Occupy Oakland with Gardens
At an Occupy Oakland rally on Saturday, I saw a group of people setting up an edible garden on the former lawn in front of city hall. For those who haven’t been following the saga of Occupy Oakland, it’s a former lawn because it was covered by a tent camp for several weeks and then the city drove over it with machines when they demolished the camp. Now it’s just a field of mud. The city was running the sprinklers during the rally — despite all the recent rain and the large patches of standing water — finding it convenient to keep this contested space as muddy and un-occupiable as possible. I’m not sure how long this little guerrilla garden will be tolerated by the city, but it’s a nice gesture. More likely to survive are the plantings of edibles, possibly done by the same people, in several of the planters edging the lawn.
After reading James’ post at Lost in the Landscape and surfing around the internet, I realized what will soon happen to the garden:
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011 at 9:14 am and is filed under bay area. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 23rd, 2011 at 10:23 pm
Love your version, and the link your shared is amazing. I had no idea there were so many out there!
Pretty scummy on the part of the city to water the protestors. But turning the mudbath into a garden is a brilliant transformation.
November 24th, 2011 at 10:28 am
I can’t say that it was intentional to run the sprinklers during a scheduled protest, but it definitely lined up conveniently with the city’s desire to keep protestors off the lawn area. People liked the garden and it had its own crowd separate from the main protest crowd.
December 13th, 2011 at 7:50 am
Been following it off and on…and can’t believe the measures enforcement has taken to stop / deter protesting. BTW, can’t say of certain, but is that pic of an officer controlling the pest on the plants using a pyrethrin application? Matti
January 7th, 2012 at 11:12 am
Ha!