In the course of a Thanksgiving Day conversation with my cousin, the subject of Rudy Giuliani came up. These days he is very much in the news as a key figure in the Donald Trump impeachment inquiry. People who are familiar with the happenings in the late 1990's in the community gardening world know Mr. Giuliani in a much different context, so I recounted this story to my cousin.
At Giuliani's second inauguration on January 1, 1997, protesters unfurled a banner protesting the loss of a community garden. He made light of it in his remarks as the protesters were hauled away but afterward sought to punish the protesters by attempting to get rid of as many community gardens as he could. Over the course of the next year, community garden properties on city owned land were placed into an auction of vacant properties. These community gardens were far from vacant and no distinction was made between a thriving, active garden and a fallow, inactive one. Approximately 120 gardens were scheduled to be auctioned in May, 1999.
This group of gardens ended up being purchased and preserved as community gardens by the Trust for Public Land (TPL) and the New York Restoration Project (NYRP). Giuliani's vendetta had the unexpected (by him) effect of galvanizing the community gardeners to protest and organize to save the gardens. In fact, the notoriety of a possible loss of 120 community gardens in NYC at one time, became worldwide news with articles appearing in the New York Times, the Washington Post and even European newspapers. Had he sold off the gardens one by one, the critical mass of activist community gardeners affected by this maneuver would not have been formed.
All of a sudden what was a "fringe" movement was now known by the general public. People were now aware what community gardens were and how beneficial they were to the communities where they were located. This helped TPL and NYRP to fundraise over $5.3 million for the purchase of the garden properties. My cheeky comment to my cousin was that Rudy Giuliani deserves a reward from the community gardeners for popularizing community gardening so they no longer had to explain what a community garden was when they mentioned to someone that they are a community gardener.
At the time there were many other truly vacant lots that could have been auctioned and helped the city toward the stated goal of shrinking government. That $5.3 million could have supported programs in the community gardens and the community gardener's efforts. This time of antagonism between the city government and it's community gardening citizens did not have to create a climate of mistrust that still lingers even though subsequent Mayors Bloomberg and DiBlasio were more supportive.
The political outlook that conflates Socialism with Communism with Community with Community Gardens is mistaken. Community Gardeners for the most part are not Communists or Socialists or Democratic Socialists. They are people who are doing something good for the community and for themselves. Although a famous Democratic Socialist, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a community garden plot in a garden in the Bronx.
Community Gardens can be looked at as a microcosm of the larger society. Now I might add that community gardens and programs that support composting, job creation and healthy living using community gardens as the staging area for all these to happen sounds a lot like the platform of the Democratic Socialists. But the community gardeners don't call it that. In Cleveland, a group called Rid-All is tackling the problems of inequality and poor health in the community. They call it building community. There are other examples of community building groups like Rid-All in New York City, Detroit, Philadelphia and other cities.
When asked about community gardeners protesting the loss of their garden, Rudy Giuliani's reply was "Welcome to the era after communism". Yes, welcome to the era of community building.
