See, it appears that my fellow garden lovin’ Texans up in Dallas are fighting City Hall for their own community gardens–and urban chickens and many of the other grassroots efforts at sustainable food–in the midst of a major recession. Not quite the same sitch as what happened in LA with The Garden, but still troubling. The big concern in Big D is that a heavy-handed ordinance could kill growing enthusiasm for urban gardening.

In the words of my high school French teacher, “We are not amused.”

From what I understand from a reliable source in the DFW area, the proposal is back in committee for revisions, but there aren’t enough people on the council who “get” it.

Background:

• City Hall Continues to Bury Community Gardens Under Permits and Procedures (Dallas Observer blog, 8 May 2010)
• Community Gardens Issue Plowed Again Today at Dallas City Hall (Dallas Morning News blog, 10 May 2010)

THE TAKE AWAY: What you can do about it

• If you’re in Dallas, contact City Hall.

• If you’re in Texas, call/email/text/tweet your like-minded friends in Dallas and tell them what’s up. Ask them to take a stand for self-sufficiency and self-reliance and make a call. (Oh, and get ‘em to join with you to sign the brand-new Dig for Texas petition while you’re in a huff, which is designed to foster awareness statewide for home and community gardens.)

• If you’re elsewhere, spread the word about what’s happening here via your networks and blogs, be they rooted in Slow Food, gardening, #realfood, community gardening, yardsharing, urban chickens, or what have you.

Perhaps if the Dallas city council realizes that cities like San Francisco and Chicago and New York City–all places that Dallas deems as peers–have a progressive, open-minded approach to community and urban gardens, there’s a chance that they’ll gain a clue.

Hey, it’s worth a shot, right?

Explore More:
• Chicago Park District Community Gardens, where you’ll read this:

Visually, the community garden can reflect the health, unity, creativity, beauty, culture and diversity of its community. Physically, the community garden can become a natural outdoor gym, where lifting, bending, pulling and pushing all promote muscular and cardiovascular activity. Socially, the community garden can bring neighbors together who once were complete strangers by providing a setting for acquaintances to become friends. Mentally, the community garden is a safe place for residents to grow and connect with nature and its provisions through caring for ornamental and edible plants.

• America’s Premier Urban Farmer is San Francisco’s Mayor Gavin Newsom, where you’ll read this text from a city of San Fran press release:

“Urban agriculture is about far more than growing vegetables on an empty
lot,” said Mayor Newsom. “It’s about revitalizing and transforming unused
public spaces, connecting city residents with their neighborhoods in a new
way and promoting healthier eating and living for everyone.”

• The American Victory Garden, Past and Present (my own Google Knol), which gives a summary of America’s commitment historically to grassroots self-sufficiency.

• I’m not sure if this makes me feel better or not, but there’s a group, Urban Farming Advocates, in LA fighting city hall right now, too. Could this be a trend?

• If you need me, I’ll be cheering myself up reading about the goings-on at Peterson’s Garden in Chicago, where Alderman Patrick O’Connor is enthusiastic for community gardens.

THE GARDEN chronicles the complex and emotional story of Los Angeles’ South Central Farm. Created from the ashes of the L.A. riots in 1992, the South Central Farm came to be the largest urban farm in the United States. THE GARDEN documents the farmers’ struggle against the city’s backroom deals, and exposes the underlying issues of money, power, poverty and racial discord.

THE GARDEN is a cautionary tale, the story of an urban paradise and an opportunity lost – for the moment, but the story isn’t over yet….

These are two of the other speakers on the panel:
Veronica Flores, WORKS http://worksusa.org
Neelam Sharma, Community Services Inc http://www.csuinc.org — veggie powered bus

Don’t miss this fantastic documentary!

Find out more and see the trailer here: www.thegardenmovie.com

On August 7th 1974, a young Frenchman named Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire and illegally rigged between the New York’s twin towers. After nearly an hour dancing on the wire, he was arrested, taken for psychological evaluation, and brought to jail before he was finally released. This documentary complies Petit s footage to show the numerous extraordinary challenges he faced in completing the artistic crime of the century.

Native New Yorkers know to expect the unexpected, but who among them could’ve predicted that a man would stroll between the towers of the World Trade Center? French high-wire walker Philippe Petit did just that on August 7th, 1974. Petit�s success may come as a foregone conclusion, but British filmmaker James Marsh�s pulse-pounding documentary still plays more like a thriller than a non-fiction entry–in fact, it puts most thrillers to shame. Marsh (Wisconsin Death Trip, The King) starts by looking at Petit’s previous stunts. First, he took on Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral, then Sydney’s Harbour Bridge before honing in on the not-yet-completed WTC. The planning took years, and the prescient Petit filmed his meetings with accomplices in France and America. Marsh smoothly integrates this material with stylized re-enactments and new interviews in which participants emerge from the shadows as if to reveal deep, dark secrets which, in a way, they do, since Petit’s plan was illegal, “but not wicked or mean.” The director documents every step they took to circumvent security, protocol, and physics as if re-creating a classic Jules Dassin or Jean-Pierre Melville caper. Though still photographs capture the feat rather than video, the resulting images will surely blow as many minds now as they did in the 1970s when splashed all over the media. Not only did Petit walk, he danced and even lay down on the cable strung between the skyscrapers. Based on his 2002 memoir, Man on Wire defines the adjective “awe-inspiring.” –Kathleen C. Fennessy

Man on Wire is available at Amazon for $17.99. To Order click here
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Other Products of Interest

• The Visitor
• Burn After Reading
• Tropic Thunder
• Vicky Cristina Barcelona
• Ghost Town