed to emphasize just one aspect of RAIN'S coverage or were simply too long (how 'bout "Visions, Strategies, and Tools for Creating a Participatory, Just, and Ecologically Sound Society"?). But we finally arrived at a subtitle that seems to convey most of what we're concerned with in just four words: Resources for Building Community. "Resources" emphasizes our access function, our attempt to provide you with information about new books, projects, techniques, and so forth, that can help you become a more effective agent for change in your community. Of course, RAIN isn't all access; we also bring you articles that offer new visions, provide new frameworks for thought and action, illuminate connections, and so on. But our articles can be considered resources as well, as they are ultimately aimed at providing you with inspiration and clarity of thought to better do something. And what do we hope to help you do? In a nutshell, we hope to help you build community. "Building" emphasizes the positive orientation we take toward social change; although protest against the wrongs of our society may be justified, RAIN has always been concerned with how we can take positive action to create technologies, institutions, and ways of life that can right these wrongs. And we are mainly concerned with the initiatives that people can take within their own communities. Some technologies, economic arrangements, settlement patterns, and systems of planning and governance serve to build community; others serve to destroy it. That which concentrates wealth in the hands of a few, leaving others impoverished, destroys community. That which isolates people and cuts through relationships of neighborliness and mutual aid destroys community. That which reduces the control people have over their own lives destroys community. That which promotes conflict and violence destroys community. That which disrupts the ecological balances necessary for sustaining life destroys community. When we destroy commuruty, we create many other problems as well. Can it be that when we build community, we can solve many of these same problems? Is it worth a try? We think so. This Issue Most issues of RAIN are not designed with any particular theme in mind. But sometimes the material just seems to fall together in a certain way, looking almost as if we'd planned it that way. Much of the material in this issue is oriented toward creating various forms of community-based, participatory institutions. We have an article about "homegrown economics" in St. Paul, another on community technology in Nicaragua, and another about grassroots government as it might be practiced in a bioregional society of the future. The message in all three is that—whether we're talking about economics, government, or technological design—local control works best. In this issue we also bring you another "organizational how-to" article, following on the "Tools for Better Meetings" article we ran last issue. People working in community organizations that have more money than they can use (ha, ha) probably won't be interested in this month's article about fundraising, but we hope it's useful to the rest of you. You won't find a "Community Information Technology" section in this issue because its editor, Steve Johnson, took his networking proclivities over to Japan last month and found quite a few kindred spirits there. Some of what he discovered will no doubt find its way into future issues of RAIN. But those of you interested in appropriate uses of computer technology need not despair; we've got an article about computer communications by Alfred Glossbrenner, one of the leading experts in the field. Other Developments Some exciting things are getting underway around here. We are working to broaden RAIN's information base by creating some new networks. One, we are creating a national advisory board to bring in a wider range of ideas and
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