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SCitizen Projects
Ethnoscape of Resistance: South Central Farm in Los Angeles
Facilitators: Dr. Clara Irazabal, Alberto Tlatao, and Jason Neville
Abstract:
Participants attending this project will get an introductory lecture on the SCF that will touch upon the occurrences at the farm. Then, they will visit the farm, meet with farmers and community organizers there to discuss their conditions and problems, participate in gardening, help in other activities needed by the community, such as farming, watering, cleaning, cooking, painting, etc. If the SCF is not available for a visit at the time of this program (due to this ongoing legal struggle for the land), an alternative community garden will be visited. Lastly, the students will each write a personal letter to LA mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Councilwoman Jan Perry (who represent the District where the SCF is), or landowner Ralph Horowitz expressing their views on the farm and what they would want to see happening to it. Alternatively, the students can write about their views on community gardens in Los Angeles.
The experience can offer valuable field exposure and conditions for theoretical reflection, empirical testing, policy analysis, and proposal-making to students interested in matters of social and health policy making, social work, urban planning and design, community and economic development, urban studies, cultural sociology and anthropology, and Latina/o, Latin American, and American studies.
Organization Information:
This program presents the South Central Farm (SCF)—a community garden in South Central Los Angeles (L.A.) currently entangled in a legal battle for its preservation—as an ethnoscape of resistance to oppressive and discriminatory governance institutions (especially legal and planning practices) in Los Angeles. It presents the case for the preservation of the community garden based on its analysis as both an ethnoscape and a case of law and planning ethics. Finally, it discusses possible structural and agency-related strategies that may contribute to its permanent safeguarding, and/or the expansion of community gardens in the City of Los Angeles. These arguments can prove appropriate for the formulation of preservation rationales in the case of different community gardens and other ‘commons’ threatened by eventual dismantlement in capitalist societies.
Facilitator Biographies:
Clara Irazábal, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Urban Design and Planning in the School of Policy, Planning, and Development at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. She received a Ph.D. in Architecture from the University of California at Berkeley, and has two Masters in Architecture and Urban Design and Planning from the University of California at Berkeley and the Universidad Central de Venezuela, respectively. She has worked as consultant, researcher, and/or professor in Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and the USA; and has lectured in several other countries. Her research encompasses the politics of urban planning and design; ethnicity and space; and criticism of transnational urban design. She has published in the Journal of Urban Design and the Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, among others. Irazábal is the author of City Making and Urban Governance in the Americas: Curitiba and Portland (London: Ashgate, 2005), the editor of Ordinary Places, Extraordinary Events: Citizenship, Democracy, and Public Space in Latin America (Routledge, 2006). She is currently working on a research project entitled Latina/o New Urbanisms in Los Angeles (with sociologist Macarena Gómez-Barris).
Alberto Tlatoa is a current student at East Los Angeles College (ELAC) and a South Central Farmer. For the past eight years Alberto and his family have been farming the land at the South Central Farm. He has taken a principled stand for the rights of low-income citizens to grow healthy, organic food for their families in South Central LA. Since the summer of 2004 Alberto has spoken as a farmer and a community member to Los Angeles City Council as well as at the 2006 Planners Network National Conference. As one of the eight captains Alberto was responsible for hosting one night per week for the past 11 months in the occupation of the land. As a student and a farmer Alberto believes in the greening of low-income areas and shares the vision with many planners for a self-reliant environment.
Jason Neville is a second-year student in the graduate Master in Planning program at USC’s School of Policy, Planning and Development, focusing in urban design. Jason worked in his first year as the teaching assistant in the ‘Reinhabiting New Orleans’ urban lab, which created a ‘Preface to a Plan’ for rebuilding in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina, outlining ‘what planners need to know before they plan.’ ‘Preface to a Plan’ won the 2006 LA APA Award for Outstanding Student Project and will be presented this fall at La Biennale di Venezia in Italy. Jason is the teaching assistant for Dr. Clara Irazábal’s graduate Design Skills class and currently co-authoring with her ‘Neighborhoods in the Lead: Covert Planning for Social Transformation in New Orleans?’ which will be presented at the 2006 World Planning Schools Congress Conference in Mexico City. Jason is also the treasurer of the USC chapter of the Planners Network, an organization for progressive and radical urban planners, which has been working for two semesters with the South Central Farmers.
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