Original article is at: https://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/06/164662.php
>
>
> South Central Farm Crisis in Los Angeles
> Malibu, CA
> Thursday, Jun. 15, 2006 at 11:55 AM
>
> Willie Nelson, Darryl Hannah, Martin Sheen, Danny Glover, Joan Baez,
> Julia Butterfly-Hill support farmers in the struggle to save the
> nation's largest urban farm.
>
> Darryl Hannah appears on Larry King Live with Willie Nelson to show
> footage of eviction. Danny Glover calls eviction a Day of Mourning,
> a Day of Shame
>
>
>
> Surrounded by organic flowers grown on the South Central Farm,
> a huge Sacred Heart of Jesus altar sat around the base of the tree
> where protestors were tree-sitting to save the South Central Farm.
> As of 5 am Tuesday morning, the altar was joined by forty nonviolent
> protestors locking together around the base of the tree because LA
> Sheriffs, firefighters, and LAPD had converged to evict the farmers
> and protesters who were now considered trespassers.
>
> Nightly, hundreds of humble farmers and their families had
> united for a vigil to light candles and pray for help to save the 350
> small garden plots in their 14-acre organic community garden. Native
> American elder, actor Floyd Westerman, led the vigil around the
> perimeter several nights; other nights it was led by the oldest woman
> from the community. On the recent full moon, 600 bicyclists from
> Critical Mass and Nightriders, surprised everyone by cycling around
> the farm at midnight, chanting, “Save the Farm”. You see, this
> community garden has been tilled and nourished for 14 years by these
> family farmers. Fourteen years of hard work—sweat equity—hard work of
> common folks, the poor of LA. The land was granted to the LA Food
> Bank after the riots of 1992, and has been miraculously transformed
> into a lush garden by these family farmers, and is a shining example
> of the poor helping one another survive in the big city.
>
> With Sheriff helicopters circling daily, the farmers and
> their supporters feared that at any moment they would permanently be
> forced out of the garden. Sheriffs met with the farmers’ attorney, Dan
> Stormer, last week and told him they would be “enforcing the court
> order to evict all at the garden,” and gave them a couple of days to
> leave the premises. In addition, the attorney alleged that the
> sheriffs stated their concern that “anarchists might be present inside
> the garden”. This kind of talk brews all the ingredients for riot
> police to come in, and now the process has begun.
>
> At 5 am, Tuesday morning, the sheriffs, fire fighters, and
> LAPD all moved in to begin the eviction. Approximately 40 protesters
> immediately locked down in an act of nonviolent civil disobedience.
> Most put their hands in tubes (specifically designed for civil
> disobedience) then dropped them into barrels of cement, forcing the
> evictors to bring in jackhammers and drills to dislodge them. Several
> locked down together around the base of the tree where Darryl Hannah
> and John Quigley were tree-sitting. Bulldozers moved in to clear a
> path to bring in cherry pickers to extract the tree-sitters. Hannah,
> calling local media on the phone during the raid, stated, “ultimately,
> the money has been on the table. This eviction might really be about
> extracting blood. When will the Mayor see that a farm in the city is
> good and sustains many families? The farmers depend on this food. I
> am planning to hold my position in the tree in a peaceful manner. The
> deal was so close. It!
> ’s a shame that the taxpayers’ money has to be wasted in this way.
> The money issues were being resolved
> ” LAPD showed up in riot gear to begin removing the many protesters
> outside the farm who had linked arms and laid down together blocking
> traffic on the streets around the farm. Hours later, riot police were
> angrily striking some of the farmers in the stomach with their
> batons. Protests began outside at the LA City Council meeting within
> hours.
