Wednesday, June 21, 2006

South Central Farm

The South Central Farm was the largest urban farm in the U.S. On June 14 it was "attacked" by city officials. Trees were cut down, bulldozers plowed over families' food, and tree-sitters removed (including actress Daryl Hannah).

350 families created the farm 14 years ago after the 1992 uprising. At that time, the land was given to the community by the mayor.

The official owner of the land decided to sell and the community could not raise the $16.3 million to buy the land.

Such a shame. I'd never heard of this before but it seems like it would be a really great thing for any community. (On July 12, the farmers and community will go to court to fight the legality of the sale of the land.)

I wish things like this made the news while they were still in existence. I wish it didn't take demolition or loss to get into the papers and onto the Web.

2 comments:

Ben Monopoli said...

I read on CNN about Daryl Hannah being removed from a tree, but that was the main point of the story. I don't remember hearing anything about the farm. I bet there were a lot of cool hippies on that farm.

Good to see you posting. I was getting lonely as the lone poster. ;-)

B.

Maggie said...

Yeah, the only thing I saw about it was that Daryl Hannah had to pulled out of a tree, nothing about the farm/garden shutting down or anything.

These are the kinds of things that actually affect people's lives and should be reported on.