Subsistence farming in South Central, LA - no more

So, who owns the land?

I've been following that, some pros and cons on it. Back in a bit with a link and perhaps part ol an article by a guy writing for the LA Times who I remember as being reasonable back when I followed the LAT more than I do now.

Daryl Hannah, Alicia Silverstone et al can turn over their property to farmers.

Problem solved!!

More info here on Indymedia.

Basically, the City acquired the 14-acre property by eminent domain in the late 1980s, then after the 1992 riots leased it to the LA Regional Foodbank to operate it as a community garden.

The City then, in 1996, drafted an agreement with a private investor to sell the property to him, but one that depended on City Council approval. As the Council hadnt approved it, the City then several times demurred the investor's insistence on execution of the sale. The investor filed suit, and eventually the City reached a settlement with him, to sell the property to him after all, for slightly over 5 million $ - a settlement which the Council then approved.

After a number of subsequent court cases first featured rulings in their favour, but then one against them, the community gardeners finally turned into de facto squatters in 2005, though they dispute the legal validity of the last ruling.

Meanwhile, supporters of the gardeners made their own offer or offers. The Democracy Now piece says that Horowitz was offered 16 million $ for the property, and that The Annenberg Foundation and the Trust for Public Land put an offer to Horowitz (I'm not sure whether that's the same offer or whether there were two). Horowitz rejected the 16 million.

Now, the farmers have been evicted. But it raises questions. Should the City never have agreed to sell it to the investor? Should the Council have refused to approve that decision? Should Horowitz have accepted the 16 million $ offer - still a handy 11 million $ profit for him, after all - (this goes down to the question whether entrepreneurs have a social responsibility or not)?

Daryl Hannah doesnt live in South Central, and the subsistence farmers can't afford the commute.

(I'm being flippant, but at the same time also serious)

(Forgot to get the link at the same time I picked up the article.)

Well, I dunno about Mumia Abu Jamal, never did read up enough on that, and I have mixed feelings re Julia Butterfly, though not mixed feelings about old growth redwoods.

I'm a community farm fan. Hell, I'd like people to plant edible front yards and parking strips. Lopez' article gave me some background re this recent episode on the community farm that I didn't know before... especially toward the end of the article.

Back with link..




Los Angeles Times
Steve Lopez:
Points West
Daryl Hannah Evicted From Tree on Urban Farm
June 14, 2006

Former mermaid Daryl Hannah said recently she didn't know there was a farm in South-Central Los Angeles until she got a phone call from a woman named Butterfly. This was back when Joan Baez was living up a tree on the same farm and singing folk songs, and I'd like to thank all of them for their contribution to the first paragraph of this column.

Hannah was being plucked from what may have been that same tree Tuesday as I arrived on the scene. Helicopters hovered overhead and there were enough police on hand to invade Mexico.

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It was the final drama in a long-running soap opera based on the fact that a guy named Ralph Horowitz wants a warehouse or something to rise on his 14-acre property, where cactus and fruit trees now bloom.

Hannah's arrest, along with those of a few dozen other protesters, was a Hollywood moment if ever there was one. The farm story has been beaten to death for years, but Hannah only heard about it a few weeks ago. And then suddenly she was Mother Teresa among the poor, laying her head down in a cabbage patch each night.

When I got to the show, protesters were behind the barricades at 41st Street and Long Beach Avenue, singing and dancing and yelling at cops in riot gear as the last squatters were evicted.

"What are you here to protect?" one foaming protester shouted at the cops, calling them slaves of the system. "Fascism?"

It was like being at a Mumia Abu Jamal rally. I liked the spirit of the young Che wannabes and gray-haired greens, but Mumia killed the cop in question, and Ralph Horowitz owns the farm in question. Which means he can do with it as he pleases, as the courts have ruled more than once.

Sure, it's a little more complicated than that. The city bought the land from Horowitz in the 1980s to build a trash incinerator, then dropped the plans after citizen protests. In 1992, the city leased the land to a food bank, which opened it up to urban farmers. But then, after a court battle, the city agreed to sell the land back to Horowitz in 2003 for $5 million.

That's when the current squabble started. Horowitz told the farmers to leave, but they wouldn't budge, so he called them squatters and they called him names right back.

The money spent on legal fees alone could probably feed the farm's 350 gardeners for years to come. But this isn't really about gardening at this point. The property is a symbol of many different things and everyone's got an agenda, with the plight of the farmers almost lost in the fray.

They became pawns, says South-Central activist Mark Williams, for a small group of political opportunists and Westside environmentalists. The latter groups made up the bulk of the arrestees Tuesday, said Williams, who's with South-Central Concerned Citizens. Many of the real farmers, he said, long ago moved to other spots the city found them, including one seven-acre plot at 111th and Avalon, where they could grow food without endless political theater.

"They speak a lot of progressive, Marxist rhetoric, but they're behaving like landed gentry," said Williams, who had water thrown in his face Tuesday by one of the so-called representatives of the farmers. "They didn't like hearing me speak the truth."

