Planning and planting a garden shifts the way that you think about food in a larger context. In one school district where I worked - our Elementary folks created a garden as part of the summer program. Planting connected both the adults and children to the land and to the food they ate. It was a shift in thinking, stopping, slowing down. People ate food like kale and peppers right from the garden. Shocking even themselves.
In a world where fast and convienent are valued; the planning, preparation and nurturing of food takes time and collaboration. What I have learned is that it also builds community - neighbors share their bounty, we consider what grows best in our plots, and we work together to preserve the harvest.
The efforts of people like Ron Finley remind us that food is money, food is medicine, and the community we build by growing food together makes us rich.
The city of Los Angeles tried to arrest Ron Finley for planting carrots.
He grew up in South Central. Drive-throughs were on every corner. The dialysis clinics were multiplying. In 2003 he drove 45 minutes to buy a tomato.
He had built a fashion line in his garage. The Dropdead Collexion ended up in Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom. He knew how to make things beautiful. And he knew what it meant when a neighborhood was denied beauty.
In 2010 he looked at the 10-foot strip of city-owned land between the sidewalk and the street outside his house. Old toilets. Broken furniture. Used condoms. The city owned that strip and had left it to rot.
He planted pomegranate and banana and almond and orange and tomato and blackberry and kale and strawberries.
The city cited him for it.
He refused to remove the garden.
They issued a warrant for his arrest.
He gathered 900 signatures.
The city backed down.
In 2013 Los Angeles changed the law.
Vacant lots became gardens. Children learned to grow food. Gardeners trained and took the knowledge home.
Gardening is the most therapeutic and defiant act you can do, especially in the city, he said. And you get strawberries.
Behind the city’s oldest library in South Central he is building an urban garden oasis: a greenhouse, a café in a shipping container, a community garden where people can grow and sell and share.
If you’re not growing your own food, you’re eating someone else’s agenda.
Invitation: Are you “eating someone else’s agenda?”
Ron Finley is a rebel with a green thumb. In 2010 Ron set out to fix a problem in his South Central neighborhood parkways; those often neglected dirt patches next to our streets. He planted some vegetables there. Soon after he was cited for gardening without a permit by the apparent owners of those dirt patches: the City of Los Angeles. Queue the beginning of a horticulture revolution. Read more on his web page.
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June Courageous Citizen
Enjoy Dennis Kucinich’s wisdom below.
“Mr. Speaker, we make war with such certainty, yet we are befuddled how to create peace. This paradox requires reflection if we are to survive. Making and endorsing war requires a secret love of death, and a fearful desire to embrace annihilation. Creating peace requires compassion, putting ourselves in the other person’s place, and all of their suffering and all of their hopes and to act from our heart’s capacity to love, not fear.”
Dennis Kucinich, at this link by Robert Shetterly
June 1, 2026
For our June Americans Who Tell the Truth feature, we chose Dennis Kucinich because he has spent a lifetime holding onto ideas that many people considered politically inconvenient: peace, public good over private profit, environmental responsibility, and the belief that government should serve ordinary people, not power. Whether people agreed with him o…
I remember reading a news story about Ron Finley. Thank you Circles of Courageous Commons for highlighting his story and the importance of gardens, particularly in cities.
"Gardening is the most therapeutic and defiant act you can do, especially in the city," he said. "And you get strawberries." Here's to more gardens everywhere.
Gardens are such a treasure!