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disenfranchised Angelinos from South Central Los Angeles did not have such advantages as they coaxed guava trees, sugarcane, tomatillos, and cilantro to rise from the Los Angeles concrete. In the end, the South Central Farm's fourteen-acre patch of green wasn't allowed to survive, as it was too much outside the paradigm. The derelict fenced-in space in South Los Angeles serves unintentionally as a cautionary tale and a reminder that racial inequality and the principles of private land ownership versus the common good are still hugely important shapers of the American city.
    S OUTH C ENTRAL F ARM'S U NLIKELY B IRTH
    At 3:15 p.m. on April 29, 1992, a jury acquitted four Los Angeles police officers of using excessive force in the roadside beating of Los Angeles resident Rodney King. The beating, which occurred in 1991, was videotaped by a bystander and was a shockingly brutal account of what many Angelinos of color felt was a common occurrence: unchecked racially motivated violence by a corrupt, mostly white Los Angeles Police Department. The footage of King, an African American Angelino,being beaten with batons and kicked while on the ground was broadcast on the television news and written about in newspapers around the globe. When the predominantly white jury acquitted the officers, it was the breaking point in poor and gang-ridden black and Latino neighborhoods, especially the one known as South Central, one of the most economically disadvantaged areas of Los Angeles.
    By 3:45 p.m., a mob of three hundred had gathered at the Los Angeles courthouse. By evening, all hell was breaking loose. The overwhelmed police retreated from the areas of the worst violence. There were three-plus days of roaming mobs, beatings, murder, looting, and arson. Los Angeles was imploding. On the fourth day, the army, the National Guard, and the marines arrived with 4,000 heavily armed soldiers to restore order to the city. There were 55 people reported killed; between 2,000 and 4,000 were injured, depending on the source; 12,000 people were arrested; and there was upward of one billion dollars in damage. The episode would later be known as the LA Race Riots of 1992.
    Doris Bloch was the director of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank located in South Los Angeles at the time. When the Department of Agriculture and city asked her what else they could do to help to restore some normalcy to this battered neighborhood, she pointed to the derelict strip of land across the street. It was, by most accounts, a garbage-strewn, rat-infested brown space. The city had acquired this land in 1986 to build a trash incinerator, but the community protested and the incinerator was never built. Bloch proposed starting a community garden as a way to heal the community and to address the issue of hunger and reliance on the food bank by area residents. In 1994, the city granted the LA Regional Food Bank a “revocable permit” to establish a community garden and occupy the land.
    With a large Central and South American population in South Los Angeles, and with many more recently arrived Latinos with extensive agricultural experience, “the gardens,” as they were known, quickly transformed the blighted eyesore into an unbelievably lush and productive fourteen-acre oasis. Not only did it produce food but it functioned as a “third-space” like a town square that many Latinos were familiar with, a social gathering place where news was exchanged and celebrations were held. And it took the place of urban parkland, allowing green space for family picnics and get-togethers. It provided shade and clean air in a city that suffers from severe air-quality issues. Moreover, it was a haven for kids to run through, and for the Latino gardeners to reconnect with their cultural and spiritual roots. Heirloom vegetables, fruits, and herbs prized by the Mexican community were grown here, such as various types of corn, Mexican wild yams, chayote (a pear-shaped gourd), banana, avocado,