Inside the urban garden in Seattle's protest zone
Issue 177: A property law expert argues that such "guerrilla gardens," pushing the boundaries of what's legal, actually do change policy.
Hello! Welcome to Nosh Box, a lunchtime-ish food newsletter that supports people forging connections with the land, regardless of what the state deems acceptable.
Read yesterday’s dispatch: Delivery app shenanigans, Flavortown, and saving America's lesbian bars: A food reading list
By now, you’ve probably heard of Seattle’s Capitol Hill Organized Protest (or CHOP; formerly the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone/CHAZ). It sprung up as a community-run, police-free area in the wake of the George Floyd protests and has since become an interesting case study in self-governance and police abolition.
In Cal Anderson Park, which is included in the boundaries of the CHOP, Marcus Henderson, a Black sustainable ag expert and gardener, planted a basil start a couple weeks ago. Earlier this year, to enforce social distancing, the city had mowed crop circle-esque patterns into the lawn at the park. These provided a handy guide pattern for Henderson to assemble what’s now a full-fledged urban agriculture project: a no-till garden, with crops planted in a layer of compost atop sheets of cardboard to cover the grass.
At Crosscut, Henderson told Hannah Weinberger why gardening is his preferred method of protest:
“It starts with land. I've been really fascinated with the idea of land ownership: collective land ownership, taking back property and really making it work for the people, using the land, growing food on the land, becoming self-sufficient. It’s something that I think is really important for us as a people. Because Black people have always lived on less money — and learning how to do it in a way that allows us to live healthy, sustainable lifestyles is important for Black people in particular.”
The gardens aren’t large enough to be the sole food source for the protesters, but Henderson hopes the harvest will still be big enough that he can donate it to community kitchens in need. Primarily, his project is a way to reclaim control over public lands and show how they can play a role in community food systems.
At Crosscut, Henderson explained:
“I would hope for there to be a garden in this park. But I would hope this sort of impact — in a sense, this protest — forces the Parks Department to rethink how they manage parks and incorporate more food into it. Like, none of these trees produce anything — why are they here? So I think we just need to incorporate more function into the park.”
“The whole point of this is to rethink how we utilize public land, and also [consider] who is controlling that public land: Is it public if the public doesn't have direct access to control over it?”
Definitely read the full Q&A with him over at Crosscut; it’s very worth it.
Photo courtesy Sarah Hoffman/Crosscut
Henderson’s garden is, according to urban political ecologist Nathan McClintock’s typology of urban agriculture, a guerrilla garden. These tend to spring up outside the bounds of the law to reclaim or produce common spaces. McClintock argues that many urban gardens are often simultaneously reformist projects committed to food justice and (perhaps unintentionally) neoliberal initiatives that reinforce the government’s dismantling of the social safety net.
Like other interstitial and subversive food spaces described in this issue, such alternative forms of food provisioning ultimately fill in gaps left by the rolling back of the social safety net. From this perspective, the burden of food production and provisioning of healthy food in low-income areas has largely shifted from the state to non-profits and community-based organizations operating in areas where market failure limits both wages and purchasing power.
Guerrilla gardens are often more radical in nature than institutional or allotment-style “victory gardens,” and often do not sell produce to the market, yet Henderson’s garden feels necessary primarily due to a cascade of state failures. Rather than the state fixing its mistakes and providing for all its citizens, the responsibility has been devolved to individual reformers actively pushing the boundaries of what’s even legal.
Transgressive urban agriculture projects like Henderson’s, according to Sarah Schindler, a professor of property law at the University of Maine School of Law, can actually be valuable and effective in making change. In a fascinating and surprising 2014 paper, she argues that property law has a “tendency to get stuck in old patterns, and thus needs to be ‘shock[ed]’ from time to time.”
She describes the powerful norms and local laws that prevent such guerrilla gardening, and notes that “property disobedience” can actually facilitate new laws, reinforce community values, and reinvigorate people who feel disillusioned by bureaucratic red tape:
It seems that transgressive local food-related behavior is beneficial to the extent that it (1) acts as a catalyst for change and innovation and (2) entices supporters of the local food movement to actively participate in that movement.
While the transgressive actions can support and further values that the community views as important but that are not yet protected by the law, the transgression may eventually catalyze legal change such that the law would also support and further those values.
Transgression is thus sometimes viewed as the only way to achieve one’s goals; those who do not own property — which in this setting would include those who wish to grow vegetables but are not landowners and those who wish to operate restaurants but do not have the funding to start their own — are often “reluctant, or simply financially unable, to initiate costly civil litigation or to assert effective political pressure to stake their claims.” Thus, in this context, transgression may entice people to participate who otherwise would not, believing that they could not.
What’s the future of the garden? Earlier this week, after a couple shootings near the CHOP, Seattle’s mayor said the city would work to wind down the protest space. Some outlets reported it closed yesterday following a tweet from “Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (Official Account)”, but demonstrators said they were unaware of this. Another twitter account called “Official CHOP/CHAZ Account ✊🏿” also says this is not true. Regardless, if and when the CHOP is dismantled, the gardens could be destroyed too.
A Change.org petition that Henderson boosted on Twitter alleges that the city temporarily shut off water to Cal Anderson park and advocates for an annual budget to maintain a garden in the park run by paid BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) gardeners. It has gathered 181 signatures so far, so the future of the garden is still very much up in the air.
What does food access look like in the CHOP, then?
A free grocery store called the No Cop Co-Op stocked bread, granola bars, water, and more thanks to donations. A mutual aid network took shape to feed demonstrators, street vendors set up shop, and local restaurants offered donated food, medical supplies, signs, phone charging, bathrooms, and other supplies. This Eater Seattle article breaks down the food situation in the CHOP really well.
Community pop-up restaurants have begun as well: Riot Kitchen, which is now looking to transition into a food truck to move around, and Feed the Movement, started by chef Johnny Rajski, which has also moved a couple times but is still up and running.
Thanks to Sydney for cluing me in to some of the articles I linked here! As always, if you have articles I should highlight or questions you want me to investigate, email me or drop a comment.
We’re off tomorrow but we’ll see you on Monday!
