"Growing your own food, feeding people … that's gangsta."
In South Central Los Angeles, the "Gangsta Gardener" is bringing more than plants to the neighborhood...
In South Central Los Angeles, the "Gangsta Gardener" is bringing more than plants to the neighborhood...
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00:00Basically, this all started, these need water, because of a lack of being able to look at
00:11beauty every day in the neighborhood.
00:13So I decided that that's what I wanted to do.
00:17So basically, if it's not there, you put it there.
00:23It's going to be a good one.
00:33Tangerine, taro, sugar cane, banana.
00:38This is supposed to be a dwarf banana, okay?
00:42Somebody lied to me.
00:48This is the most delicious spinach you've ever not tasted.
00:56This is gangster, you know?
00:59You can't get no more gangster than air.
01:01But growing your own food, building community, feeding people, that's gangster.
01:07Oh my God, look at these colors.
01:14Look at that.
01:16Look at the blend on this.
01:27This is food slavery.
01:28The fact these neighborhoods are food slavery.
01:30You can't get any healthy food in your neighborhood.
01:35That's food slavery.
01:36When you have other neighborhoods, all they have to do is do this, and organic avocado
01:41toast magically appears in their hand.
01:44And it's by design.
01:53This is actually the gooseberry.
01:54That's the blossom.
01:56This is the flower.
01:57This is the fruit, which is not ready yet.
02:03That's basically where this all started.
02:06I wanted to walk outside my home, office, and I wanted to see beauty everywhere.
02:13I wanted to smell it.
02:15I wanted to be taken over by it.
02:20And never did I think that it would turn into this, but it did.
02:29It frees you.
02:30What gardens represent to me is freedom from an oppressive slave system.
02:37People depend on other people to give them their food.
02:41That means they control you.
02:43He who controls the food controls your life.
02:48Once you start controlling it, you control your own life.
02:55When you're gardening, you're practicing life.
02:58It's not transfer, you're practicing life.
03:01Of course it is.
03:02You're thinking anything that you do is going to transfer.
03:07The good and the bad, if that's your practice.
03:10When this becomes your practice, you will see things differently.
03:13You will view things.
03:14You will hear things differently, everything.
03:21Enjoy the journey.
03:22Enjoy the lesson.
03:23And be creative.
03:25And that's how this happened.