Save the Farm. Deadline: Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Mostly, Los Angeles is an assortment of adjacent but isolated enclaves transversed by the freeways and major transportation arteries. We locate ourselves in relation to them. I live at the 405 and the 710, or just east of the 110 near the 5, or on the other side of the 101. The freeways have been cultural and economic borders at least since the 1980's, when the Westside (west of La Brea, north of the 10) was closed off by expensive, single-family homes, gated communities, and not-in-my-back-yard lines in the asphalt. Drive across L.A. on the 10, and your windshield becomes a movie screen of the income gap, and of ethnic and cultural collisions. As Spanish-speakers came and stayed, East Los, unable to flow west, spilled into South Central and Inglewood, bastions of African-American tradition. We in L.A. rarely leave the freeway any more.

Except if you happened down the Alameda Corridor a couple of years or more ago. Through Los Angeles proper, the Alameda Corridor overlays Alameda Street. It was designed to connect trucks and trains to the Port of Los Angeles. Along its path have sprung up warehouses, manufacturing plants, shipping centers and the rest of the repugnance of industrialization that cities try to keep tucked out of sight. In some places, industrial development overlays the homes and schools and playgrounds of people living in its shadow.

In the middle of your drive down Alameda, between Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and 41st Street, back then you would have seen the South Central Farm. Back in 1986, the City had purchased the land from Ralph Horowitz and others as a site for a mammoth trash incinerator for $4.8M, but local residents rose up in one of first environmental justice movements in the country and defeated the notorious Lancer Project. In tribute to the people, Mayor Bradley gifted the area to the residents after the Rodney King beating and the ensuing rebellion, in 1992. Forced past in the flow of moving traffic, you might barely have had time to glimpse the 14-acre Farm, but, if your windows were open, the sudden jolt of oxygen-laden air was palpable.

The City sold the land to the independent Port of Los Angeles in 1994 for $13M, and the Harbor let the food bank across the street use it for a community garden. It blossomed into the largest urban farm in the world, feeding over 350 families and many in the neighborhood. Then, eleven years after it was purchased, in backroom dealings that have yet to be explained, the City sold the land a second time, to Horowitz, the developer who
owned it before 1992, for just $400,000 more than they price they paid him for it, a questionable gift of taxpayers' money to Horowitz. For two years, the Farmers took time from their jobs and their farming to make twice-weekly trips to City Council meetings to implore the City to return the land to them, But by 2006 developer Ralph Horowitz had lined up the support of the Ninth District's council member, Jan Perry. Early in the spring, the freeway boundaries that divided Angelenos crumbled--people from all walks of life contributed to saving the Farm when, at the behest of Horowitz and Perry, county sheriffs posted an eviction notice on the Farm fence.

Spanish-speaking Farmers and committed, mostly young, people from across the City occupied the Farm day and night. Movie and music stars and famous activists dropped in for publicity photo ops, and some stayed to tree-sit. Thousands of visitors from across southern California headed east or north or south or west to attend rock-star concerts and indigenous ceremonies to benefit the Farm. People drove across the country to visit. Prayers were offered in Africa and by Zapatista supporters in Atenco, Mexico. Something essential, something like a connection to the land and these campesinos, had swept across Los Angeles. City Hall was quaking.

But Horowitz, proclaiming "developers' rights" over the outrage of Angelenos, put the land on the market for $16.3M. When the Annenberg Foundation and others came to the Farmers' rescue and offered Horowitz his asking price, he brusquely refused to sell it to the Farmers. Three months later, on July 3, 2006, the media filled TV screens and radios with the sights and sounds of tree-sitters plucked off branches by hook-and-ladder trucks rolling across ripe food. Supporters locked down in the fields, their arms chained in concrete-filled oil drums. A zucchini in the tailpipe of a bulldozer shut it down for more than a day. Forty-four people were arrested, as the bulldozers destroyed fourteen years of labor in an afternoon. City Hall settled back on its foundation: development, industrialization, and exploiting Angelenos for the sake of globalization.

It's happened before, a groundswell of Angelenos uniting to keep patches of green safe from asphalt and concrete. Back in 1999, the people organized and stopped the construction of downtown warehouses at the Cornfields, after the Cultural Affairs Department determined the site was not historically significant. With dramatic justice, now the Cornfields houses the Los Angeles State Historical Park. In that same year, nearly forty community organizations banded together to save Taylor Yard from warehouses. Taylor Yard was purchased by the State of California and is now a state park.

In 2006, Angelenos found one more treasure in their back yard, and they drove off the freeway grid, found each other, and fought City Hall for the South Central Farm and the Farmers who brought it to life. Across the world, people held their breath in hope, but City Hall recovered its footing and industrial developers heaved a sigh of relief. Now, the public comments will continue until July 23, from both the Farm supporters and, no doubt, from whomever Rosenheim and Associates can round up. A week or two later, the Deputy Advisory Board will either stand by its Mitigated Negative Declaration or require an Environmental Impact Report. In either case, an appeal to the full Planning Commission is likely. The question is, can Angelenos muster their connection to the land and culture in time and with enough determination to pry City Hall from the grip of developers? Can they recover their city government and the South Central Farm for the people?

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