Williams, whose mother, Juanita Tate, was one of the original activists who fought the city's attempt to build an incinerator on the property, said he thought the activists were fools to vilify and alienate Horowitz, and thinks they sabotaged whatever deal might have been worked out to keep at least a portion of the land open to public use for gardening or soccer fields.

Meanwhile, demonstrators blasted Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for failing to save the farm, and supporters promised yet more legal challenges in the never-ending saga. At City Hall, the defeated mayor was pointing a finger at Horowitz, saying he had turned down a $16-million offer that included a $10-million pledge from the Annenberg Foundation.

The city lost "an oasis in a sea of industry and concrete," Villaraigosa said.

Sure, it's sad when a disputed patch of salad greens in central city gets crushed under the boots of City Hall bunglers and a developer who's about to turn fertilizer into gold. But who knows, maybe Joan Baez will get a new folk song out of the drama. And it did give a few Hollywood heroes a bit more time in the lights.

"I'm very confident this is the morally right thing to do, to take a principled stand in solidarity with the farmers," Hannah told the Associated Press moments before her arrest.

Call me a cynic, but I've got to wonder why she, Baez, Laura Dern, Martin Sheen, Danny Glover and other Hollywood supporters couldn't help raise the dough to back up their principles.

And if they believe poor folk ought to do their farming on private property, I'm wondering when they'll ask some of their Hollywood pals to open the security gates to their sprawling compounds. I'm just guessing, but there must be thousands of acres of fertile soil out there, ripe for planting.

(end article)

I can't tell if my post showed twice or not. It seemed to, I tried to edit, said I couldn't, and now it's only there once. Sorry if it does end up showing twice.

Here's the link -

http://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/la-me-lopez14jun14,1,7190777.column?coll=la-news-columns

Interesting alternate take, thank you Osso. Cant say it comes entirely unexpected.

Regarding his last paragraph, however, my flippant-yet-serious post to Lash applies. Its a nice rhetorical flourish, but in practice an irrelevant non-option.

Now, if those Hollywood stars had just bought the place, that indeed seems a more logical reproach (put your money where your mouth is).

Then again, if Horowitz, who bought it for 5 million, now wont even take 16 million for it... I do think Villaraigosa has a point re his blameworthiness. But then I believe that businessmen, too, have a social responsibility.

It's like pulling taffy to post, not sure if it's my computer or a2k.

Anyway, the buy from LA in the eighties was said by Lopez to be from Horowitz, and from Dem Now as (I forget, was ii eminent domain, but Horowitz not mentioned).

I wonder if my ex is following this. I just got off the phone with him, but we didn't get to this subject. He's from south LA and may have a view, or know something more. Last I heard he likes Villaraigosa.. but that's a generalization.

On the sarcasm about the bleeding hearts, I see the point, south LA was well abandoned for many years and may still be for all I know. Little transportation, and so on... in a city with many wealthy folk.

On the other hand, I think it's fine to protest what one thinks is injustice and one doesn't have to live there.

Could be there is some concern over squatters rights and adverse domain, nimh. I'm not sure if those are purely American doctrines or not.

I think it's easy to act like Horowitz is a bastard, but what I don't understand is why anyone expects him to give up property that he bought.

Again, seriously, these millionaire actresses have no right whatsoever to expect someone else to do what they won't do.

So lets see if I have this right:

The City of Los Angeles forced the Alameda company to sell them the land under the eminent domain theft system, but DID tell them that they would have the opportunity to buy back their OWN land if the city couldn't find something useful to do with the parcel within 10 years.

Track forward several years, the city decides to sell the land. (16 very valuable acres in downtown LA) They have a contractual obligation to offer the original owner, now called Libaw-Horowitz Investment Company, from who the land was stolen from an opportunity to buy their property back. (How fricken magnanimous of them. ) The owners buy back their property and now have to spend God only knows how much in legal fees to evict the people who are tresspassing on their property.

So what is the problem? The original company (Alameda) should NEVER had been forced to sell the land if the city didn't have a specific use for it.

Just my 2 cents.

Well, it did. They were going to build an incinerator there.

Now that plan was shot down by public protests. After that it was leased to the Regional Foodbank. Question is whether that alternative use counted as "a specific use for it" as well. I'd say it did.

I drive by this "farm" on an almost daily basis. It was kind of an oasis surrounded by an ugly industrial area.. I have to agree with Fedral, property rights is property rights. Horowitz was already screwed once with the eminent domain bs. Is he being a butthole by not taking the substantial offer for the property...............probably.

When I remarked in some earlier post about a bit I didn't know before towards the end of the Steve Lopez article, it was this, about new alternate sites being found -

"They became pawns, says South-Central activist Mark Williams, for a small group of political opportunists and Westside environmentalists. The latter groups made up the bulk of the arrestees Tuesday, said Williams, who's with South-Central Concerned Citizens. Many of the real farmers, he said, long ago moved to other spots the city found them, including one seven-acre plot at 111th and Avalon, where they could grow food without endless political theater."