Gil Friend and David Morris of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance

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More confidence. A new appreciation of their own abilities. When people work together on vegetable gardens, they can see that their efforts literally bear fruit.

PLOWBOY: Does it give them confidence because they feel they have more control of their own destiny and their own welfare?

MORRIS: Yes, because they begin to see that when they work together they have a lot more power—as well as ability—than when they work by themselves. That goes beyond just the production of food. It's true in dealing with landlords or with the city government. Adams-Morgan people now know that they don't have to just sit back and passively accept decision after decision from above . . . decisions which they may feel are deteriorating the quality of their lives.

F RIEND: That's happening all over this neighborhood. We have a variety of community development efforts . . . retail collectives, housing committees, tenant unions, and health centers, to name a few. And the quality of life in this neighborhood reflects that kind of activity. We feel that we all live here together . . . so if there are things that need to be done, then let's do them.

MORRIS: One of the major benefits of this attitude is that people here now think of Adams-Morgan as a specific community. This has always been an "area" in the sense that sections of cities are usually defined. We've had a school district, we're in a police district, and we have a zip code. But, until we started doing things for ourselves, the residents of Adams-Morgan—just like the people in most sections of our big cities—didn't define their neighborhood as a functional, economic, social, and political entity. But they do now.

PLOWBOY: If the sort of things that are happening here happen in neighborhoods of other cities around the country, will such a movement lead to the formation of sub-municipal units of government . . .

MORRIS: Absolutely.

PLOWBOY:. . . and, if so, how will they operate in relation to the official city governments?

MORRIS: It depends on how far we can go in decentralizing certain kinds of production facilities and services. Studies have shown that police and fire protection, garbage collection — things like that—are most efficiently handled on a neighborhood level. I foresee the creation of elected neighborhood governments, each one having representatives in a municipal government. Because, you know, we do need municipal governments to make decisions concerning the entire area.

PLOWBOY: Doesn't this concept of a self-reliant community remind you somewhat of the way cities were organized and run in medieval Europe?

FRIEND: Certainly. Food production in the city is a very old idea. In fact we're constantly struck by that thought, again and again, as we work. We're not proposing anything that's new . . . we're proposing things that are old and forgotten.

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