A guerrilla gardener in South Central LA | Ron Finley

0:00Ron Finley: I've been thinking a lot about what makes a good life. And when I dig into this question, it really comes down to the people around us. Neighbors, teammates, the friends and family we share a meal, a game, or a group chat with. It turns out our health and happiness may depend on them so much more than we realize. So for August's TED Talks Daily playlist, we've gathered five of our favorite talks on finding our people, our community, whether it's at a dinner table, in a video game, or in a garden growing in the middle of the city. Happy listening.

0:34Ron Finley: You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. Gardener Ron Finlay grew up in South Central Los Angeles, a place of beautiful, vibrant culture, and a place where for most of Ron's life, healthy food was hard to find. As he puts it, the drive-thrus were killing more people than the drive-bys, and he grew tired of watching his neighborhood get sick. So Ron started planting vegetable gardens in often overlooked spaces all around him. abandoned lots, traffic medians, the strip of dirt along the curb. In this beloved talk from more than a decade ago, Ron, who calls himself a gangsta gardener, shares how those gardens became equal parts nourishment, defiance, and art.

1:24Ron Finley: Because it wasn't just food that grew in the south-central streets. Neighbors showed up with shovels. Volunteers turned planting days into block parties. Kids who grew kale started eating kale. What began as one man's garden became a way for a whole community to take back its own health. Ron gave this talk back in 2013, so it's a bit of a throwback and some of the dates and numbers have shifted. But his message about the power of gathering around a patch of dirt is as alive as ever. His talk is coming up right after a short break.

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4:34Ron Finley: And now, our TED Talk of the day.

4:37Elinor Lipman: I live in South Central. Liquor stores, fast food, vacant lots. So the city planners, they get together and they figure they're going to change the name South Central to make it represent something else. So they change it to South Los Angeles. Like, this is going to fix what's really going wrong in the city. Just like 26.5 million other Americans, I live in a food desert. South Central Los Angeles. Home of the drive-thru and the drive-by. Funny thing is, the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-by. People are dying from curable diseases in South Central Los Angeles. For instance, the obesity rate in my neighborhood is like five times higher than say Beverly Hills, which is like probably eight, ten miles away.

5:32Elinor Lipman: I got tired of seeing this happening. And I wonder, how would you feel if you had no access to healthy food? If every time you walk out your door, you see the ill effects that the present food system have on your neighborhood? I see wheelchairs bought and sold like used cars. I see dialysis centers popping up like Starbucks. And I figured this has to stop. So I figured that the problem is the solution. Food is the problem and food is the solution. Plus, I got tired of driving 45 minutes round trip to get an apple that wasn't impregnated with pesticides. So what I did, I planted a food forest in front of my house.

6:21Elinor Lipman: It's on the strip of land that we call a parkway. It's like 150 feet by like 10 feet. The thing is, it's owned by the city, but you have to maintain it. So I'm like, cool. I can do whatever the hell I want. Since it's my responsibility and I got to maintain it, this is how I decided to maintain it. So me and my group, LA Green Grounds, we got together and we started planting my food for us. Fruit trees, you know, the whole nine, vegetables. What we do, we're a pay-it-for-it kind of group. Where it's composed of, like, gardeners from all walks of life from all over the city. And it's completely volunteering.

7:01Elinor Lipman: Everything we do is free. And the garden, it was beautiful. And then somebody complained. the city came down on me and basically gave me a citation saying that I had to remove my garden which this citation would turn into a warrant and I'm like, come on, really? A warrant for planting food on a piece of land that you could care less about? And I was like, cool, bring it because this time it wasn't coming up so LA Times got hold of it Steve Lopez did a story on it and talked to the councilman. And one of the Green Grounds members, they put up a petition on change.org. And with 900 signatures, we were a success.

7:47Elinor Lipman: We had a victory on our hands. My councilman even called and said how they endorse and love what we're doing. I mean, come on, why wouldn't they? L.A. leaves the United States in vacant lots that the city actually owns. They own 26 square miles of vacant lots. that's 20 central parks that's enough space to plant 700 million 725 million tomato plants why in the hell would they not okay this growing one plant will give you a thousand 10 ,000 seeds when one dollar's worth of green beans will give you like 75 dollars worth of produce it's like my gospel I'm telling people, grow your own food. Growing your own food is like printing your own money.

