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It's so funny.
People ask me, how'd I get into gardening?
It's-- the question is, how did gardening get into me?
'Cause I remember when I--
when I first started growing on the parkway.
And it was just so personal.
And I would get up at 5:00 in the morning,
you know, in my pajamas or my robe.
And I'd be out on the parkway planting
sunflowers and arugula.
And all of a sudden, it's 11:00 o'clock and you
haven't showered, you haven't eaten, you haven't--
[INAUDIBLE] so literally, that garden seduces you.
So my garden had been growing on the parkway for almost a year.
And I got a complaint from a neighbor.
Basically, I got a citation that turned into a warrant
for my arrest.
What the citation stated was illegal planting
of the parkway.
So they put something into motion
that woulda had me in jail.
I had a arrest warrant issued for me
for planting on my parkway.
So I had to go to court and deal with that a couple of times.
I had to remove everything off the parkway.
And I left it for years.
So it was-- it was weeds.
And everybody was asking me would I take care of it?
I'm like, no.
When I did take care of it, you know, I was gonna go to jail.
So I just left it.
Years later, I started an organization
where we put in gardens for people in South Central
for free.
And I thought, OK, maybe-- it's been years.
Maybe I should put my-- you know, do my parkway garden
again.
So I did it again.
And it was up, I don't know, maybe for two years or more.
And I got another citation.
And this time, I fought it.
I was like-- it ain't coming out.
'Cause last time, I had to go to court a couple of times
and I wound up taking the garden out.
You know, you have to take us--
take out everything.
So, you know, I'm killing trees.
And it just hurt me that I got so much positive energy
from people that would come by from the community.
And so the last time, I said, it ain't going down like that.
Do what you gotta do.
And I took on the system.
We wound up getting the law changed,
where you could plant edibles on your parkway
throughout the City of Los Angeles.
And that is really what started everything.
My story and my experience lit a fire under people.
And it's interesting because I have a guy I met recently
at an event that I do.
And he came up to me and he said-- he studied me in--
while he was inside.
And he came up to me and said, you were my inspiration
while I was there.
I saw articles on you.
Then I did a paper on you.
And he said, when I get out, I wanna do with this guy's doing.
I wanna to change--
I wanna fix my neighborhood, the part that I fucked it up.
And, you know, it had me--
it made me cry, you know, 'cause you don't know--
you have no idea with media how many people that you're
affecting, how many people that you're
touching around the world.
You know, I've had people, they're studying me
at University of Jordan.
And I would have never imagined that this is possible.
So I want people to think the unimaginable.
That's what I wanna do.
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I do this thing sometimes when I talk to kids in a auditorium.
I'll bring a-- just a gang of snacks, all kinds of snacks
from different products that they
drink to they eat to crackers to chips,
just-- to different sodas or these so-called sports drinks.
And I'm like, OK, we got snacks for you guys.
They're like, ah, yeah!
Woohoo!
And I'm like, but you can't eat 'em.
And they're like-- and I say, what I want you to do--
I want you to--
I'm gonna do my thing up here, but I want you--
we got two mics set up.
And I want you to get on your phone, get on your computer.
And I want you to turn the label around on that product
and I want you to read what these labels do to you.
It always gets to the point where
they're like, OK this may cause acne, irritable bowel syndrome.
This is known for cancer.
This is that.
And it's always somebody that can't pronounce something.
And I'm like, this whole--
I, say.
Great.
[INAUDIBLE]
I say, perfect.
I'm waiting for--
I been waiting for you the whole time.
And I said, it's real simple, guys.
If you can't read that shit, don't eat that shit.
I say, nothing in nature has 16 letters that you cannot
pronounce.
And it changes 'em.
And I've had kids tell me they've never looked at a label
and they've never gone online to see what these things do.
Being in these urban areas, a lotta times, it's hard for us
to get any kind of healthy food.
And we have to travel to get healthy food out
of our communities, these so-called food deserts.
We have more chronic diseases in these neighborhoods,
where the prominence of liquor stores are higher.
And a lot of times, this is all that's in these neighborhoods.
People that are wealthy, a lot of 'em still don't know that
they're--
they trust their food source.
They don't know where their food's coming from, you know,
the high fructose corn syrups, the,
you know, chrome and all this stuff--
chromium and all the stuff that's in our products.
And it's like, why?
Why do you need that in our products?
For shelf life?
Food is medicine.
But we're not treating it like that.
We're treating food like it's just slop for pigs.
That's why we have these fast food places.
That stuff is not making anybody healthy.
It's making a lot of people very, very rich.
So you think, the way this system is built,
who is it benefiting?
Is it benefiting us?
Is it benefiting, you know, the common man?
No.
I mean, the bottom line is what this is-- what the Ron Finley
Project is about is, how do we get back to healthy?