>
> Why would the Mayor allow this eviction to go down, after
> giving the farmers such hope through his reps just days before? What
> a heartbreak. Rumors had been circulating for weeks that many in the
> government, i.e., the Mayor, Senator Barbara Boxer, and Congresswoman
> Maxine Waters were all working “behind the scenes” to find a solution
> to this intensifying problem, but still no official word from the
> Mayor’s office was given. Finally, three days days ago, Larry Frank,
> LA Deputy Mayor showed up at the nightly candle vigil, stating, “If
> there is a chance to mediate this situation, Mayor Villaraigosa will
> do what he can to settle this. Don’t give up hope.” LA City Board of
> Public Works Commissioner Paula Daniels, also showed up, emphasizing
> that the Mayor “cares for the farmers and wants to make this one of
> the greenest cities in America, including the 500 trees growing on
> this farm.”
> .
> Some of the nation’s most authentic beacons for humanitarian
> issues have turned the South Central Farm into a microcosm of how to
> preserve the only green zone in downtown LA, and also give fair
> treatment to the poor in the City of Angels. Organizers Darryl
> Hannah, Julia Butterfly-Hill, and John Quigley had attracted Martin
> Sheen, Ralph Nader, Farm Aid’s Willie Nelson, U.N. representative
> Danny Glover, Ben Harper, Joan Baez, Leonardo DeCaprio, Congresswoman
> Maxine Waters, Sen. Barbara Boxer, a rep for Jane Goodall, musicians
> Tom Morello and Michelle Shocked, over the past two weeks, drawing
> world attention to the possible loss of the gardens.
>
> The endangered 14-acre organic farm, considered the nation’s
> largest urban farm, has also drawn to its heart local faith-based
> leaders, clergy, and civil rights leaders (such as Evelyn Knight of
> the Martin Luther King, Jr. marches). All had been calling for Mayor
> Villaraigosa to immediately intervene to halt the looming eviction of
> the 350+ farmers. They also had hoped that Brentwood developer,
> Ralph Horowitz, would find compassion in dealing with the poor on this
> issue. They are all asking, “Why bulldoze a fine city model of
> sustainability to build a warehouse?” Yes, Horowitz has the right to
> maximize profits, but there are many humanitarians now pleading for
> him to reconsider and use his conscience over profits.
>
> But while the police roughed up the protesters and farmers
> outside the farm, the Mayor was finally giving the press conference he
> should have given one week before. He was finally announcing the
> financial goal had been met to buy the farm! Well, low and behold,
> the developer later that day talked to the Mayor on the phone,
> stating it was now worth $2-3 million dollars more. Earlier, during
> television coverage of the eviction, he was focused on the issue of
> the farmers’ “ingratitude,” and that he wouldn’t sell it to them for
> “100 million” because he didn’t like their “causes”. Hurt feelings on
> both sides might have occurred in the past, but now all of LA became
> focused on the television footage showing the hurt feelings and hurt
> bodies of those farmers and protesters hit in the stomach with riot
> police batons.
>
> Los Angeles developer, Ralph Horowitz, has been the focus of
> this dilemma, one that the former Los Angeles Mayor Hahn played a part
> in creating when he quietly sold the garden land for $5 million to
> Horowitz in 2003. Many lawsuits later, it now stands that a July 12th
> Superior Court hearing will determine whether the original sale of the
> land was even legal in the first place. Horowitz also sued the
> farmers in February-- a Slapp suit for $700,000 filed as an Abuse
> Process Complaint.
>
> What is not being reported at all in this issue, is that the
> real heat had been turned up last week by Senator Barbara Boxer when
> she delivered the most direct punch to this boondoggle. Sending a
> letter to developer Ralph Horowitz, she stated, “I understand that
> efforts to raise the $16.3 million have so far fallen short and that
> you may be prepared to oust the approximately 350 families who farm
> the land.” Noting that the property has a “tangled history which
> began when the City of Los Angeles took the property through eminent
> domain in the 1980s for a planned trash-to-energy incinerator, which
> was never built,” Sen. Boxer then pointed to the fact that after that
> transaction, the “City allowed the LA Regional Food Bank to begin
> using the land as an urban gardening project
> Ultimately, you regained the property through court action for $5
> million, slightly more than you had been paid for the property when it
> was taken for the incinerator.” Focusing on fair treatme!
