Power at the Roots by Martinez Miranda J.;

Author:Martinez, Miranda J.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2010-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Retranslating Garden Realities:

Environmental and Community Benefits

We are here today before you in the name of _____ Garden. We are here in the name of our seventy-three dues paying members, of the over sixty children from [nearby schools] who learn about nature by planting seeds in our soil and watching them grow, and the hundreds of our neighbors who sit in the shade during the summer. We are also here in the name of the thousands of ladybugs, butterflies, crickets, mantises, and different species of birds who bring biodiversity back to the city, and our five healthy trees that bring cleaner air and shade to our block. We are open to the public all weekend, and weekday evenings. We hold regular events, including our annual procession for the Virgin Mary, and we bring together neighbors from many different backgrounds and walks of life to make our community stronger. We are here together to ask you to continue to allow us to work as a community, for this community, by voting to support our garden to be protected as a city park.

This speech, by a gardener from one of the spaces that were designated as “transferable” on the GreenThumb list, is excerpted from one of the

better-prepared presentations that I observed. The gardeners had surveyed the format of the meeting beforehand and had received technical assistance from the Trust for Public Land. The gardeners came early and signed up to speak as a block. They had a clever strategy for dealing with the two-minute public session format: They divided their presentation into portions and passed the flow of the speech along down a line of garden members as each speaker’s time was up. They were a large group, more than thirty, and colorfully costumed children carried photographic storyboards depicting life in the garden. There was an information sheet that gave the garden’s origin stories and incorporated performance statistics detailing the gardeners’ achievements. This garden was not contested by another developer, and its approval for transfer was voted through by the community board without controversy.

The appeals within the speech show the expressive gap that gardeners had to bridge in order to be heard. The speaker testifies in the name of a “we” that is defined in universal terms, to encompass the elements of nature, but these are then carefully enumerated using a language of performance standards and environmental management. Retranslating garden reality into persuasive performance statistics was absolutely necessary when gardeners were testifying before the community board in order to counter the tacit comparison—“would it be more valuable as housing?”—that was being made as each garden was considered. The comparison is not unreasonable, given the shortage of available housing, but it is significant because it represents a shift in thinking from “use” to “exchange.” The standard being enforced is a calculation of services rendered to the general public in exchange for use of the land. That shift implies that gardeners are being forced by the requirements of the venue to adopt the city administration’s

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