Community Gardens, Ghetto Pastoral, and Environmental Justice

Abstract

In a Google Earth satellite image of South Central Los Angeles from January 2005, the blocks at East 41st and Alameda stand out a deep green against the gray grid of roads and buildings. For over a decade, the green rectangle of fourteen acres was the South Central Farm, a garden cultivated by hundreds of Angelinos for food and community. The farm also stood out against legacies of environmental racism that had made the neighborhood one of the most polluted landscapes in America. Stories about the South Central Farm have since dispersed across small circulation publications and the transient addresses of community websites. Most recently, Scott Hamilton Kennedy has brought wider attention to the South Central Farm through his documentary film, The Garden (2009). While these community garden stories require work to reconstruct, the dominant story of urban development that has overwritten the site at 41st Street is relatively more stable, if less interesting. As of this writing, the parcel is listed by the County Assessor's Office as “Vacant Land,” and a dun-brown, scraped field appears in satellite images in place of the lush gardens of the South Central Farm.