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September 23, 2005
South Central Farmers
What: "Friends and Neighbors Day"
When: Oct 1st 2005, 2:00 pm
Why: To Help Preserve the 14 acre community farm
Where: 4000 S. Long Beach Ave. Los angeles, CA 90058
Find the farm on Google
Maps
Contact: (323) 232-8316
email: [email protected]
web: www.southcentralfarmers.com
Hello Neighbor! Please take a moment of your time to read this Letter of Introduction.
You may have noticed the Farmland along Long Beach Avenue at 41st Street,
just east of the train tracks and stretching from Long Beach Avenue to
Alameda. These 14 acres are the Farm of the South Central Farmers.
The South Central Farmers have creatively turned a section of inner-city
squalor -- a barren wasteland of formerly hard dirt, broken concrete and
glass -- into a flourishing green garden of life engendering life. The tree
of life is the sweat and toil of humanity in Nature, feeding families
freely. In the middle of the inner-city poverty of South Central Los
Angeles, farmers are growing roots, fruits and vegetables -- serious food
that includes cabbage, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, cactus and other staples
to put on the family table. This is not abstract symbolism of 'keeping hope
alive,' but the material reality of keeping families fed. For the past 13
years, the South Central Farmers have been developing this otherwise piece
of wasteland into fertile farmland.
This land has been cultivated by working-class members of your community --
of our community -- whose labor and sweat feeds the families of the farm laborer
and the hungry and poor of our community. We are the South Central [Los Angeles]
Farmers feeding families -- working 350 individual plots of land in a communal
setting. We work together, help each other, and have asked for no welfare from
the government, wealthy landowners or from the City of Los Angeles. We see our
efforts as contributive, not competitive -- cultivating food directly from the
good earth.
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 have called the people
in New Orleans "looters" and "rioters -- but know very
well that the people
of New Orleans are responding to a desperate situation resulting from
conditions of poverty.) 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 be
operated as a community farm. The land was given to the community our
community, yours and mine -- 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 have been deliberately isolated from the governmental decision making
process no notice was given by the City to this community or the South
Central Farmers of its plans to take back this land! But, we are not
isolated from our community or from our friends.
We are fighting this cruel eviction in the courts, and also demanding that
City Council live up to its decision in 1992 to allow our community to
cultivate this land to help alleviate hunger in South Central Los Angeles.
But, from experience, we know that the courts and the government are not
"neutral." We know this from the not guilty verdict
that sanctioned the
police brutally beating Rodney King, and we know this from the failure of
the government to timely rescue the people of New Orleans.
But, we also know the power of public awareness and of public protest
potential that forced the federal government to retry the police officers
that beat Rodney King, and to convict them for violating Rodney King's civil
rights. Similarly, we have seen the power of public opinion that has forced
the government to finally rescue those poor, abandoned people of New
Orleans.
We are not advocating rebellion -- we do not want to see stores destroyed
and people killed by soldiers. This is merely a reminder of the history of
how the community farm came to be, and of the objective injustice of
evicting the South Central Farmers -- no matter what the Courts "rule."
We are here to tell you that we are still here aqui estamos y no nos
vamos! But, this community garden is under attack by the wealthy that are
supported by their political and judicial connections. We cannot match their
money or their political flunkeys; but the power of the people and of
organized labor is the greatest force in society.
We are asking you to connect with us at the Farm. Join the South Central
Farmers on Saturday, October 1, 2005 at 2:00 p.m., for Friends & Neighbors
Day. We need your support and your help to save this life-giving Farm.
Thank you for your time!
http://www.southcentralfarmers.com/
______________________________________________
Southcentralfarmers mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.electrolandia.com/mailman/listinfo/southcentralfarmers
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