Last week, I sat riveted at the Horticultural Society of New York while watching a screening of the 2008 Oscar-nominated documentary, The Garden, a tour de force that pits a 14-acre community garden in South Central Los Angeles, run by mostly Latin American immigrants, against a wealthy developer with questionable city ties. A powerful treatise on power and racial discord, The Garden tells the story of farmers who organize to fight back against backroom deals to try and save their green urban oasis. [spoiler alert]

In the wake of the 1992 riots in South Central Los Angeles, the garden was created by the city as a way to heal the community. In turn, it became the largest garden of its kind in the country, sustaining more than 350 families and an antidote to the surrounding inner-city blight. The garden flourished for nearly a decade, until the city notified the farmers in 2003 they would be evicted within two months and the garden destroyed to make way for warehouses and a soccer field.

The film follows the farmers from the day they receive an eviction notice through the discovery of shady deals and courtroom drama to a last minute showdown replete with celebrity treesitters. With the looming threat of losing their land, Director Scott Hamilton Kennedy draws the viewer into the farmers’ struggle to continue planting and maintaining their community.

As the farmers decide to fight back and not merely vacate the property, I could almost smell the soil rising up against the smog of L.A. Through Kennedy’s lens, we follow the farmers’ leaders Rufina and Tezo as they hire a law firm who help them determine that the city had originally acquired the land for $5 million from owner Ralph Horowitz through eminent domain. They then discover that the Los Angeles City Council, in a secret, closed-session meeting and endorsed by Councilwoman Jan Perry, had sold the land back to Horowitz for $5 million—a price far below market value. Horowitz announces his intention to build warehouses on the land, as well as a soccer field. The situation is further complicated by Juanita Tate, the founder of the Concerned Citizens of South Central, who is adamantly opposed to the farmers’ cause and focused on her pet project, a soccer field.

In a bright moment, lawyers help the farmers’ score a preliminary victory: the County Superior Court issues a temporary restraining order and later a preliminary injunction halting development of the property until the lawsuit is settled. Sadly, later, the farmers lose the lawsuit and the court raised the injunction, freeing Horowitz to evict the farmers.

Initially, Horowitz seeks $16.3 million for the property, more than three times the 1986 eminent domain valuation. Then, in a deal brokered in cooperation by The Trust for Public Land, the farmers raise a little over $6 million. The film cuts to the only thing that seems to matter (but ultimately cannot save the garden) in L.A.: star power, as Willie Nelson, Danny Glover, Darryl Hannah, Joan Baez, Martin Sheen and others turn out to shine a light on the issue. In a stunning moment, the Annenberg Foundation announces they will donate the remainder of the money to buy the farm. And with crashing devastation, Horowitz declines to accept the offer; in his voice over, he says he would not have sold the land to them even if they offered him $100 million.

Ever-present is the glaring disparity between power and poverty, race and class. The immigrant farmers eking out a green space versus a wealthy developer and tainted city council member with a corrupt local organizer in her back pocket. Amongst claims of brown vs. black racism, anti-Semitism and “pimping poverty,” endless politicians parade their way through the garden, including Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who meekly states that he wishes there was more he could do to save the garden.

In the end, as bulldozers tear down the garden, tears rolled down my face. Perry manages to get re-elected, some of the farmers are relocated to a subpar parcel under power lines, while another group relocates to farmland in Bakersfield. The garden is still a dirt patch and Horowitz and the clothing company Forever 21 are now working on a proposal for a warehouse and distribution center on the now-bulldozed site. For what? I kept asking myself. Greenery turned to dust. Trees turned under for cheap clothes from China.

The Garden is a gripping and enraging film. While they may not longer have their garden, the South Central Farmers are still organized and protesting. Go see the film and learn how you can support local urban farms.

The Garden is playing select theaters:

05/01 Irvine, CA, University
05/01 San Francisco, CA, Lumiere
05/01 Berkeley, CA, Elmwood
05/01, Pasadena, CA, Playhouse
05/08 New York, NY, Cinema Village
05/15 Phoenix, AZ, Valley Art
05/15 Washington, DC, E-Street
05/21 Hudson NY, Time & Space Ltd
05/22 Santa Rosa CA, Rialto Lakeside
05/22 Waterville ME, Railroad Square
05/22 Boston MA, Coolidge Corner
05/29 Amherst MA, Amherst Theatre
05/29 Salt Lake City UT, Broadway Theatre
06/05 Grand Rapids MI, UICA
06/09 Normal IL, Normal Theatre
06/11 Saratoga NY, Saratoga Film Forum
06/12 Portland OR, Hollywood Theatre
06/12 Tallahassee FL, Regal Miracle 5
06/12 Charlotte NC, Regal Park Terrace
06/19 Tucson AZ, The Loft
06/26 Houston TX, Museum of Fine Art
06/26 Austin TX, Alamo
07/03 Nashville TN, Belcourt Theatre
07/24 Santa Fe NM, CCA

What do you get when you mix L.A. sunshine, a collection of artists and an obscure state law? The Fallen Fruit project.

A few years ago, artist/activist and CalArts professor Matias Viegener stumbled across a California law stating that any fruit that grows on or over public land is community property, even if the trunk is rooted in a private yard. In LA, that means both bounty and variety of fruit.

Viegener joined forces with CalArts colleagues and collaborators David Burns and Austin Young, and the trio set out to find trees that spread their branches over sidewalks, streets and parking lots. They looked for hidden fig trees in city parks and gnarled grape vines on fences. They found plum trees in abandoned lots and olive trees by highways.

Armed with sharpies and recycled paper, they set out to map the public fruit of their city and thus the Fallen Fruit project was born. The group set about trying to feed those most in need by distributing the maps to residents and posting them around the neighborhood. A passage from Leviticus 19 was their guide: When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger.

Their website offers a series of LA-based fruit maps and suggestions on creating one for your own neighborhood. The eventual goal is to produce a global atlas of public fruit maps.

But the group doesn’t rely just on the city’s existing fruit for the project. As a part of their mission, Fallen Fruit encourages homeowners to plant fruit trees on the perimeter of their property and advocates for the city to plant more fruit trees in public spaces.

Fallen Fruit also organizes community events to let their neighbors get a taste of the wild urban bounty. In the early days, they rallied friends for midnight fruit forages through the concrete jungle, and they now host daytime events, as well, such as the Public Fruit Jam, which will be held for the third consecutive year this Sunday, August 3rd.

The Public Fruit Jam invites LA residents to come together and make jam with fruit harvested and collected from their own yards.

The kinds of jam we make will improvise on the fruit that the participants provide. The fruit can be fresh or frozen. Fallen Fruit will bring public fruit. We are looking for radical and experimental jams as well, like basil guava or lemon pepper jelly. We’ll discuss the basics of jam and jelly making, pectin and bindings, the aesthetics of sweetness, as well as the communal power of shared food and the liberation of public fruit.

If you are in LA or would like to make a trip there this weekend, you’ll find Fallen Fruit jammers at The Machine Project in Echo Park, 1200 Alvarado Street, from noon to 3pm. And just one month from now, be sure to get another jam fix at Slow Food Nation’s Honey and Preserves Pavilion.

Photos courtesy of Fallen Fruit