Why the Butterfly landed when she did. She'd gotten as much publicity as she could and knew the eviction was about to happen anyway.
LOS ANGELES – Sheriff's deputies evicted people from an urban community garden to make room for a warehouse Tuesday, touching off a furious protest in which actress Daryl Hannah and others climbed into a walnut tree or chained themselves to concrete-filled barrels. More than 40 people were arrested.
Authorities cut away branches and used a fire truck to bring down the "Splash" actress and another tree-sitter, who raised their fists as they were removed. Hannah was arrested.
"I'm very confident this is the morally right thing to do, to take a principled stand in solidarity with the farmers," she said by cell phone before the fire truck raised officers into the tree.
About 350 people grow produce and flowers on the 14 acres of privately owned land, in an inner-city area surrounded by warehouses and railroad tracks. The garden has been there for more than a decade, but the landowner, Ralph Horowitz, now wants to replace it with a warehouse.
It's also important to note what earlier coverage of this protest has neglected. Most of the people who used the area to grow things have already moved to new plots the city made available. This story was manipulated to make it seem the heartless landlord was evicting poor little people. In actuality, the landowner had been losing quite a lot of money on the property for many years and the "farmers" had already been offered alternatives.
Horowitz noted that the farmers were squatting on land zoned for warehouses and factories. The landowner said in a telephone interview that he was paying $25,000 to $30,000 a month in mortgage and other land costs.
"We've made, in the last three years, enough of a donation to those farmers," he said. "I just want my land back."
Horowitz accused the farmers of ingratitude, saying they had sued him and their supporters had picketed his home and office.
"I feel that the gardeners have been on the land for 14 years, almost 15 years for free. After 15 years, you say thank you," he said.
Horowitz also said that the city had provided other locations for the gardeners, and that most had left. In a statement, City Councilwoman Jan Perry also said many gardeners had moved to new garden sites.
Now we won't have any more reasons to run the picture of Joan Baez, though. Darn it.
You know, this just shows how naive and gullable these nut-jobs are. If these Hollywood ding bats really wanted to ‘save’ these farmers, why didn’t they just pool their cash and buy the plot from Mr. Horowitz? If he wasn’t selling, bo guy a plot elsewhere…apparently land was available since the city found plots.
Oh, because that would have been a constructive action…something these twits just don’t do. They just take the lazy way out and sit in a tree. Even got a free shower out of it (well, a shower at the tax payer’s expense).