> nt, she ended her letter with, “Mr. Horowitz, I sincerely hope that
> you will agree to negotiate with the community for a price that they
> can realistically afford. I am also sure that you could benefit by
> making part of the ownership transfer a charitable gift to the
> community.”
>
> Amidst all the scurry, the Trust for Public Land (TPL) came to the
> rescue last week offering another solution—buy the farm for full
> price. The TPL has always been generous to LA, creating the Parks for
> People-LA program to create 25 new park and open space projects (i.e.
> community gardens and athletic fields) over the next five years. Using
> their G1S computer modeling to pinpoint neighborhoods where parks are
> most urgently needed in LA, they have determined south LA to be an
> area that definitely needs greenery. Recently the TLP also saved
> another downtown LA site, the 32-acre “Cornfield” which was also being
> threatened by developers.
>
> With eviction looming, last week the Trust put out a
> nationwide plea to many philanthropy organizations to immediately
> pledge monetary grant support to buy the South Central Farm at
> Horowitz’s asking price of $16.3 million. The Annenberg Foundation
> immediately responded with a gift pledge of $10 million, and this
> week, the Trust for Public Lands will be presenting documents to
> Horowitz to purchase the land for the farmers. Bob Reid of the Trust
> for Public Land, states that the Trust has “drafted legal documents”
> to present to Horowitz to negotiate a “transaction to purchase the
> community farm”.
>
> Joan Baez, who initially lit the fire on finding a compassionate
> solution to this crisis, showed up again over last weekend, actually
> sleeping in the tree overnight with tree-sitters Darryl Hannah, John
> Quigley, and Julia Butterfly-Hill, the four doing phone interviews all
> night with late night radio talk shows about the plight of the farm.
> Baez said she showed up in LA to “bring my little piece of heart to do
> something that would bring a tangible result.” The next morning, she
> also sang an honoring anthem to Julia Butterfly-Hill while the
> activist concluded her 24-day hunger strike, descending from her
> tree-sitting post, which had then been replaced by another female
> farmer, Refina Juarez, also fasting.
>
> Julia Butterfly-Hill noted that her water-only fast was to show
> the unfairness of destroying “paradise”, and that the farm garden was
> “priceless and irreplaceable”, and a “large vision of what’s possible
> for Los Angeles to be healthier”. She had successfully taken a stand
> on the value of preserving nature by living in a redwood tree for over
> two years in Northern California to stop the impending destruction of
> old-growth redwood forests, which is the subject of one of her
> bestselling books, Luna. She noted that during her LA hunger strike,
> she realized that “most Americans don’t know what it’s like to go
> hungry for even 24 hours. “ She urged citizens to think about how
> the South Central Farm garden is “the food source for over 350
> families and their extended families, and to place yourself in their
> shoes—to consider how it would feel to have a large part of your food
> source ripped away from you.”
>
> Joining Julia Butterfly-Hill and Darryl Hannah in the tree was
> John Quigley. John Quigley, is well known for a recent LA tree-sit to
> save a 400-year old tree, Old Glory, from being destroyed. He also
> just completed a project with Global Green, organizing an aerial
> photograph of thousands of scientists and the Innu tribe in the Artic,
> who with their bodies spelled out SOS on an ice cap, bringing
> attention to ice caps dramatically melting there due to global
> warming. He also recently created another art image at Venice Beach
> to draw attention to the plight of the quarter of a million homeless
> U.S. veterans. At his request, five hundred citizens of LA formed the
> outline of the famous image of veterans raising the American flag at
> Iwo Jima. For Quigley to be one of the tree-sitters at the South
> Central Farm is natural for his way of thinking, “We hope Ralph
> Horowitz will negotiate a deal where everyone wins.”
