Linda Piera-Avila asked me to forward this, since she is back at farm this morning. She is a Green Party organizer who has been intensely involved for several weeks onsite and before the encampment.

What a sad day yesterday…

We truly live in a fascist government, esp. if one is a person of color or poor or both. I was not at the Farm when the heavy hammer came down, but arrived shortly afterward. In time to see hundreds of armed law enforcement types do their militaristic maneuvers.

At one point they were pointing tear gas guns in the direction of the crowd in which I was a part. They would not let legal observers in to see what was happening to the arrestees. They would not let us give them water. They did not give the warning period before commencing arrests inside the Farm, as they are required to do by law.

They started cutting the walnut tree with John and Daryl still in the upper limbs. (Daryl will be on Larry King tonight.) They sent bulldozers in not only to clear a path to the tree, but also to wantonly and spitefully destroy random plots.

The news keeps reporting Horowitz’ side, but very little mention of the Farmers’ side - that the land was sold out from under them in a back room deal three years ago. Then, recently, with the efforts of Julia and others, the money to buy the farm was raised, but he refused to sell to the Farmers because he “doesn’t believe in the cause.” I guess that means he doesn’t eat. I wouldn’t be surprised as he obviously has no heart, either. He is like the disembodied Sauron. I guess Frodo failed this time.

It was a spontaneous, organic, joyful, simple, peaceful group of very different folks who came together for this cause along with the farmers. It was like being in a Mexican village. The farmers kept us fed with good vegan food, a lot of which was from the farm. Often you could hear someone playing music. We had a healing center where bodyworkers volunteered and where people could get first aid or counseling or a nap. We had an art center where people could make banners, posters, or whatever was needed for the daily press conferences and evening vigils.

We had a media table, set up outside with internet and fax and powered by solar panels from Taran Smith’s veggie van (he was the youngest son on Home Improvement). The farm organizers and tree sitters had daily conferences in the peach orchard to plan strategy. We had nightly vigils, inviting leaders from all religious backgrounds to lead inspirational moments, followed by the Aztec blessing and then a candlelight procession around the perimeter of the Farm.

We had young people arranging security: anarchists, zapatistas, and others. All very respectful of others. I was doing ground support for the tree sitters and trying to monitor Julia (she is stubborn) during her prolonged fast. (note: Linda is a physical therapist, in addition to all of her Green Party organizing talents.) A heavy responsibility.

In many ways, I think the community at the Farm was a model of what could be, and what might be when peak oil hits and what should be, so that resources are avaiable to all and no one has to starve. As you’ve learned in your odysseys, we really don’t need all the stuff we’re told we need.

My heart is heavy this morning as I reflect on what has been lost and the foolishness of the City of L.A. in not nuturing this gem, this oasis in the midst of urban grit and greed. All the players’ excuses and disclaimers only serve to confirm the disease of our dominant culture and the idolatry of private property rights to the exclusion of the commons and human need. 350 low income families will now be without access to their crops. I wonder how Horowitz and the mayor and the councilwoman would feel if they could not get fruits and vegetables.

A court case will begin July 12. Let’s hope the truth will be revealed then and that the farmers will be able to return to their plots. It is a sad day when people are criminalized for growing their own food. What I saw yesterday looked more like a third world country with peasants being thrown off the land for a corporation’s interests, rather than a scene from the US.

The random destruction of the plots also reminded me of the time when white buffalo hunters would kill the animals for their tongues and hides and leave the carcasses to rot on the plains. No respect for life or the planet. No heart. No soul.

Linda Piera-Avila
Los Angeles Greens

Listen:

She is the basis of life, our Mother, and she is true. Today, sunshine glints from her leaves as the wind lifts them; the energy is transmuted; she gives birth.

Coming home from the action at the Farm today I noticed the world. It is green, even here, in LA.

It isn’t our anger, or our grief, or even, in the final analysis, our sense of justice that moves us, that has kept us alive under a system of death for 5 hundred years. It is our knowledge of beauty.

The seeds, the ancient seeds growing at the Farm were sent to us by our ancestors; they are precious messages from a distant past, from those ancient ones who still watch over us, and who are present in this moment and in this place; they have made us who we are.

They will remain; they are messages to our children and great-grandchildren, messages of sunlight and life, the yellow corn and the white corn, the blue…

They grow.

But this. This system of death has no option but to kill, and thus no option but to die. These men, who as the Hopi Elders tell us, profit at the expense of all life, will come one day to pay their debt. It will all fall down on them.

Our prophecies, the prophecies of our Elders and antepasados tell us so. Science, the science of the earth, of living systems, of the atmosphere, of combustion and energy, of structure and chaos, tell us so. There is not much time.

Some day soon we will all be farmers. Some day soon what the Destroyers have built on the foundation of destruction will follow itself to its logical and inherent conclusion.

We’ve done the right thing. We’ve defended our Mother and life and balance. We’ve stood together in an alliance for her survival. We’ve created beauty and community; we are here together. We are pushing up, from beneath the concrete, from between the cracks of a collapsing system; we are coming to know one another.

We have and we need only one answer: plant new seed. This was the course of our ancestors, the path they took to preserve our past and plant anew the beauty that is life; they did so in the face of genocide, of cultural collapse, and of a destruction so utter, so total, that we can scarcely imagine it, even in the face of the bulldozers on the Farm.

We have not lost. The Earth does not belong to us, we belong to her. It is a bond that cannot be severed. The Zapatistas remind us that only forgetting is defeat.

Remembering means life. What we have learned so far at the Farm cannot be forgotten. It has changed us forever. We are a new people. Not even in death can we forget.

Yes, following the peak oil crisis community farms like south central farm will become models for what needs to replace the petrochemical intensive fertilizer/pesticide dependency of monocrop plantation agriculture. Just look at Cuba's approach to the pesticide embargo, the people grew their food in community gardens, huertos intensivos, organoponicos, etc..

The difference between Cuba and the US is that in Cuba the goverment helped the people with their community farms, providing scientists with beneficial insects and organically derived (non-petroleum) pesticides, natural slow release fertilizers, permaculture methods, etc..

In the US the city officials resond to community gardens with police state tactics, helicopters, bulldozers and destruction. This (destruction of the farm) indicates the LA city and CA state officials (up to the bush/cheney regime) have no concern for the welfare of people and when the peak oil crisis hits, as there will be no safety net to feed starving people dependent on pesticide/biotech corporate controlled monoculture crops (lack of crop diversity prone to viral/pest plagues) that are prone to mass die-off, resulting in famine and potential genocide..

Community farms like the one in south central LA need to expand and be multiplied everywhere throughout the US and the world, not destroyed and replaced with non-living materials, concrete, warehouses, etc..

http://www.foodnotlawns.com/

How about "what *is*" what will happen?

When you make $15,000 a year, that $3 a gallon gas looks a lot more expensive than when you make $40,000 a year. Peak oil is mostly about fuel and other industrial age resources getting expensive. And when fuel is that valuable, other things become valuable, like the political power to defend self-sustenance and the political will to destroy it.

>The random destruction of the plots also reminded me of the time when white buffalo hunters would kill the animals for their tongues and hides and leave the carcasses to rot on the plains. No respect for life or the planet. No heart. No soul.

It might also remind us of when American soldiers, with anger and revenge in their hearts, destroyed the crops of Vietnamese farmers suspected of being the enemy.

It might also remind us of when American soldiers, with anger and revenge in their hearts, destroyed the crops of Iraqi farmers suspected of being the enemy.

Not that I'm picking on America. Other warriors have destroyed crops since war and agriculture were invented. It's right up there with rape and child-snatching in the old playbook of wartime psychological torture.