The South Central Farm deserves to to stay planted.
When the South Central Farm supporters won an eviction stay last week—the latest extension of a 20-year battle over the land—many Angelenos may have rolled their eyes once again, wishing the whole issue would just die, expire, buy the farm, so to speak.
Instead, the whole story keeps being unearthed like a field of carrots: the legal rights of the farmers (or whether to even call them “farmersâ€), the mayor’s alleged closed-door, possibly illegal efforts to save the farm, and the land’s original (and faulty) eminent domain accruement. Meanwhile, L.A. media seems intent on digging all the wrong dirt, like the LA Weekly exploring the sordid details of in-fighting between some of the former farmers and activists with nary a mention of the hundreds of farmers who claim to depend on the land. As the largest urban farm in the nation, and considering the legal battle has implications across the board, the farm should stay planted.
Contrary to the L.A. Times’ editorial last week asserting that “no magic is so strong that it erases a landowner’s right,†we see it happening all around us. That magic: eminent domain. When this city will strip business owners of their stores in order to build something more lucrative, arguing that more jobs can be construed as “the greater good,†then by the same token we can stomach righting a wrong committed by the city years ago. Appropriately compensating the farm’s leaseholder and saving a monument to community is the first, truly special instance we’ve seen of eminent domain seeming a reasonable option. No case could better represent a “benefit for the greater good.â€
What is inherently fair about paying $18 million dollars for a small group of people to collectively (and exclusively as the LA Weekly pointed out) engage in their hobby? You point to the “magic” of community without nary a mention of the safety of consuming vegetables from soil that has never undergone state testing for contaminants; soil that has been zoned by the city as industrial use for decades.
It is amazing what stupid populist rhetoric and an inclination to go the contrary of anyone with the title of “land developer” does today. Suddenly, squatters become “urban farmers.” The needs-assertion from a blighted and economically depressed area (South Central) goes from “more jobs” to “more farms” (in Los Angeles??). Lastly the storyline goes from one of continuing to squat to one of pseudo-enviro epic between the powers-that-be and peasants. Give me break.
First off, this is not the first mention of this issue in L.A. Alternative. Back in December LAA previewed the farmers before any paper cared to touch the topic. This editorial was in light of a few new pieces of information, since that original feature. As for the LA Weekly coverage, pitting 20 ex-farmers against the other 330 farmers, it smacks of its new corporate and its increasingly pro-development position in a number of troubling cases.
But secondly, no one’s setting up a peasants vs. land developer dichotomy here, it’s not a black and white issue of wrong and right. The whole point is that unlike most eminent domain cases this one was entirely botched by the city in the early ’80s, and all that’s happened since, including the sprouting up of an immensley important public resource, must be inlucded in the discussion of what to do now. These people weren’t squatters, they were helping turn a blight land into something productive for a decade before the city then sold it back from underneath them.
For the right amount of money, the developer will sell and go elsewhere, all that’s concerned there is the economics of building a warehouse. Guess what? You can do that anywhere. But finding a replacement for the 14-acres of open soil and gardens has proved impossible. So, if you can use this eminent domain for anything beneficial ever, this seems like the case.
Why are you so angry at vegetables?
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Bif said,
March 17, 2006 @ 4:31 pmI think you are right and your opinion seems to connect with the cover story CityBeat did on the subject about six weeks ago.