Page 10 RAIN May 1978 . • At the request of low-income groups first in New Mexico · and now all over, Bill Yanda has been doing workshops to teach the building of simple solar greenhouses that will help heat homes and grow food. • Utility rate organizing in various parts of the country is allowing poor communities to stand up against rates that (as usual) discriminate against low income users in favor of corporations. • Several years ago Eugene and Sandi Eccli put together that excellent booklet for the then Office of Economic Opportunity called Save Energy, Save Money-it was geared towards poor people but it was useful for anyone. These examples also extend into the Third World. The Intermediate Technology Development Group in Britain and Volunteers in Technical Assistance in the U.S. (among others) have been showing that if asked by local groups, whether in Guatemala or Sri Lanka,. the technical creativity is relatively easily mustered to develop tools and processes that are appropriate for particular situations. G;IJ..dens and playground emerge through asphalt. from Acorn Okay, then, why is there still that uneasiness when the topic is raised of applying appropriate technologies in poo,r communities? I think a lot of it comes from the still relatively undiscussed issue of the ''voluntary" poor. Some of the "pooracrats" seem particularly bothered by this issµe and are quick to discount the experiences of those who have chosen to live on less. Having done very well for themselves running government: programs that treat symptoms r_ather than the real problems of the poor, they now seem to feel threatened by the low salaries and high expectations of the a. t'. people. The thrust of the government programs has been to bring the poor into ,the mainstream of American life by raising their incomes and expectations to match those of the middle class. It is part and parcel of the assumption•that there is a huge pie to be shared and the poor and rich can have bigger and bigger pieces. On the contrary, the pie is getting smal-ler, and if there is to be anything left for the poqr, the more fortunate of our society must learn to live on less. Unquestionably many,of us who are conveying these messa:ges and experimenting on the enabling technology are speaking, by and large, from a position of privilege. Most of us come from the "haves" rather than the "have nots." But, we know the problems and unfulfilled promises of having oversized .slices of the pie and are pleased by the results of our efforts to learn to live more lightly. The key here see~s to be that we- as educated, relatively well-off do-gooders-can't shove our ideals or our experiments off onto poor communities, urban or rural. We cannot really know their problems or their constraints. But given particular situations and ~rn invitation, there is a lot we have to offer. • Anyone living on a limited income needs cheap foodroof-top gardening and organic pest_control techniques as demonstrated by Farallones Institute and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in urban situations can help. So can solar greenhouses if they are cheaply and easily constructed. • As energy pri~es rise we all have to spend a vast amount of our money on heat and electricity-community and/or individual based alternative energy systems in conjunction · with utility rate reform can go a long way towards easing that squeeze on already empty pocketbooks. • People need personal and community power-the rese::i,rch done by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and others into the dy.namics of neighborhood economics and the organizing work by groups such as ACORN can be applied to most ~ny community to begin to ,bring the powerbase hack to the people who live and work there. At the same time, collective, worker-controlled, or at least small-scale (even home-based) working situations can begin to bring a sense of power and well-being back into individual lives. Clay Collier describes hydroponics We are not talking here about second class technology or second class lifestyles. We are talking about the generation'. of skills and living patterns that we as drop-outs from middle class values are proud of and which we are convinced have relevancy to traditionally low-income people as well. We may be voluntarily poor and as such have the education and selfesteem to back us up, but we are using those skills to develop ways of living and working that are appropriate to low-budget, low·energy condition·s. What we have learned has been of value to us, and we are slowly beginning to apply it in our own lives (as we work the bugs out). We have long known that the ways were good for the conditions we are moving into, but we haven't been about to to sell them to anyone else until we are using them in our ·own lives. For those of us interested in getting these technologies and working patterns to those who need it, thf task is to make the information available. The people in poor communities must be able to lay their hands easily on the ideas when they reach out for them, as they are increasingly doing. - Lane deMoll
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