Seeds of Dissension Linger

Nearly 200 protesters cupping red and white candles formed a glimmering fortress around Los Angeles’ largest urban garden Sunday evening in a final effort to hold on to the cilantro, chayote and sense of community they have cultivated for more than a decade.

After nearly 20 years of uncertainty, the fate of these 14 acres in South Los Angeles was finally decided in court earlier this month. The land, known as the South Central Community Garden, must be turned over to its owner, who plans to build a warehouse on it.

Some of the 350 farmers, who have tilled the land under a temporary agreement that stretched to 13 years, say they would turn to civil disobedience -- perhaps even protecting the plants with their bodies -- in a last desperate attempt to save the garden.

Families have been camping on the site, fearful that the locks would be changed in the dark of night. They had several meetings last week to try to rally public support to preserve their verdant plots. Activists have converged on the site to help organize peaceful protests.

Standing in front of a sign that read, “L.A. needs more farm land,” a young boy smashed a cardboard depiction of a bulldozer with a gardening hoe. An organizer shouted, “This is what we’re going to do when the bulldozers come.”

The landowner, Ralph Horowitz, who has been through a legal odyssey of his own, said he won’t change his mind. And he has a string of court victories to back him. The warehouse is coming, he said last week in an interview. He has a few more court hearings aimed at carrying out the legal eviction, which probably will involve sheriff’s deputies to serve notices to the farmers to abandon the site.

“If they ever had a shot, which they really never did, all that stuff is over,” said Horowitz.

He said the gardeners want to use the land “forever without having to pay any taxes, without having to buy it.” People who lounge on blankets in a public park cannot lay claim to that land, Horowitz said, so why should the farmers be allowed to squat on his? He pays for the land, he said, and every day that passes with the farmers on it, he loses money.

The land has been mired in dispute since the mid-1980s, when the city used its legal powers to forcefully buy the property from Horowitz for a trash-to-energy incinerator.

The community rose in protest and quashed the incinerator project. But the city kept the land, eventually turning it over to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. Under a temporary agreement, the food bank lent the site to residents as a community garden after the 1992 riots.

It’s been a garden ever since, a bountiful scene of cornstalks and banana trees stretching above a barbed-wire fence that separates the green refuge from the rest of South Los Angeles.

The farmers, mostly immigrants from Mexico and Central America, divided the 14 acres into plots and began planting leafy, spinach-like papalo quelite, cactus, sugarcane and peach trees. During the day, most work as seamstresses, laborers or restaurant workers, earning $12,000 to $20,000 a year. At night and on the weekends, they harvest the land to help feed their families.

As the years passed and the garden flourished, Horowitz mounted a legal challenge to the property’s ownership, arguing that he was not given a chance to buy back the land after the city scrapped the incinerator project. Horowitz sued the city, which had paid him about $4.8 million for the property in 1986.

In August 2003, Horowitz and the city settled the case. The city sold the land back to him for $5 million during a private meeting.

The farmers and their team of activist supporters in turn sued the city for what they believed was an unfair, secret deal. Their lawsuit alleged that the city had not followed its administrative code and charter.

A Superior Court judge temporarily halted the demolition of the garden a year ago. But by summer, the Court of Appeal had reversed that order. The farmers were given 40 days to petition the California Supreme Court to review that ruling. On Oct. 19, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, setting off the farmers’ resolve to keep their cause alive with rallies and Sunday’s vigil.

Ninth District Councilwoman Jan Perry has been looking for alternative sites for the farmers. The city offered two other spaces, which the farmers rejected. The first consisted of less than an acre, too small to accommodate all of the farmers. The other space, three acres, was near high-voltage power lines, which farmers said would endanger the families.

“There’s no legal option at this point,” said Patrick Dunlevy, attorney for the farmers. “It would have to be some sort of willing concession on the part of Ralph Horowitz, who could decide that for the public good he will allow them to continue farming there.”

Horowitz, who is also a lawyer, said the rallies will do nothing to sway his resolve to develop his property after all these years. The whole issue, he said, has been drawn out by the farmers and their attorneys. They have been “stalling and stalling,” he said, trying everything to prevent the eviction.

“We have to throw them off,” said Horowitz, of Brentwood, who runs his own real estate investment company. “They’re not going to walk off voluntarily. They have to be thrown off by a sheriff.”

One night last week, several Spanish-speaking families settled into a colorful patchwork of tents, camping for the night. Fearful that their crops could be razed at any moment, they have been keeping watch over the farm day and night. As the temperature dropped, they sipped cinnamon-flavored coffee and burned planks of wood for warmth.

Despite the court defeats, many farmers refuse to accept the reality that Horowitz is preparing to reclaim his land.

When his father was diagnosed with diabetes, farmer Tezozomoc took over the family’s plot and promised to keep it alive.

He said Horowitz and the farmers both suffered from the city’s business deal. But in this case, he said, the needs of the community outweigh property rights.

“We are not starving for warehouses,” he said, “but on the contrary there are families who live in this community who are starving.”

Jose Garcia was one of the 350 farmers who voted unanimously to “stand strong” against eviction last week.

The garden is a place of safety, he said, where elders tell stories about their homelands and teach others how to nurture crops. Children use hula hoops and play hide and seek while adults sing folk songs by the fire. They hold church services, and on Saturday community members celebrated the Day of the Dead.

But he acknowledged that eviction was all but inevitable.

“We had many plans to improve it, but really, we don’t have time,” Garcia said. “We’re losing this place.”