When I saw this video for the first time it moved me. Ron Finley is an innovative social gardener improving his community in South Central LA. His talk is real, heartfelt, and insightful. Some of my favorite quotes below, there are just so many. Such a great talk. Enjoy and Stay Glorious!
“I got tired of seeing this happening. And I was wondering, 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 has 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.“
“See, I’m an artist. Gardening is my graffiti. I grow my art. Just like a graffiti artist, where they beautify walls, me, I beautiful lawns, parkways. I use the garden, the soil, like it’s a piece of cloth, and the plants and the trees, that’s my embellishment for that cloth. You’d be surprised what the soil could do if you let it be your canvas. You just couldn’t imagine how amazing a sunflower is and how it affects people.“
“ To change the community, you have to change the composition of the soil. We are the soil.“
“I see young people and they want to work, but they’re in this thing where they’re caught up – I see kids of color and they’re just on this track that’s designed for them, that leads them to nowhere. So with gardening, I see an opportunity where we can train these kids to take over their communities, to have a sustainable life. And when we do this, who knows? We might produce the next George Washington Carver. but if we don’t change the composition of the soil, we will never do this.“
“So what I want to do here, we gotta make this sexy. So I want us all to become ecolutionary renegades, gangstas, gangsta gardeners. We gotta flip the script on what a gangsta is. If you ain’t a gardener, you ain’t gangsta. Get gangsta with your shovel, okay?And let that be your weapon of choice.“
Filed under: Likes Tagged: dialysis centers, Fast food, Food, Food desert, Garden, george washington carver, Graffiti, graffiti artist, Kitchen garden, Nature, plants, Ron Finley, Soil, solution food, South Central LA, South Los Angeles, Starbucks, TED
