Trailer for The Garden, opens in theaters April 24, 2009

Here's the trailer for The Garden, which opens in theaters this Friday.

The Garden is an engaging and powerful look at the famous political and social battle over the largest community garden in the US (located in South Central Los Angeles). A follow-up to Kennedy’s award-winning documentary OT: Our Town, the film shows how the politics of power and greed (backroom deals, land developing, green politics, money) tragically intersect with working class families who rely on this communal garden for their livelihood. Equal parts The Wire and Harlan County USA, The Garden exposes the fault lines in American society and raises crucial and challenging questions about liberty, equality, and justice for the poorest and most vulnerable among us. Kenneth Turan of the LA Times said: “It’s tempting to call The Garden a story of innocence and experience, of evil corrupting paradise, but that would be doing a disservice to the fascinating complexities of a classic Los Angeles conflict and an excellent documentary that does them full justice.”

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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SKR

Eminent Domain discussions always intrigue me. I always hear such pragmatic arguments about how much revenue the new shopping center will bring in and how that is a public good. Or in this case, the litany of barely quantifiable goods that Martha lists off. It always makes me wonder what that person would say if the shoe was on the other foot. In this case, I wonder what Martha would say if some developer wanted the government to condemn the one or two businesses on a derelict street in order to redevelop for a open street mall with housing? The “ends justifies the means” mentality on both the left and right sides of the pro-eminent domain argument bothers me quite a bit because it highlights the complete lack of respect for the rights of people they either don’t like or with whom they disagree. That disrespect for individual rights should face condemnation regardless of whether you feel for the beneficiary or not.

Do I feel for the people that lost their garden? Of course I do, I was part of the Echo Park Community Garden that no longer exists. I enjoyed my time there, but the property owener had plans to develop the land and that is his right. (still hasn’t ben developed) Is the property owner in this case likable? Not really, but permitting theft of property because someone thinks another person is a jerk seems like a bad precedent to set. As I have asked before, “when will the celebrities put their money where their mouths are and support these types of projects in a moral manner, without resorting to the tyranny of the mob and government sponsored theft?”
SKR

To the people bad-mouthing the jobs that may be created by this development, please let the unemployed who desperately need the work decide about whether they think the job is a good one or not. Just because you have a better job than working in a distribution center doesn’t mean that other people wouldn’t welcome the chance to work there, or anywhere for that matter.
Anonymous

Hey! This Movie just moved over to the Downtown Independent in downtown LA: http://www.downtownindependent.com/events/the-garden

The director Scott Hamilton Kennedy will be in attendance sunday night.
Anonymous

I saw an LA Screening of this last week. I highly recomend it.
just for calrifacation the city took the land for $5 million in 1986, and he got the land back 18 years later for the same $5 million in a shady backroom deal. While it was under city control, they encouraged the community to put it to productive use, but never told anyone it was going to be sold. The owner offered it to the farmers for over $16 million, and when they raised that much money, he refused to sell. He may have been the orginal owner,but is still a jerk. And the shady backroom deals with the city are not OK.
Raines Cohen

Here’s the official site main URL:
http://thegardenmovie.com/

IMDB only shows it as showing in L.A.

Landmark Theatres’ Opera Plaza is running previews for it in SF as of last night, presumably indicating it is coming there someday.

The official site’s schedule of screenings shows it coming May 1 to Berkeley’s Elmwood as well as SF:
http://www.blackvalleyfilms.com/screenings/

I appreciate getting a piece of the backstory, @p_renheimer. I had followed media coverage of this battle and found myself mystified as to how the forces ended up arrayed as they were in the run-up to the final battle; it seemed like there was some kind of deeper structural conflict here.

Part of the problem with “old-school” community organizing is that it requires putting up a strong united front and staying on message in a way to create the political pressure that gets your allies in line and brings about action, demonizing your enemies, but doesn’t lend itself well to recruiting support through logical reasoning or engaging in conversation to find solutions of mutual benefit. It can all-too-easily scare off/dissuade potential partners or inhibit a real dialogue over the underlying issues.

Look at the current backlash against eminent-domain abuses; seen through that frame, had the gardeners succeeded, it would have furthered polarization along that axis.

@MagicBean: absolutely, a smart landowner would shoot for something of greater net benefit to the community = greater long-term stability, lower risk, higher profit. But until we have the incentives in place in the law and in the web of relationships in the community that make it possible to justify this choice, is it fair for us to criticize someone for making a rational decision not to choose it? Is it practical for us to do so? Does it advance our interests?

I’m looking forward to not just watching The Garden, but furthering this conversation afterwards.
Charles Guarino

@Zikzak
Some things are more important than the nuances of private property law.

Things such as theft, apparently.

Do you mean to imply that theft is merely a “nuance” of real (I am not sure what you are referring to when you say “private”) property law?

That sort of attitude undoubtedly informs the casual contempt displayed by many BB users towards intellectual property rights, for example.

[This is not meant to imply that the disciplines of real property, personalty, and intellectual property law are in any way connected.]

For every RIAA or other overreaching IP holder, there always seems to be an equally annoying whine from the “free as in beer” crowd.

