We´ve written (need link) about EL Garden´s petition response to recent threats to the city´s community gardens, and now you have an opportunity to take more direct action: tomorrow morning, Tuesday, February 10 at 9:00 a.m., join New York City Community Gardens Coalition and stakeholders from gardens across the city to rally at city hall to demand that the mayor takes sixteen community gardens off a list of areas zoned for redevelopment.
Here’s a map from 596 Acres of the endangered community gardens that was posted to the event’s Facebook page:
The rally is a response to a recent initiative from the mayor´s office that placed several vacant lots under consideration for potential housing development, including sixteen active garden sites. The event will include a speech from council member Antonio Reynoso, and representatives from several gardens will also speak. As one librarian who signed the online petition put it, ¨A garden is an accomplishment whose benefits radiate through a community in small and larger ways. To destroy it in the name of development is to act with the callousness of a colonizer who sees only ‘available space’ where a community is already thriving.¨
