I have been doing a little research into the Fenway Victory Gardens for a possible future wikipedia entry.  It's surprising that the oldest remaining victory garden in the US doesn't have it's own wikipedia entry already, but there you have it.

I was entrusted by the board with the archives of the Fenway Garden Society some years ago, since we don't have a physical address where we can store them.  If memory serves, there were two banker's boxes worth, but hardly anything of real interest to anyone outside the organization:  bare bones minutes of meetings that were conducted according to Robert's Rules of Order, same as now, and a few clippings here and there from the local papers, but really nothing of historical value. 

Nowadays I'm particularly interested in an attempt by the Red Sox to buy the seven-acre plot which houses the Victory Gardens in order to turn it into a parking lot for the ballpark.  This was in 1960 or so, and there was some fear at the time that lack of parking might force the Sox out of their ancestral home. 

There were apparently plenty of other proposals to develop the plot, too — a hotel, a hospital, and a school among them — until the site was granted Boston Historic Landmark status (an oft-repeated fact I'd like a little more documentation on, myself).

I've yet to haul my ass down to the Copley branch of the BPL, much less to MassHort in Wellesley, but from my nosing around online, it looks like I'll have to do things the old-fashioned way this time around.

My cyber-sleuthing hasn't been utterly fruitless.  In my researches so far I've come across all sorts of goodies on community gardens in general. This delightful blog by a very, very enthusiastic newbie in the Fenway Victory Gardens, for one. 

But nothing has blown my mind like the 2008 documentary The Garden, about a community's struggle to save their fourteen-acre garden in the heart of South Central LA from being bulldozed.


You can stream this movie on Netflix, and if you have it, I suggest — no, I demand — that you do so immediately.  Go.  I'll wait.


Was that not unfuckingbelievable?

I don't want to spoil it for anyone who doesn't know the outcome.  But even if you do this is a jaw-dropper.  Only in America.

I mean, the story of what was America's largest community garden — fourteen lush acres in the blighted heart of South Central Los Angeles...


... tended mostly by Latinos — has everything we've come to expect from an American tale: hope and tenacity in the face of greed and corruption, random acts of kindness and one great big heaping act of utterly gratuitous malice.  Oh, and, um, Daryl Hannah, Danny Glover, Willie Nelson, and a truly hilarious cameo by a candidate for president who shall remain nameless.

And did I mention racism?  Lots of it.  This is LA after all.  In fact, the racial dynamic is probably the most interesting aspect of the film, especially as we enter the Latino Century.  Nobody but nobody does social justice like the Latino community.  And even as the demographics of LA are shifting towards Latinos (Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa puts in an appearance here as Councilman Villaraigosa), the black community still wields power in South Central.  And power still corrupts. 

If the depths of "black on brown" racism here is astonishing, it's also far from monolithic.  What is truly staggering — truly, truly — and it is a lesson we have to learn anew each and every day — is the lengths to which some people will go to take away what others have worked and loved and lived for, just because they can. 

Oops, did I forget the "spoiler alert"?  Never mind.  You wouldn't believe me if I told you how it ended, because even though we know how it ends, we still can't believe it. 

Only in America.