COME OUT TODAY TO DEFEND THE LARGEST URBAN GARDEN IN THE COUNTRY!
Coast to Coast Solidarity with the South Central Farmers!
Harvard University is welcoming the Mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa.
Demand the city stop "developers" from dismantling the South Central Farm!
THE LAND BELONGS TO THOSE WHO WORK IT
Wednesday. November 30.
6:00 pm
70 JFK Street
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA
Please join us tomorrow if you can make it. If not, write to officials here:
http://www.southcentralfarmers.com/politicianform.php The South Central Farm is thought to be the largest urban garden in the country. It feeds hundreds of families who grow their own food. It also serves as a model for autonomy and self-determination. Help the South Central Farmers defend their land from being demolished by "developer" Ralph Horowitz, who plans to put a warehouse in its place.
From the South Central Farmers:
For 13 years, the South Central Farmers have worked to transform the land into a farm that meets the needs of a community regularly ignored and neglected by the City and its “elected” representatives. The State has failed Los Angeles residents who lack access to healthcare. The South Central Farmers grow medicinal herbs as an alternative to the high cost of prescription drugs. The City has failed to provide safe places for the children of South Central Los Angeles to play free from threats of violence and gang activity. The South Central Farmers welcome families and community into a veritable oasis.
The South Central Farmers dispel the myth that the poor are poor because they are lazy. Many of the South Central Farmers work more than one job, and then farm the land at 41st and Long Beach Avenue. They grow staples such as corn, tomatoes, cactus, and other foods such as papalotl, pipicha, chipillin, alachi, quelite, and quintonil from Meso-America unavailable elsewhere in Los Angeles. The South Central Farmers provide fresh foods and a healthy alternative to the working poor. They have found a creative way to feed families without “welfare.”
The land at 41st and Alameda was given to this working-class community after the “L.A. Rodney King not guilty verdict,” when a Jury of wealthy citizens acquitted the four police officers who were filmed beating Rodney King half to death. People throughout Los Angeles County rebelled against such an obvious miscarriage of "justice."
The 1992 rebellion put the spotlight on the poor of Los Angeles and of South Central L.A. in particular -– just as the spotlight is now on poverty conditions in New Orleans. The government and media tagged the 1992 L.A. rebellion as “looting” and “riots” –- but knew that the rebellion was a reaction to the “not guilty” verdict, and to conditions of poverty and hunger in South Central Los Angeles.
While the world had its spotlight on Los Angeles in 1992, the L.A. City government expropriated the land where our farms now stand and gave it to the community to operate as a community “farm.” The land was given to the community in South Central Los Angeles to cultivate farms that feed hungry families.
Fast forward, 13 years later when the cameras are gone but poverty in the area has increased. The City of Los Angeles and the Courts want to deny our community the right to healthy food that supplements the meager incomes of the working people of South Central L.A. They want to destroy the farmland that has been feeding South Central L.A. families for more than a decade. The South Central Farmers have transformed this barren piece of land that was previously filled with trash, rodents, weeds, broken glass and rock. Now, the City of Los Angeles and the Courts want to grant a venture capitalist the right to evict the South Central Farmers to replace the fertile farmland, and our precious fruits and vegetables, with a cement warehousing complex in connection with the Alameda Corridor!
We are here to tell you that we are still here – aqui estamos y no nos vamos! But, this community farm is under attack by the wealthy that are supported by their political and judicial connections. But, the power of the people and of organized labor is the greatest force in society.
We need your support and your help to save this life-giving Farm.