>
> Ralph Nader, who also visited with the activist, stated,
> “This farm is a model, a source of inspiration for people in other
> parts of the world. These farmers are giving life, hope and food in
> an unlikely place. There has to be land for people in the cities, not
> just family farms in rural areas. It’s always the banks and
> developers buying up the land for skyscrapers. Our city planners need
> to allow farms such as this in the city. You have devastated areas in
> the city, like here. The wealthy keep taking the land, and this
> protest to save this farm is a historic event. This signifies the
> possibilities of working the land, and the fruits going to the people
> who work that land.
>
> “In the 1980s, Detroit wanted to build a GM plant on a similar piece
> of land, and at 5am, fifty squad cars came in and pulled out the
> protestors and got away with it. But here in LA, I am saying to the
> authorities that it will be difficult to keep their jobs if they
> destroy this farm.”
>
> Former Mayor of Santa Monica, Mike Feinstein, now active in
> urban planning with the Southern Regional Comprehensive Plan Task
> Force (part of SCAG, the Southern California Association of
> Governments) stated, “This brings up food security issues. When the
> Mayor’s office previously said they would just relocate the farm, I
> immediately thought that they can’t relocate the spirit that has gone
> into the land here. Better solutions can be found. The previous city
> grant that built this community garden is a good model. With open
> space, a city can build a dream garden.”
>
> Rev. Ignacio Castuera, pastor of St. John’s United Methodist
> Church in Watts stated, “My hope was that the sheriffs wouldn’t move
> in too quickly. We are working outside the usual channels, and the
> people of faith are trying to bring another dialog to this
> conflict—heart to heart. It should not only be a money question. My
> hope is that Mr. Horowitz is a practicing Jewish man, and I pray that
> his Rabbi will remind him of the Biblical call to deal fairly with the
> poor.”
>
> Christine Chavez, daughter of Cesar Chavez, who also spent the
> night on the farm in the tent encampment, stated, “We shared the farm
> workers prayer that Cesar Chavez, always prayed. Cesar also had an
> organic garden like these found at this farm. I saw Cesar fast for
> 36 days to stop the spraying of pesticides on the farmers in the
> fields, and it was very serious on his health, so I was at the farm to
> pray for Julia Butterfly-Hill while she fasted for the South Central
> Farm.” Cesar’s wife, Helen, also accompanied her daughter.
>
> Martin Sheen recited poet Tagore to the farmers: “Where the
> heart is without fear, and the head help up high
> when the clear stream of reason hasn’t lost its direction, into that
> heaven, that freedom, let my country awake.” Sheen, usually
> protesting the closing of the School of Americas for its training of
> battalions that later commit atrocities in other countries, arrived
> with Jesuit priest, Rev. Michael Kennedy.
>
> Rev. Kennedy, of the Delores Mission Church in East LA, is
> still alive today but could have been killed in the 1980s if he had
> been with six fellow Jesuit priests as planned. The Jesuits were
> killed in El Salvador, murdered by the Atlactl Battalion which had
> been trained at the School of Americas. The issues over immigrants
> from Central America taking political asylum in the U.S. (due to the
> US funding of these death squads,) is close to his heart. Perhaps
> that is why he showed up-- to protect the small number of Central
> American farmers who also have plots of land at the South Central
> Farm.
>
> He stated, “At this historical moment, this is a Promised
> Land. People of faith believe LA should come together to keep the land
> sacred, using it for the best use, and that is as a garden. We live
> in this part of the city, and we know there are not many green areas
> down here.”
>
> Pete Seeger even called the farmers, saying, “Some growth is
> considered bulldozing. Right now we need growth in generosity, and
> growth in common sense for humanity and our communities.”