In a similar manner, you would disregard the real property owner’s legal right to his property in favor of an arbitrary grant to a sympathetic third-party, merely because “some things” are more important.

Well, who decides which things are more important than the owner’s property rights? What is the basis for such exceptions? And who pays for it?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Well, who decides which things are more important than the owner’s property rights?
  
  Whoever has power. Possibly the majority of voters. Possibly their elected representatives. Possibly industry lobbyists. Possibly any combination of public and private interests. It should at least not be decided by lobbyists. Can we agree on that much?
p_reinheimer

“Whoever has power. Possibly the majority of voters.”

Employees and representatives of foreign owned Company X present a minority of people in this country. I think we should form a majority to nationalize that profitable company and keep the money here.

After the entire fiasco with Cuba and other South American countries nationalizing various firms, and the ensuring outcry. To say I’m surprised to see such bold statements would be putting it mildly.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  p_reinheimer,
  
  Maybe I’m completely misconstruing your comment, but it looks like you just said that A) my laundry list of possible players in a political struggle (of whom you only mentioned one) was a call to nationalize industries and B) democracy is a bad idea.
SKR

@#2 Akohan “good faith offers”

Those offers were made only after the property owner was completely dragged through the mud by the media here in LA. It is not hard to imagine why he didn’t want to accomodate the same people who had just been demonizing him.

They also only offered money after using the force of government to permanently steal his land failed.

@#3 zikzak “some things are more important than the nuances of private property law”

Sure, murder and assault trump theft, but just because it was the government that tried to steal this land doesn’t mitigate the theft.

@#7 Antinous “who decides”

I would really like the answer to this question be “The Constitution”, because in this instance your majority of voters sounds more like the tyranny of the mob than constructive democracy. “OMG Darryl Hannah and Martin Sheen are on TV telling me this man is evil. Take his land!!!”

Actually, I guess the real answer is the courts, and the land owner won.
martha_macarthur

I worked in this garden on several occasions as a member of the UC Master Gardener program. I can tell you that this garden was more than just a garden. This garden brought hope, health and vitality to a community that needed it desperately. It was a safe place for community members and their families. It created positivity in an otherwise negative space. This was a unique case that should have been handled differently and really cannot be compared to things like the RIAA and typical property disputes.
magicbean

#13

Big industrial jobs utterly fail to create the sense of self-reliance and community power that community farms and gardens inherently build. A warehouse and distribution center is what the landowner wants to create on that spot? Great. Crappy, thoughtless jobs that don’t require any sense of intelligence, skill, or thought, which clearly this community has.

Factory jobs may pay out a crappy wage for people to scrape by on, and that’s…acceptable. Maybe. But it’s just OK. Why not shoot for something more, a la Van Jones? Something that benefits the entire community by creating sustainable jobs that bring communities out of poverty? Why was this landowner not connecting with the needs of the community his land is in? Not only was he not looking at and not responding to the resources in the community – as any half-witted businessman would – but he was actively discouraging ANY community engagement.

That landowner is remarkably spiteful and short-sighted. Businesses succeed with the support of the community – do you think anyone in that community is going to want to take a job from some businessman who clearly and actively dislikes the neighborhood?
SKR

Didn’t the city create a new community garden that was half the size on public land? Why doesn’t Martin Sheen just by up another 7 acres and make up the difference? Maybe he is more generous with other people’s money.
p_reinheimer

For more details, and a glimpse at the other side of the story, see the wikipedia article on the garden.

Short version: The city used eminent domain to buy land for a specific purpose. It didn’t use the land for that purpose, nor did it return the land to the original owners (as per the rules of the eminent domain purchase). Instead, it built a community garden. The original owner through the courts and negotiation got the land it never should have lost back, pissing off the people who were using the garden in the process.

It’s all well and good to root for the under-dog, but as far as I can tell the original land owner is in the right here.
martha_macarthur

Hope, community building, leadership skills, math skills, science skills, historical knowledge, nutritious food, second language development, cultural history and oral tradition, current events, safety, child development, exercise, community news and information, transitional assistance for immigrants.

Will the non-existent distribution center bring any of these things to South Central?
SKR

The garden may have brought hope to the community, but so will the jobs created if and when the development project is completed. That neighborhood desperately needs jobs, and there was no need to break a commandment.

It is lamentable that the whole mess resolved the way it did. I’m sure there were mistakes on both sides since it seemed like emotions were running pretty high. But in the end it is his property and the city shouldn’t have to resort to stealing if the citizenry and wealthy benefactors think it is so fantastic.
akohan

I saw this in Chicago last year, and highly recommend it.

@#1, it’s important to note that the land owner, when approached with good-faith offers to buy the land, rebuffed the south central farmers and bulldozed the area, which still remains vacant. However much he may have been within his legal rights to retake the land (which the film does a good job of bringing into question), he’s clearly a huge jerk.
zikzak

Some things are more important than the nuances of private property law.
dezeinstein

I’ve seen this in Los Angeles and also highly recommend it! It should have won the Oscar over Man on Wire, in my opinion.