TED_Finley_gardening_2台词.docxVIP

TED Talk: Ron Finley – Guerilla GardenerI live in South Central. This is South Central: liquor stores, fast food, vacant lots.So the city planners, they get together and they figure theyre going to change the name South Central to make it represent something else, so they change it to South Los Angeles, like this is going to fix whats really going wrong in the city. This is South Los Angeles. (Laughter) Liquor stores, fast food, vacant lots.Just like 26.5 million other Americans, I live in a food desert, South Central Los Angeles, home of the drive-thru and the drive-by. Funny thing is, the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys. People are dying from curable diseases in South Central Los Angeles. For instance, the obesity rate in my neighborhood is five times higher than, say, Beverly Hills, which is probably eight, 10 miles away.I got tired of seeing this happening. And I was wondering, how would you feel if you had no access to healthy food, if every time you walk out your door you see the ill effects that the present food system has on your neighborhood? I see wheelchairs bought and sold like used cars. I see dialysis centers popping up like Starbucks. And I figured, this has to stop. So I figured that the problem is the solution. Food is the problem and food is the solution. Plus I got tired of driving 45 minutes round trip to get an apple that wasnt impregnated with pesticides.So what I did, I planted a food forest in front of my house. It was on a strip of land that we call a parkway. Its 150 feet by 10 feet. Thing is, its owned by the city. But you have to maintain it. So Im like, Cool. I can do whatever the hell I want, since its my responsibility and I gotta maintain it. And this is how I decided to maintain it.So me and my group, L.A. Green Grounds, we got together and we started planting my food forest, fruit trees, you know, the whole nine, vegetables. What we do, were a pay-it-forward kind of group, where its composed of gardeners from