Insult to Injury
Tantalizingly close to saving their community garden from destruction, the South Central Farmers beg
By Perry Crowe
These are tense times for the South Central Farmers, poised between an apparent city deal to purchase the property and imminent eviction, and the internal strain is starting to show. A March 17 article in the L.A. Weekly, based on interviews with 20 "current and former South Central farmers," portrayed the farm as the "unofficial fiefdom" of the farmers' two elected leaders, Tezozomoc and Rufina Juarez. One farmer even described them as "despots" who evicted anyone who disagreed with the leadership.
"Everybody has dissident members," responds Tezozomoc. "We have people who are not happy. And it's okay. But we have due process."
The article comes at a critical juncture for the farmers. The city is currently in negotiations to purchase the land from its owner, developer Ralph Horowitz. A sticking point is cutting Horowitz a tax break on the $18 million he could potentially make on the sale. City officials are tight-lipped on the subject, though. Darryl Ryan at the mayor's office would only say the city is seeking a deal that is "mutually beneficial to all parties."
But the Weekly article goes further, citing farmers' concerns about the handling of group funds - about which Tezozomoc and Juarez both say they welcome close scrutiny. A strictly low-budget operation, they pride themselves on the transparency of their organization (all purchases over $100 must be approved by the entire farmer community and all motions require a simple majority to pass). Each farmer pays a $10 membership fee and then $13 per month to farm the land at Alameda Avenue and 41st Street. All members are then subject to the rules of the farm. According to Tezozomoc and Juarez, many of the farmers who were evicted had engaged in sharecropping, whereby a single person would obtain multiple plots on the farm in order to produce food for profit rather than for subsistence, the original intention of the farm.
Another membership requirement of the South Central Farm is active participation. The farm holds meetings weekly to update members on events pertaining to the farm, as well as a monthly general assembly meeting where the farmers vote on issues.
"These people [who were evicted] did not want to engage [in the democratic process]," says Tezozomoc. "They did not want to follow the rules. They were used to doing whatever they wanted. These are the people who are not happy because we began to enforce the original rules that the Food Bank [to whom the farmers pay monthly dues] never enforced."
Originally, the 14-acre farm was divided into eight sections, with each section run by a captain. During that time, the aforementioned sharecropping practices began, with some captains taking three or four plots for themselves. ? A change in leadership came in February 2003 in response to a written eviction notice.
"What happened is we had a meeting," says Juarez, "and we asked people, 'Did you know that [the farm] was going to close? And they all said, 'No, we only got this letter in English.' So we had a general assembly where we talked about, 'Okay, do we want to move forward as a group?' And everybody said, 'Yes.'"
And with that decision to begin fighting the eviction, the atmosphere at the farm did change. The farmers now had a political battle on their hands.
"The leadership that has emerged is because of the crisis," says Devon Peña, a professor at the University of Washington who is consulting with the Trust for Public Land on how the property might be managed collaboratively between the farmers, the city, and the county. "Everyone [at the farm] would rather be farming, including Tezozomoc and Rufina. But it's a matter of the crisis compelling the sort of politicized leadership that they've been able to provide. And if not for them, [the farm] would've been lost."
Regarding allegations that they might stand to benefit financially from the purchase, both leaders point out that they would not be the deed holders. If sold, the land would be city property. In the past, they had heard that some farmers were charged $750 to $1,000 to work a plot controlled by others, but that doesn't happen now that firm rules have been established. Any money raised from fundraising concerts by Ozomatli or Zack de la Rocha are spent according to a vote of the general assembly - and generally go for gas, oil and maintenance for the generators, locks and keys (changed every few weeks), and media or legal materials.
Confrontations between the farmers and L.A. City Council have taken on an acrimonious feel lately, as the farmers become frustrated by the lack of action. Particular scorn has rained down on the head of Councilmember Jan Perry, whose Ninth District includes the farm. Her office declined comment for this story, citing the farmers' current lawsuit against the city. The farmers contend the deal which brought the land back to Horowitz (after he had been forced to sell it to the city to allow the construction of an incinerator known as the LANCER project; a project successfully fended off by a community group) was some $8 million below the land's actual value, and therefore illegal.
At a recent city council meeting, Soche Luhen, a member of the South Central Farm's Support Committee, called Perry out for allegedly rolling her eyes while Luhen addressed the council. And after other farmers' comments were repeatedly directed at Perry during a March 24th meeting, a frustrated Herb Wesson stepped to his colleague's defense, asking the city attorney's representative if there wasn't some rule against public comments being directed at councilmembers by name. The representative replied that the public had the legal authority to refer to city officials by name, but must stop short of threatening.
Yet it seems the farmers' struggle can't help but threaten some people.
"A farm like this is very threatening to speculators, real estate developers, and so on," says Peña, "because it really fundamentally changes the use of the land into something that's really productive, not only of food and biodiversity, but of community."
But even the idea of "community" is being contested. Mark Williams of Concerned Citizens of South Central (the community group that fought off the incinerator project) suggests many of the farmers are not residents of the neighborhood immediately surrounding "the LANCER site," and some are not even residents of L.A. proper.
"The most frustrating thing about what's been going on is the needs of the local community have been totally ignored," says Williams. "How do allegedly 350 farmers who don't even live in the community, how do their needs end up trumping the needs of the local community?"
At two earlier town hall meetings, Williams says, local families expressed a desire for about half of the plot to be developed into a soccer field and youth center, while keeping about seven acres for gardening. "It's been portrayed as an issue between a rich developer and these humble gardeners," Williams continues, "but it's a land use issue."
Williams suggests Concerned Citizens could even buy the property outright by selling some of the various properties the group owns around the city. But Williams also suggests a more personal motive for obtaining the land, rather than simply providing another soccer field for the area. "That place is where our organization started, so it has a great deal of sentimental and spiritual value to us," he says. "It would be like a homecoming for us."
As for Williams's suggestion that the farmers have less claim on the land because they aren't from the immediate neighborhood, the L.A.-born Peña says: "It's like arguing, 'If you're not from the area around Dodger Stadium, you shouldn't go to Dodgers games.' It's a very unfair way of framing the issue. [The farmers] are marginalized, low-income, immigrant, diaspora people. They're already outsiders. We don't have to add insult to injury, do we?"Published: 03/30/2006
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT
