The showdown over the South Central Farm went on for hours: Dozens of protesters were arrested by deputies who pried activists loose from concrete drums using power tools, bulldozed vegetable gardens and rolled in a ladder truck to pluck actress Daryl Hannah and other protesters out of the branches of a walnut tree.
That was more than a dozen years ago, when farmers and activists were evicted from a South Los Angeles plot that had become one of the biggest urban farms in the country.
Their latest battle ended much more quietly in the marble chambers of City Hall, with a 12-0 vote Tuesday by the Los Angeles City Council. The decision paves the way for warehouses and offices to be built on the Alameda Street site, dealing another blow to activists’ hopes of reinstating their beloved farm.
The farm “gave people hope,” said Alberto Tlatoa, an organizer with the South Central Farm Restoration Committee. “It gave people an opportunity to be self-sufficient and grow their own produce. … We were talking about food justice in the early ‘90s when no one was talking about this.”
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