Article on the South Central Farmers

Community Farming in LA

Neoliberalism at the Garden Gate

By TOM PHILPOTT

The fate of LA's South Central Community Farm, the nation's largest community garden, hinges on a dubious back-room deal between a developer and an ambitious city attorney. According to the Los Angeles Times, though, it's all pretty straight-forward.

"It would be nice to keep the South Central Community Garden, an island of lush kitchen crops covering 14 acres amid the industrial warehouses, packing plants and junkyards that stretch for miles in a seemingly endless sweep along Alameda Street," the paper declared in a March 11 editorial. But the garden sits on private property, the Times continued, and its owner "has every right to kick out the people who have been squatting there for more than a decade." And the putative owner, Brentwood developer Ralph Horowitz, is exercising his right to the hilt. He has evicted the gardeners, who are now clinging to the land on the strength of a court-ordered stay that expires March 20.

In its place Horowitz plans to erect a warehouse-possibly for Wal-Mart. The garden lies conveniently near the Alameda Corridor, a $2.4 billion city project designed to facilitate the flow of goods shipped into the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports through the metropolitan area. Since its completion in 2002, big-box retailers have scrambled to build warehouses in South Central.

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Read whole article at: http://www.counterpunch.org/philpott03162006.html