LINNEA SWENSON | staff writer
L.A. Term students bring awareness about South Central farmers to Azusa Pacific’s campus through a film showing of the Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary feature, The Garden, in Munson Chapel, Tuesday, March 17.
The evening opened with the documentary, a film by Scott Hamilton Kennedy that follows the lives of South Central L.A. farmers in their pursuit to see justice served as they fight to keep their 14-acre community garden from being bulldozed by a wealthy developer. The developer bought the land for millions less than fair-trade value in a closed-door session of the L.A. City Council.
For 14 years, the farmers worked to revive the land, cultivating it from the ashes and despair caused by the L.A. riots of 1992.
The garden, located on 41st and Alameda streets, fed up to 350 Latino families, upwards of 3,000 people, and was the largest community urban garden in the United States before its destruction in June 2006.
The film clearly exposes the underlying issues of greed, power, poverty and racial divides and probes questions regarding equality, liberty and justice for the poor and oppressed.
The event concluded with a brief question and answer time by three South Central farmers, an opportunity to sign up to visit the farm in April and the chance to try a veggie shot, a drink puréed from organic vegetables straight from the farm.
Sophomore global studies major Mackenzie Howe, along with junior business major Brittan Salisbury, decided to bring the film to APU with the intent of introducing APU to current issues in L.A.
“I think people need to realize that food is just as much of a right as anything else and people deserve to eat healthy,” Salisbury said. “This is something that’s really related to other issues such as the health system and immigrant rights and I’d like for students to start thinking about and making conscious decisions about where they shop. Go local.”
Howe had similar reasoning to host the event on campus.
“I think APU doesn’t focus enough on local issues in Los Angeles,” Howe said. “They do a good job on focusing on the Azusa community and then on global issues.”
Howe and Salisbury have been interning with Faith/Activism Collective this semester as part of the requirement for L.A. Term. The organization is a college student organizing initiative launched in 2006 by Progressive Christian Uniting (PCU) as a means to identify the needs of young Christians.
“Basically any area that is politically unjust, they [Faith/Activism Collective] come alongside and do small college ministries with them,” Howe said. “South Central Farmers is just one of their projects, but probably their biggest project.”
Organizing Director for Faith/Activism Collective Frank Romero-Crockett has been working alongside these organic farmers for almost three years.
“Our main goal is to transform regular students into advocates,” Romero-Crockett said.
Senior sociology major Britt Brown, who also attended the film showing, interned with Faith/Activism Collective her junior year while on L.A. Term.
“It’s important to be conscious about where your food comes from,” Brown said. “But it’s more than something of self-interest. It’s a way to be part of something bigger. We need to understand the importance of food and our health as it pertains to labor. Community-supported agriculture is a way to enter into that understanding and awareness.”
South Central farmer Alberto Tlatoa spent most of his life in South Central L.A., where he remembers there being more liquor stores and mini-markets than stores that provided the option of healthy organic food. His family had a plot in the community garden for nearly eight years.
“It’s a process to grow food and it’s a wonderful [lesson] that needs to be passed down,” Tlatoa said. “We are creating a food production and we’re doing everything to bring it back to the community. We’re trying to create a balance. We are the Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods of our community.”
Since the destruction of the community garden in 2006, South Central farmers have leased 80 acres of land up in Bakersfield where they commute to work on the weekends and bring up to four tons of food a week into L.A. Farmers markets and local grocery stores.
“Faith/Activism advocates for our cause and brings attention to the fact that we are still an organization and still doing work within the community,” Tlatoa said. “A lot of people think that after the eviction [from the garden] we just stopped. But we are still actively doing a lot of different projects.”
The new 80-acre farm in Bakersfield has been running for about a year now and is always in need of volunteers and interns.
“We use food as a form of organizing. It brings people together and it’s a basic human right,” Tlatoa said. “It’s something everyone can relate to because we all eat. Everyone should have an equal chance to get good and healthy organic food in their community.”
To find out more about the South Central farmers, you can do so by visiting www.southcentralfarmers.com. Or if you’d like your own copy of the documentary you can order from www.blackvalleyfilms.com.
