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I live in South Central.

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This is South Central.

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Liquor stores,

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fast food,

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vacant lots.

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So the city planners, they get together

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and they figure they've got to change the name

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of South Central to make it represent something else.

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So they change it to South Los Angeles,

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like this is going to change what's really going wrong in the city.

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This is South Los Angeles.

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(Laughter)

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Liquor stores, fast food, vacant lots.

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Just like 26.5 million other Americans

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I live in a food desert:

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South Central, Los Angeles.

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Home of the drive-thru

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and the drive-by.

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The funny thing is the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys.

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People are dying from curable diseases

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in South Central, Los Angeles.

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For instance, the obesity rate in my neighborhood

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is like 5 times higher than, say, Beverly Hills,

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which is like, probably 8, 10 miles away.

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I got tired of seeing this happening.

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I wonder, how would you feel if you had no access to healthy food?

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If every time you walk out your door you see the ill effects

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that the present food system have on your neighborhood?

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I see wheel chairs bought and sold like used cars.

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I see dialysis centers popping up like Starbucks.

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And I figured this has to stop.

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So I figured that the problem is the solution.

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Food is the problem and food is the solution.

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Plus I got tired of driving 45 minutes round-trip

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to get an apple that wasn't impregnated with pesticides.

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So what I did, I planted a food forest in front of my house.

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It was on a strip of land there, we call it a parkway.

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It's like 150 ft by like 10 ft.

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The thing is, it's owned by the city,

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but you have to maintain it.

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So I went like: Cool, I'll do whatever the hell I want.

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Since it's my responsibility and I've got to maintain it,

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so this is how I decided to maintain it.

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So me and my group, L.A. Green Grounds,

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we got together and we started to plant my food forest.

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Fruit trees, you know, the whole nine, with vegetables.

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What we do here, we're a pay-it-forward kind of group,

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where it's composed of, like, gardeners from all walks of life from all over the city.

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And it's completely volunteer and everything we do is free.

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And the gardening was beautiful, and then somebody complained.

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The city came down on me

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and they basically gave me a citation

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saying that I had to remove my garden.

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And this citation turned into a warrant,

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and I'm like, Come on, really? A warrant for planting food

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on a piece of land that you couldn't care less about?

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(Laughter)

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And I was like, "Cool, bring it."

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Because this time it wasn't coming up.

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So L.A. Times got hold of it, Steve Lopez did a story on it,

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and talked to the council man and one of the Green Ground members

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they put up a petition on change.org

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and with 900 signatures we were a success. We had a victory on our hands.

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My council man even called me and said how they endorsed and loved what we were doing.

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I mean, com on, why woudn't they?

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L.A. leads the United States in the vacant lots that the city actually owns.

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They own 26 square miles of vacant lots.

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That's 20 Central Parks.

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That's enogh space to plant 725 million tomato plants.

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Why the hell would they not OK this?

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Growing one plant will give you a thousand, ten thousand seeds.

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With one dollar's worth of green beans will give you, like, $75's worth of produce.

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It's my gospel, I'm telling people, grow your own food.

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Growing your own food is like printing your own money.

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(Laghter)

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(Applause)

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Thank you.

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I have a legacy in South Central.

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I grew up there, I raised my sons there,

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and I refuse to be a part of this manufactured reality

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that was manufactured for me by some other people and I'm manufacturing my own reality.

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You see, I'm an artist.

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Gardening is my grafitti, I grow my art.

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Just like a grafitti artist, when they beautify walls, me?

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I beautify lawns, parkways.

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I use the gardens, so that's like a piece of cloth

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and the plants and the trees, that's my embellishment for that cloth.

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You'd be surprised what a soil can do if you let it be your canvas.

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You just couldn't imagine how amazing a sunflower is,

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and how it affects people.

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So what happened, I have witnessed my garden become a tool for the education.

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A tool for the transformation of my neighborhood.

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To change the community you have to change the composition of the soil.

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We are the soil.

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You'd be surprised how kids are affected by this.

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Gardening is the most therapeutic and defiant act you can do,

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especially in the inner city.

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Plus you get strawberries.

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(Laughter)

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I remember this time, there was this mother and her daughter came,

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it was like 10:30 at night, they were in my yard,

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and I came out and they looked so ashamed.

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Man, it made me feel bad that they were there,

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and I told them, you don't have to do it like this.

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This is on the street for a reason.

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It made me feel ashamed to see people that were this close to me that were hungry.

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This only reinforced why I do this.

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And people were asking: "Finley aren't you afraid people are going to steal your food?"

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And I am like, "Hell, no, I ain't afraid they're going to steal it. That's why it's on the street.

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That's the whole idea. I want them to take it, but at the same time

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I want them to take back their health."

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There was another time when I put a garden in this homeless shelter

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in downtown Los Angeles.

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And the guys, they helped me unload the truck.

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It was cool, and they just shared the stories about how this affected them,

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and how they used to plant with their mother and their grandmother.

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And it was just cool see how this changed them,

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if it was only for that one moment.

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So Green Grounds has gone on to plant maybe, like, 20 gardens.

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In fact, like 50 people come to our dig ins and participate.

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And it's all volunteers.

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If kids grow kale, kids eat kale.

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(Laughter and applause)

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If they grow tomatoes, they eat tomatoes.

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But when none of this is presented to them,

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if they're not shown how food affects the mind and the body,

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they blindly eat whatever the hell you put in front of them.

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I see young people and they want to work,

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but they're in this thing where they're caught up,

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I see kids that are colored, and they just are in this track that's designed for them,

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that leads them to nowhere, so with gardening

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I see an opportunity where we can train these kids

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to take over their communities, to have a sustainable life.

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And when we do this, who knows, we might produce the next George Washington Carver.

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But if we don't change the composition of the soil, we will never do this.

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This is one of my plans. This is what I want to do.

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I want to plant a whole block of gardens, where people can share in the food

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in the same block. I want to take in shipping containers and turn them into healthy cafes.

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Now don't get me wrong.

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I'm not talking about no free shit,

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because free is not sustainable.

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The funny thing about sustainability, you have to sustain it.

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(Laughter)

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What I'm talking about is putting people to work and getting kids off the street.

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And let them know the joy, the pride and the honor in growing your own food.

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Open your Farmer's Market.

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So what I want to do here, we've got to make this sexy.

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So I want us all to become eco-lutionary, renegades, gangsters, gangsta gardeners.

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We've got to flip the script. I want a gangsta here.

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If you ain't a gardener, you ain't gangsta.

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Be gangsta with your shovel, OK?

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And let that be your weapon of choice.

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(Applause)

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So, basically, if want to meet with me,

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you know, if you want to meet, don't call me

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if you want to sit around in cushy chairs

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and have meetings when you talk about doing some shit,

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where you talk about doing some shit.

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If you want to meet with me come to the garden with your shovel,

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so we can plant some shit.

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Peace!

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Thank you, thank you.

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(Applause)