8:43I have a legacy in South Central.

8:51Elinor Lipman: I grew up there. I raised my sons there. And I refuse to be a part of this manufactured reality that was manufactured for me by some other people, and I manufactured my own reality. See, I'm an artist. Gardening is my graffiti. I grow my art. Just like a graffiti artist, where they beautify walls, me, I beautify lawns, parkways. I use the garden, the soil, like it's a piece of cloth. And the plants and the trees, that's my embellishment for that cloth. You'd be surprised what the soil could do if you let it be your canvas. You just couldn't imagine how amazing a sunflower is and how it affects people.

9:43Elinor Lipman: So what happened? I have witnessed my garden become a tool for the education, a tool for the transformation of my neighborhood. To change the community, you have to change the composition of the soil. We are the soil.

10:03You'd be surprised how kids are affected by this.

10:10Elinor Lipman: Gardening is the most therapeutic and defiant act you can do, especially in the inner city. Plus, you get strawberries.

10:25Elinor Lipman: I remember this time, there was this mother and the daughter came, you know, they were, it was like 10.30 at night, and they were in my yard. And I came out, and they looked so ashamed, you know, and I'm like, man, it made me feel bad that they were there. And I told them, you know, you don't have to do this like this. This is on the street for a reason. It made me feel ashamed to see people that was this close to me that was hungry. And this only reinforced why I do this. And people asked me, Finn, aren't you afraid people are going to steal your food? And I'm like, hell no, I ain't afraid they're going to steal it.

11:01Elinor Lipman: That's why it's on the street. That's the whole idea. I want them to take it, but at the same time, I want them to take back their health.

11:13Elinor Lipman: There's another time when I put a garden in this home homeless shelter in downtown Los Angeles. The guys, they helped me unload the truck. It was cool. And they just shared the stories about how this affected them and how they used to plant with their mother and their grandmother. And it was just cool to see how this changed them if it was only for that one moment.

11:41Elinor Lipman: So Green Grounds has gone on to plant maybe like 20 gardens. We've had like people, like 50 people come to our dig-ins and participate in this, all volunteers. If kids grow kale, kids eat kale. If they grow tomatoes, they eat tomatoes. But when none of this is presented to them, if they're not shown how food affects the mind and the body, they blindly eat whatever the hell you put in front of them. I see young people and they want to work, but they're in this thing where they're caught up. I see kids of color and they're just on this track that's designed for them that leads them to nowhere. So with gardening, I see an opportunity where we can train these kids to take over their communities, to have a sustainable life.

12:41Elinor Lipman: and when we do this, who knows? We might produce the next George Washington Carver but if we don't change the composition of the soil we will never do this. Now this is one of my plans. This is what I want to do. I want to plant a whole block of gardens where people can share in the food in the same block. I want to take shipping containers and turn them into healthy cafes. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not talking about no free shit because free is not sustainable the funny thing about sustainability you have to sustain it

13:21Elinor Lipman: what I'm talking about is putting people to work and getting kids off the street and letting them know the joy, the pride and the honor in growing your own food opening farmers markets so what I want to do here We got to make this sexy. So I want us all to become ecolutionary, renegades, gangsters, gangster gardeners. We got to change of a, we got to flip the script on what a gangster is. If you ain't a garden, you ain't gangster. Get gangster with your shovel. Okay? And let that be your weapon of choice. So, so...

14:08Elinor Lipman: So basically, if you want to meet with me, you know, if you want to meet, don't call me if you want to sit around in cushy chairs and have meetings where you talk about doing some shit. Where you talk about doing some shit. If you want to meet with me, come to the garden with your shovel so we can plant some shit. Peace. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

14:42Ron Finley: That was Ron Finley speaking at TED 2013. This talk was originally published in March of that year. If you're curious about TED's curation, visit ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Taubner, and Tansika Sungmarnivong. Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo, Christopher Faze-Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Banban Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey Lott. Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu. Thanks for listening.

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