Justice Denied: South Central L.A. Farm Destroyed
By Gregory D. Morrow

Another win for the white man in L.A. Yesterday, police evicted South Central L.A. farmers and destroyed the 14-acre community farm that has taken 15 years to build. Evictions were forcibly served and the crops were bulldozed with the aid of 250 LAPD officers in riot gear and 65 L.A. County sheriff deputies. A symbol of hope in one of the city’s most devastated communities, with a 99% non-white population, was flattened in a senseless act of destruction. Justice was denied here in L.A. yesterday.

(Javier Manzano/L.A. Times)

The farm has been the subject of court battles for years. The farm was part of a rebuilding process following the devastating 1992 Justice Riots that erupted following the acquittal of LAPD officers for beating Rodney King (which was caught on tape). Originally, in 1986, the city used eminent domain to take the land from owner Ralph Horowitz in order to build an incinerator. When community activists blocked the incinerator — arguing on environmental justice grounds – residents turned the city-owned land into a community garden with the approval of the city, so that low-income families could grow their own food. It may come as a surprise to many, but food security was a huge part of the 1992 Justice Riots — because of years of stigma and red-lining, South-Central L.A. did not have any grocery stores (only corner liquor stores whose produce was, shall we say, less than fresh). Combined with poor housing, high unemployment and years of police harassment, the Justice Riots were a tipping point for the African-American population that then dominated South-Central (today, it is largely Latino, but a sizeable African-American community still lives there). So, the farm represented a grassroots efforts to produce fresh local produce.

Horowitz sued to get the land back, and in a controversial ruling, won, paying $5 million three years ago to re-acquire it, the same as he was paid by the city back in 1986 (note: $5 million in 1986 was worth $8.4 million in 2003, so Horowitz netted a tidy $3.4 million profit in the re-acquisition). But, having farmed the land for over a decade, farmers refused to leave, and have fought eviction orders for the past three years. Instead, farmers wanted to buy the land. Horowitz, not content with his $3.4 million profit, set an asking price of $16 million, over three times what he paid for it. The injustice of evicting poor hungry residents from the farm attracted much attention and organizers were able to raise the $16 million asking price through donations and foundations.

(Al Seib/L.A. Times)

Thinking that they would finally be free to tend their crops, having met his asking price, farmers’ hopes were crushed when Horowitz suddenly said he thought the land was worth an additional $2-3 million. And, moreover, he flatly refused to sell to the farmers, because he felt they were anti-Semitic. In the place of the community farm, Horowitz hopes to build warehouses.

While Horowitz is right to protest the eminent domain taking back in the 1980s, he was given a sweet-heart deal to re-acquire the land. Then, having set the bar at $16 million, and having literally hundreds of volunteers raise money to meet his asking price, his decision to move the bar and flatly refuse to sell to the community, can only be regarded as indolence, arrogance and greed. With the $16 million offer and the $3.4 million he made on re-acquiring the land, Horowitz would have made nearly $20 million. But that was not enough for Horowitz. He wanted the beat the activists — to show them that in the U.S.A., property rights trump justice any day of the week.

The only problem with that argument is that property rights in L.A. have had a long history of racial injustice. After the American-Mexican war in 1848, many white Americans began moving to California to “settle” the land. American courts decided that the titles held by Mexicans (and Mexican-Americans) on the land did not meet U.S. standards. Consequently, Mexicans were stripped of their land without compensation. White Americans were the beneficiaries. Back then, as now, the white man’s rules mattered more. I’d like to think that in 150 years we have made progress. But with yesterday’s disgraceful events, it is clear that the more things change, the more they stay the same.