Adams-Morgan is a seventy-block neighborhood in the center of
Washington, D.C. For five years Karl Hess worked with hundreds of
people in this neighborhood striving to make it self-sufficient.
There were fish in basements, vegetables growing in once vacant lots
and on rooftops, self-contained bacteriological toilets to unhook the
community from conventional sewer systems, a newsletter, plans for a
methanol plant to convert local garbage into fuel, and a shopping
cart to handle most heavy moving chores. Most important were the
weekly town meetings: "After tasting a participatory democracy,"
Hess says, "I would never want to trade it for a merely representative one."
