By Bethany Ramirez
If all politics are local, there is currently a dust up about renovations to the park across the street from me. Plans include the removal of a tree that interferes with the community garden area. But the renovations were halted before they began because of a movement to save the tree.
And recently there have been some members of the community (certainly not most) who have made dismissive comments about the community garden in a way that makes me want to unpack some classism.
When Your Justice Collides with Ours
When we first came to look at this apartment, we were quite excited to discover that the community gardens were so close. We were even more excited to learn that there was already a fenced-in garden space in our yard, so we did not need to worry about the waiting list for a community plot. It had not been used for several years, so we invested a lot of time and money into cleaning out concrete and patching the fence.
However, our garden is struggling. Since the garden was last used, one of the trees has grown to cast shade over most of the space. And since the landlord does not want tenants wasting water, there is no water hooked up to the hose – a problem when we are approaching drought conditions.
In order for us to garden next year, either the landlord has to fix both of these problems, or we will have to use the community garden across the street. We rent. We cannot just move the garden location to somewhere else in our yard. Many neighbors don’t have space to garden at all. This is what community gardens are for. In fact, we are sharing our garden with friends from the next town who are on a waiting list for a community garden where it could take them years to get a plot.
There are class issues in the dismissive comments people have made about the community gardens. There are class issues in being able to afford to garden at all in the first place. And there are class issues in claiming a tree is more important than community gardens that have nowhere else to go. We talk a lot about how the poor can’t afford fresh produce, and we’re not letting them grow their own, either.