>
> Mary Wright, of the Wright Resource Center in Malibu, and of
> the visionary Frank Lloyd Wright family, noted that the late architect
> developed the concept of “broad acre cities” with people “living near
> where they grow their food, and children being able to be in nature
> close to home, and to get in touch with the process of seed to
> harvest.” Emphasizing that in the case of the farmers in south
> central, she is “deeply saddened that greed seems to be superceding
> need” in an area where there is “such a deep, important need.”
>
> Last Sunday, country superstar, Willie Nelson, showed up to lend
> support as head of Farm Aid. He stressed, “We all need to learn to
> grow our own food. There is a new trend where city-folks are going
> out into rural areas to hire family farmers to grow their organic
> food. This farm should be saved. It’s a great example of what can be
> done in all cities. I would climb up in the tree with them, but I
> think of Keith Richards’accident, and so I’ll just do a polka with one
> of the farmers on the ground.”
>
> “The farmers are growing organic food here, and helping other
> farmers. We all have to utilize every acre to grow food. Farm Aid
> supports growing organically, and the farmers will grow our fuel in
> the future, as well as food. Biodiesel and ethanol will be positive
> for family farmers to pay their bills, growing soybeans and cotton for
> biodiesel.”
>
> While Nelson was at the farm, the Sheriffs’ helicopters circled
> overhead many times, and he stressed, “Mayor Villagarosa should step
> up to the plate all the way right now. He knows what the people want.
> Senator Boxer and Congresswoman Waters are being very vocal. He
> should have been helping to settle this more actively already and
> being more outspoken, before the farmers have to go through
> unnecessary pain.”
>
> After Darryl Hannah returned from being arrested, she stated, “As I
> was coming down from the tree, I looked around and what really came o
> me was this neighborhood is filled with liquor stores, warehouses and
> concrete. Every mother deserves a place to grow healthy food and a
> green place for children to play. Here in South Central LA, there is
> a dire need. I’m very sad today that Mr. Horowitz has broken his
> word. He said if the community of south Central could raise $16
> million, he would sell us the land. We did it. It was a miracle, and
> that’s why I raised my arm when I was coming down from the tree. We
> did our part. We stood up and did the impossible, a group of
> farmers, a few celebrities, and hundreds of people who care. Now he’s
> broken his word
> ”
>
> Today, Danny Glover sent word to the farmers, stating, “I received
> the news today about what was happening at the South Central Farm, and
> it’s a very, very sad day. In fact, it ought to be a National Day of
> Mourning, a national day of Shame. What we are witnessing is the
> wanton and wholesale destruction of a community’s dream. Instead of
> destroying the dream, we should be embracing it.”
>
> He went on to say, “I’m especially saddened for our children. What
> is the message that we are sending to them when our national
> priorities are such that we can spend a billion dollars a day, about
> $45.8 million dollars an hour, on the war in Iraq and have a few
> million dollars domestically be the difference between whether
> communities like South Central Farm have healthy and nutritious food
> or not. So like thousands of other people around the world today, I
> am saddened and at the same time I continue to admire, support and
> gain strength and hope from the courageous example provided by the
> South Central farmers. Your cause is not lost because the struggle
> will and must continue.”
>
> Wednesday evening, Darryl Hannah appeared on CNNs Larry King Live
> interview show, joined via phone by Willie Nelson. Mr. King stated he
> knew the late Mr. Annenberg (of the Annenberg Foundation), and that he
> would have help, “probably doubling the money gift.” The late
> founder of the Annenberg Foundation was the former publisher of the
> Philadelphia Inquirer. Willie Nelson reiterated that he is strongly
> standing “beside the farmers” on this issue.
>
> Whatever happens next, the Sacred Heart of Jesus candles are still
> around the sacred tree, but could be bulldozed within days. As of
> last night, more candles are being lit on the outside of the farm
> during new nightly prayer vigils. Even though this is a big political
> mess, all I can think of is Jesus’ saying, “Whatever you do unto the
> least of me, you do unto Me..”
> END


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