The Neighborhood News Online

Big Victory for Vegetables and Communities

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Category: Community News

Published on Thursday, 19 September 2013 16:02

Written by D.V. Lawrence

Local Garden Hero, activist and TED speaker, Ron Finley, is celebrating a major victory for street gardeners throughout Los Angeles.   Two years ago Ron ran afoul of the law…

“I live in a food desert, South Central Los Angeles, home of the drive-thru and the drive-by,” he said. “So what I did, I planted a food forest in front of my house. It was on a strip of land called a parkway. It’s 150 feet by 10 feet. Thing is, it’s owned by the city and somebody complained. The city came down on me, and basically gave me a citation saying that I had to remove my garden, and the citation was turning into a warrant. And I’m like ‘Come on, really? A warrant for planting food on a piece of land that you could care less about?’

He approached Councilman Wesson with a huge community petition. The Councilman didn’t hesitate to side with Finley and began looking into possible solutions to the dilemma of either growing food on public land or going to jail on taxpayers dime.  This summer when two people were cited for their parkway gardens Councilman Wesson raised the motion to amend the ”Residential Parkway Landscaping Guidelines” and suspend any more fines as the city searches for a solution to allow parkways to be used to grow community vegetable gardens. 

Neighborhood News Kudos to Ron and to Council President Wesson for supporting real growth in our community. 

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