A guerrilla gardener in South Central LA | Ron Finley

**Elise Hu** (0:00)
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.
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 Finley 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-throughs were killing more people than the drive buys, 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. 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.
And now our TED Talk of the day.

**Ron Finley** (2:13)
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. I got tired of seeing this happening. And I want to ask, 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. It's on a 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 this is 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 forest. Fruit trees, you know, the whole nine for 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. Everything we do is free and in the garden it was beautiful. And then somebody complained. The city came down on me and they 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 Greengrounds members, they put up a petition on change.org. And with 900 signatures, we were a success. 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? LA leaves the United States in vacant lots that the city actually owned. 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?