FREE OUR COMMUNITY GARDENS

The Garden Liberation Project

The South Bronx is in need of immediate food security. As the city begins to return and resume its day to day, residents of the South Bronx are left to navigate the effects of the pandemic in addition to further greater food insecurity caused by socio-economic strains. Our Community Gardens are being neglected, abandoned and access to these Gardens has been taken away from their respective communities. New York state parks Dept. and Green Thumb NYC has turned a blind eye to the urgent tremendous need for these safe spaces in this time of crisis. Food insecurity in the Bronx has exasperated during the COVID 19 crisis, The cost of food has increased, unemployment rates are astronomical and Bronx Families are going hungry daily. Our community garden resources can be used to alleviate the food insecurity strain by being utilized to create nutritious edible crops to be distributed in low-income areas at no cost. Our community gardens also serve the purpose of providing a safe space for our elderly, allowing our children to congregate or play safely in a protected environment that is desperately needed for mental health stability especially during these chaotic times. The gardens can also be used to host community programmings such as food sustainability, health, nutritional education, Selfcare, physical fitness, cultural awareness, town halls, Medical testing, and screening sites while serving as a no-cost meeting space for grassroots community organizations to grow. 

We must free our community gardens immediately and use them for what they were intended for not chained up and abandoned.

We plan to continue to revitalize and support the Bronx community gardens that are currently struggling with Supplies, Garden materials needed, Plants, and volunteers to maintain them as Green thumb NYC has severely neglected The Bronx Comunity Gardens for months by not allocating resources or providing adequately for the gardens who are fighting to stay open for their respective areas. Green Thumb NYC has not fulfilled their obligations or promises to our Bronx Comunity gardens.

We will gain access to the gardens that have been abandoned and locked up by the New York Parks Dept. / Green Thumb NYC. We will Revitalize, rejuvenate, cultivate, and maintain them, breathing life into them for our communities inspiring hope and essential living energy. We will no longer allow them to be left forgotten to decay and wither and become eyesores at the hand of organizations that do not care for the communities that they blatantly disregard and ignore. What has been done is gross negligence and indifference on their behalf, that we as a community will no longer accept nor allow. Our Community Gardens are too important of a resource and can make an enormous change if allowed to be used to their full potential. We demand that the Community Gardens be given control and access back to the Community immediately.

We are calling on not only members of our community, but on anyone who believes that the community should be in control of the food sources and community spaces that are within it.

THE TIME FOR ACTION IS NOW. JOIN US AND SIGN THIS PETITION TO SUPPORT AS A COMMUNITY TO FREE OUR GARDENS!!!

- The Garden Liberation Project

www.FreeOurGardens.com