How do we get back to humanity?
I mean, really think about if only 2% of the people
start growing food around the world, what kind of change
that would be.
We could definitely demand that the food that is delivered
to our stores become healthier.
Because now we're affecting their bottom line.
And that's why this is gangster.
That's why this is the food revolution.
This has to happen.
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I would encourage everybody to have some kinda plot where
they--
where they're growing something, if it's for beauty, if it's
to feed yourself, if it's both.
Because it takes you out of this other world
that we've created for ourselves, that we--
you know, I ask people, like, what are cities designed for?
And people will say, people.
I had a architect tell me, a professor,
cities are designed for people.
I'm like, [INAUDIBLE], wrong.
They're not designed for people at all.
If they were designed for people, I would be like this,
and do like this and there's a pear in my hand
and there's strawberries and there's shade
and the air is cleaner and different.
Can we design cities that are more humanistic?
Hell, yeah, we can.
Are they?
No. 'Cause they have one purpose, commerce, period.
And I tell people--
I say, the only thing that cities have in common
with nature is the freeway.
People look at me like--
I say, yeah, you know, freeway, rush hour.
You know, you seen a ant farm?
It's like, that's-- now look at a freeway and look at a ant
farm.
It's the same thing.
We have to redesign our cities.
And that's where these green spaces come into.
That's where these parkways come into.
'Cause some neighborhoods have no access to land whatsoever.
And just imagine if we planted parkways.
Just imagine if every other block in a community
had the parkways full of food.
So you've created a ecosystem.
You created a community.
You've created safety in your neighborhoods.
'Cause now I can go across the street to Martha and get onions
and she can come over to my place and get tomatoes.
And, you know, we can go around the corner
and get pomegranates from David.
At one point, we did do a block in South Central
where we planted a whole block.
All the parkways were planted with boxes.
And some people chose to do flowers.
Some people chose to do vegetables.
Some people did both.
If you do that--
and you should, as a--
even as an experiment in your neighborhood.
And you're gonna find that all of a sudden,
you get to meet neighbors that you didn't know you had.
You get people passing by your house.
'Cause this gardening, this effort that you put in,
it creates questions.
And now, people wanna know, well, how can I do this?
Why'd you do this?
You know, people ask me, why did you start growing food?
I'm like, 'cause it's food, you clown.
Why would you not grow food?
You know, why don't we grow food?
But I have a real simple concept.
And that's, you know, beauty in, beauty out.
You put beauty into a space, that's
what you gonna get out of it.
But if you have a place lacking in this,
that's what you gonna get out of it.
And, you know, growing up in these environments, the city,
urban areas, you realize that beauty is by design
just like ugly is by design.
Both of them, they serve a purpose.
You know, 'cause if you're surrounded by ugly,
that's how you gonna think life is,
'cause that's-- now it's in your DNA.
But if you're surrounded by beauty,
that becomes natural to you, too, and you become--
you appreciate it.
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Things that we value, we've been trained to value,
like money and diamonds and other dumb shit like that.
We don't value humanity.
We don't value each other.
We don't value our water, our air,
our resources that surround us.
And we definitely don't value soil.
We call it dirt.
You know, but we gotta realize that life comes out of that.
I've actually put gardens in some places in Skid Row.
And it was interesting because it did--
it took some of the people back to when they were kids.
And it's been proven, they have all kinds of statistics,
that they realize when you put in a garden, when
you put in a green space, the crime rate goes down.
This is known, because of the things that gardens do.
It's not just about the food.
It's about the fact that now you have something to care for.
Now you have something that's alive.
And it's-- it winds up changing your life.
It's like with a child.
You give 'em a seed and all of a sudden,
you put it in the ground and they come back
and it's a carrot.
And they take it out like, I made this.
You know?
And I'm like, yes, you did make it.
You know, so now that's something that someone never
can take from them.
So it's known.
So why don't they have this in every prison?
Why don't-- every school.
Why isn't that one of the main curriculums
in elementary school is learning how to cultivate and grow
your own food?
Because there's so many lessons and there's
so much power in that.
And that's why I'm doing what I'm doing with the garden.
And I had no idea that I was building a ecosystem.
That just came.
I had no idea that all of a sudden,
I would see birds in South Central
that I've never seen in my life.
It brought this knowledge that I've never had, that I never
kinda knew existed.
And I was kinda pissed that--
everybody should know the things that you learn in the garden.
I have a saying, the school should be in the garden, not
the garden at the school.
There's so many lessons out here that we all need to have.
We have to have this reverence for mother nature.
We have to have this respect.
And we haven't been trained to do that.
Is there a pledge allegiance for air?
Why not?
There should be.
It's the single most important thing to your life.
And this is the things that I think we need to change.
With that, we need to change our value system.