•Page 16 RAIN January 1_978 Dear Rainpeople: Your November 1977 issue, which focused on the California Office of Appropriate Technology and its activities inadvertently revealed, I think, one of the real dangers of growing government involvement in the a.t. social change movement. For despite all of the well-reasoned and self-conscious contributions by people involved 'in OAT, no mention was made, or perhaps could be made, of 'Governor Jerry Brown's indefensible position on what may weH be the single most signifi- ·cant movement in the state and the country: National Land for People's efforts to have enforced the 160-acre limit law in California's Westlands Water District. Brown's decision to oppose, rather than to support, regulations tightening enforcement of a law regulating federal irrigation water is a decision that is squarely on the side of this state's agribusiness, and is clearly at odds with his image among some of us in the a. t. community. So when RAIN runs a piece on OAT, and the director of that agency acknowledges that there is a perception that "OAT is essentially ... a 'toy' of the Brown administration," the ' reasons for this are really not hard to find. While Gqvernor Brown is quite willing to support a tiny but very well publicized a.t. program of bikes and compost privies, when it comes right down to the very real politics of California a. t. and ecology (and don't, please, credit him with the Dow pull-01.n ...) he is on the side of big business and big agriculture, the well-cultivated image notwithstanding. Brown's position really should not surprise us, but what is disturbing is the entirely uncritical presentation of one of his pet ·programs by RAIN. Perhaps that is due in part to the fact that RAIN did play a part in the formation of that program. But the OAT program and Brown's pro-agribusiness stand are opposite sides of the same coin. And that is the crux of the matter. Is the a.t. movement, for nickels and dimes, going to allow itself to become an agency for political hucksters who, when it really comes to the crunch, are on the other side? We pride ourselves on our ability to see through the political and economic propaganda of Mobil and Tenneco, yet are all but oblivious to the manipulation of the a.t. movement by ambitious politicians and their functionaries. As an a.t. community organizer who works in a government~sponsored a.t. program (and can't be accused of being an a.t. purist), I have grown tired of hearing charges that the a.t. movement is naive and even opportunistic. It isn't. But RA/N's "closer look" at the California scene lends credence to tho·se kinds of assertions. There seems to be a growing feeling among some a. t. activists that the a.t. movement can "use" government agencies and the political process to achieve its goals.. I submit that sophisticated politicians and various gov'ernmental agencies will increasingly use,the a.t. movem<=;nt to promote and legitimate'their own programs and careers, and to obtain cover for their more insidious activities. The Brown/QAT alliance is a c'.1-se in point. Until a.t. activists become fully aware that We've had a great deal of very positive feedback on fhe November issue. We 're printing the followif1:g more critical comments here because there is more to be learned from them. they can and will be used by the very forces they oppose, they are destined to be ineffective and even counter-productive. Politics is far too important to be left to the politicians. So is appropriate technology. Very truly yours, J. David Colfax The Mo~ntain School Box 88, Redwood Ridge Road Boonville, CA 95415 Dear David, Thank you very much for your thoughtful letter criticizing the November issue on the California Office of Appropriate Technology. Your comments on Jerry Brown and the activities of his administration are quite true~ he is essentially running for president and is doing whatever ~e-perceives is best to achieve that goal. And yes, we would argue that we all are simply us.ing him and his good grac·es (as we are using others) to achieve some successes for more appropriate technologies. Indeed, we would be the first to argue that government involvement- except perhaps on the local level-~ay well be hurting more than helping us. In fact, a major reason for our beginning to feel this way has been our abysmal experience with NCA T, which we will expand upon in an issue one of these days. The RAIN OAT issue was an experiment. It was edited by the QA T people themselves. We only added a frw introductions where they were missing and cut a.few pieces for space reasons. We probably shouldn't even have done that so that it would be more clear that it was guest edited. We want to begin to highlight.different regions, and we want to spread the joys and burdens of doing an issue around. Gigi Coe at OAT is an old friend whose idea of doing an issue we were · excited about. We have mixed feelings about the end result. We were hoping that it would contain a more self-critical look 'at the pros and cons of working in the state government-views that the people involved with OAT have expressed to us privately. That they could not express them publicly shows in itself a problem inherent in the politics of tqe situation. We had also envisioned more coverage ofgrass roots activities in the state than they were able to pull together. But, as it stands, the November issue is a very useful tool for others who are trying to get such things going in their own areas.
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