Trouble on the farm

Media and blog coverage of the South Central Community Garden mostly celebrates a story line of plucky, poor South L.A. residents banding together in agrarian fellowship to stand up to the man. Reality is a little different, Daniel Hernandez reports tonight on the LA Weekly website. Since the acreage at 41st and Alameda has been turned into a political organizing cause by poverty and environmental justice activists, farmers have been quitting and complaining about pressure to protest at City Hall. Writes Hernandez:

Trouble is, the opposite of harmony and nonviolent behavior takes place at the farm these days. Instead, interviews and documents show, the South Central Farm has been the scene of severe — sometimes violent — internal strife.

The conflicts have led to allegations of abuse, intimidation, sexual harassment and the purging of farmers who disagree with the farm’s current leadership. There have been fights, arrests and restraining orders. Farmers complained to officials about the problems but found little relief. As a result, there’s been an exodus of farmers in recent months from the lands at 41st and Alameda streets to other community gardens, where they say they can work freely and peacefully.

Twenty current and former South-Central farmers, who spoke to the L.A. Weekly in a series of interviews, in groups as well as individually, say the farm has become an unofficial fiefdom for organizing leaders Tezozomoc and Rufina Juarez, an MTA transportation planner.

Now, with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa involved in negotiations to allow a nonprofit agency to purchase the garden from developer Ralph Horowitz, the farm’s current leadership is a potential beneficiary of millions of dollars in contributions if a sale is made.

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“It’s going to be impossible to do anything with those people there,” said Rafael Ruiz, a former South Central farmer who arrived at the site one morning in January and found his 30-by-30-foot lot locked shut. “I don’t like using hard words, but they’re despots.”

A companion Weekly story by David Zahniser looks at the special deals being internally pondered at City Hall to make the farm issue go away and asks, "How far is Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa willing to go to save the South Central Community Garden?"