It was 6:30 a.m. on October 24 when park rangers arrived and told members of the Black Star Farmers (BSF) that they were about to tear down the Black Lives Memorial Garden (BLMG) at Cal Anderson Park. BSF personnel, who are collectively manning the site, sent frantic messages to colleagues at Signal.
Around 7:15 a.m., Seattle Police officers arrived to back up Seattle Parks and Recreation Department employees. The city then brought in a heavy-duty backhoe, which rolled it yards away from the garden. But just as they were about to begin digging, members of the community began to arrive, locking arms and sitting around the garden. BLMG has been saved, for now.
This was the third clash between activists and the city in less than a month. On October 4, BSF received a tip that the Parks Department was planning a “turf makeover” and would tear up the garden. Community organizers have made it clear that they refuse to give in and are willing to engage in civil disobedience if necessary, such as people barricading themselves in various stairwells throughout the space to create physical barriers.
The garden is home to a wide variety of vegetables, native plants and sacred medicinal herbs. Their produce is redistributed to the community and the garden space often hosts community events. The site is full of signs with inspirational quotes from radical thinkers such as Franz Fanon and Silvia Federici, as well as messages of solidarity with other causes, such as the liberation of Palestine.
BLMG was first planted in the summer of 2020 amid the Black Lives Matter uprising and Occupy Capitol Hill protest and is located in the center of a semi-circular grassy meadow north of the football fields of Cal Anderson Park. It is one of the only visible markers left from the three-week occupation, along with the Black Lives Matter mural on East Pine Street.
Alongside the fledgling garden emerged the BSF collective, which runs BLMG and aims to advance black liberation through food sovereignty and land reclamation. BSF Gardens Manager Marcus Henderson said BLMG was focused on piloting this new relationship with the land.
“It’s about activating the community around the land and creating agency for people to decide where their food comes from and have more relationships,” Henderson said. “I think that’s sovereignty, right? It’s not just about growing pounds of food. It’s about culture; it’s about relationships; it’s about the knowledge, the skills being disseminated to the community and really being of the community, so that the community can make their own decisions about how they go. [to] access to food and access to land”.
During those turbulent summer weeks of 2020, BSF attracted goodwill and media attention. That also led city officials to explore whether BLMG could be part of a larger effort to “activate” Cal Anderson Park. However, once public support no longer focused on addressing racial injustices, the Parks Department quickly changed its approach. The garden has never been officially sanctioned by the city.
“There was quite a bit of community engagement around the garden and what it might look like in the future,” Henderson said. “But that conversation ended pretty quickly, and then Parks quickly tried to move us out of that space or into different elements of the park without really understanding our work.”
According to Rachel Schulkin, spokeswoman for the Parks Department, BLMG is not in an appropriate location, as the semi-circular field it sits on is designed to host large gatherings and events. He added that discussions with community members resulted in a desire to move the garden to another area of the park, an offer BSF has rejected. The department declined to provide further comment beyond the brief emailed statement.
BSF Garden Manager MD said that the Parks Department has so far refused to engage with the community members who support the garden.
“[They’re] not respecting the community organization [by] come up with ways to try to force the hand of the community instead of meeting at the table to have a real conversation and a real negotiation,” said MD.
Contrary to city perceptions, Henderson said BLMG serves a wide variety of groups outside of BSF. The site regularly hosts mutual aid food drives and educational events. Even a class from Nova High School came to visit recently to learn more about food sovereignty.
The garden has also helped improve public safety in the park, Henderson said. BLMG supporters administered naloxone to someone who was overdosing on October 22nd.
“There was a crowd of people sitting there watching, like, ‘I don’t know what to do besides call the police.’ And the people here who are in this space had Narcan, they knew exactly what to do, they showed up and he was able to save someone’s life,” he said.
MD said BLMG has also become a hub for activists trying to stop the ongoing displacement of homeless people in Seattle, commonly known as littering.
“People in this space are strategizing about how we care for and love each other,” they said. “And how do we stop sweeping homelessness through the cracks? These are real people’s lives.”
Henderson said BLMG’s symbolic weight at its current location in Cal Anderson Park has a much larger impact outside of just providing food for the community. However, BLMG’s fate remains uncertain, with turf renewal still on the agenda.
“There’s a lot of intangibles that have really come out of that space,” he said. “And I think that’s why we’re so attached to this space and we’re staying here, because it’s been a catalyst to continue bringing people closer to mutual aid and to see that we have a voice, that community power can make change.
“I think that’s really what this garden represents to a lot of us.”
Read more about the November 8-14, 2023 issue.
