519 E. 11th (foregtound), Empire State Building (backg~ound )' around without much on and tinkering with odd-looking machines had to do with their problems. There is also the example of Karl Hess's experiment in the Adams-Morgan area of Washington, DC, where a group of people were experimenting with urban-related appropriate technologies in an old warehouse. Despite their best efforts to include their neighbors, the weekly meetings were attended by otl)er experimenters from all over the country but were largely ignored (or even ripped off) by the local people to whom the work was meant to be a~med. Karl has recently written that this was in part due to the fact that most of the poor in the neighborhood had grown used to the handout mentality of government programs and were not interested in tackling the hard work of attempting self-reliance. (For an interesting discussion of his perspectives on the project, read his article, "Flight from Freedom" in the Sept./Oct. issue of Quest/77, available for $2 from: Ambassador International Cultural Foundation, 300 West Green Street, Pasadena, CA 91129). However, as effqrts like the National Center for Appropriate Technology (which is firmly out of the anti-poverty world) have shown, the time has come when it·is clear that technologies and processes _supporting self-reliance and local control have far more universal applications than either poor blacks or hippies. And as so often happens when the time is right, there are people from both worlds who are beginning to bridge those gaps. Apparently ~e've all done a good deal of learning and growing during the five or six years that have transpired. I know why the technology is being developed, but I am not at all clear about the dynamics of the changes within the -communities. Perhaps ethnic awareness has begun to generate the strength and authority within the community to be able May 1978 RAIN Page 9 to achieve the first steps of control and knowledge on their own. Perhaps the barely noticed and rarely thanked work of the tireless organizers who did stay is beginnin~ to pay ~ff.. At any rate, as they reach out there are increasingly begmnmg to be people at hand with useful skills and kno~ledge to apply. The examples are numerous and heartening: • Louise Howard in Illinois has pulled together a successful rural community garden and cooperative cannery in one of those huge housing projects. She started the program on her own but is beginning to work with the Midwest Alternative Energy Network/Acorn people to help teach farming to Chicago city kids. • At 519 East 11th Street in Manhattan, local blacks and Chicanos began to rehabilitate and solar-and wind-retrofit an abandoned tenement building with the help of an al- 'ternative energy architect and Conjmunity Service Admi..nistration funds. Sweat equity at its best. (See ''Wind" entries this issue.) • c;ontinued next page
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz