One of the great things about living in the DC area is the AFI Silver Theater, and especially SilverDocs, their annual documentary filmfest. Not only do they show some of the best documentaries out there, but many of them are having their US or World premieres there, and often the director or others involved with the film are there to speak afterwards. As you can imagine, it’s popular. Once again, I failed to anticipate how fast this festival would sell out, but I did make it to one movie, and was glad that I did. That movie was The Garden.
The story is pretty incredible. After the LA riots, a mostly Latino community starts a community garden on 14 acres in South Central Los Angeles. It’s the largest urban garden in the country (the world?) at a time when community gardens are not yet the cool thing to do. This is just a community of people, living in a tough place but feeding their families with healthy organic food because it’s the right thing for them to do. Many of the people in the documentary say they have farming in their blood, and talk about how it’s a gift they inherited from their parents.
The movie begins when the garden is about to be taken away from them. We follow the farmers on a journey through backroom deals, racism, classism, prejudice, social conflict, protest, politics, and great passion on all sides. What comes out most for me (though there are many stories and many lessons in this movie) is that food is central to the lives of so many people, yet it is an afterthought to many others. At the heart of the farmers’ struggle is the right to grow their own food and to eat healthy food, regardless of poverty or wealth. Growing food brought this community together. Their main goal was to feed themselves well. They were passionate about organic vegetables in the sort of neighborhood where you would usually be hard-pressed to find any fresh vegetables. Many poor neighborhoods today are known as urban desserts, simply because so little healthy food is available. When the city threatened to take away their ability to grow food, these farmers fought with all they had to keep that simple right.
And it is a right. Rufina, one of the lead activists, spoke to us after the film, and that’s how she framed it: all people should have a right to good food. And why not? How can we justify growing corn for ethanol when people are starving around the world? How can we justify vacant lots in warehouse districts when a few feet of soil and a bit of hard work could give a family real food? For that matter, why should food stamps not be allowed at farmer’s markets everywhere? (More and more markets are accepting WICS, which is great.) With food becoming so expensive, more and more families are growing their own, for a multitude of reasons, but gardens are still something of a luxury in this country — not everyone can do it.
It’s sort of a crime. People like the South Central Farmers shouldn’t have to be fighting for their farmland. Cities should be giving it to them, subsidizing start-up expenses, providing training. As a society, I think we are slowly coming to that awareness. Too slowly, I say.