The Rosa Parks of Sustainable Gardening?
Everyone knows the story of Rosa Parks, the African-American civil rights activist who on December 1, 1955, refused to give up her bus seat to accommodate a white passenger. That act of civil disobedience resulted in her arrest, and quickly became one of the defining and most memorable acts of resistance in the Civil Rights Movement.
It might be a stretch to describe Julie Bass as “the Rosa Parks of sustainable gardening”… but not by much. Bass is no activist. She’s just a homeowner living in Oak Park, Michigan, who planted a vegetable garden in her front yard — like the one Michelle Obama planted on the front lawn of the White House, she notes — and who now faces arrest and jail time if she refuses to tear it down.
Why? Because of a city ordinance which reads, “All unpaved portions of the [screening and landscaping] site shall be planted with grass ground cover, shrubbery, or other suitable live plant material.” And a complaint from a neighbor to a city councilman that the front-yard garden looked like a “New Orleans cemetery.”
Since when is a vegetable garden not considered “live plant material”? The debate turns around the meaning of the word “suitable,” with city officials arguing that, “If you look at the dictionary, suitable means common. You can look all throughout the city and you’ll never find another vegetable garden that consumes the entire front yard.” Of course, the word “suitable” does not mean “common” (no, not even according to the dictionary), and Bass’ attorney Solomon Radner argues that the term is intentionally vague, allowing the city to enforce arbitrary policies, and therefore unconstitutional. Even if city officials were correct about the meaning of the word “suitable,” however, Radner points out that the ordinance itself also lists several exceptions, including vegetable gardens: “Exempted from the provisions of this article, inclusive, are flower gardens, plots of shrubbery, vegetable gardens and small grain plots.”
This confrontation over property aesthetics might have remained a local matter if it hadn’t been for Facebook, where multiple fan pages in support of Julie Bass’ cause have sprung up, spurring broad international criticism of the Michigan suburb’s position. City officials complain they’re being misunderstood. “We’re not against people having gardens,” said City Manager Rick Fox. “Just not in their front yards.” Sure, and it’s fine for African-Americans to ride the bus… as long as they sit in the back, right Rick?
Of course, that comparison’s a bit of hyperbole — but again, not by much.
This summer, the U.S. continues to face devastating floods, droughts and fires that threaten large swathes of midwest farmland and bring the consequences of human-caused climate change into inescapable focus. Political and cultural leaders all over the world acknowledge that environmental destruction has become so dire and so wide-spread, it is perhaps the single most difficult, most vital challenge we will face in our lifetimes, on which the continued existence of the human species itself might depend. If the rights of our fellow human beings to live freely and equally continues to be an issue of immense importance, how much more so the rights of the earth and its ecosystems on which we depend to live free from pollution, exploitation and destruction?
Yet cases like Julie Bass’ illustrate how unsustainable, un-”green” practices and lifestyles are not only culturally ubiquitous, but sometimes even dictated by law. It has long been known that expansive lawns of perfectly-manicured grass are not only exceedingly expensive to maintain in many areas of the country, but that monocultures of non-native plants are unhealthy for the local environment, depleting nutrients in the soil and disrupting the careful balance of local insect and wildlife populations leading to problems with disease and pest control. Environmentally-minded individuals might wonder, in such cases, if maybe we should take a long, hard look at what else the word “suitable” might mean (which the dictionary actually defines as “right, appropriate or fitting for a particular person, purpose, situation or place”).
Loving the Earth is a Political Act
All across the U.S., as well as internationally, people are beginning to do just that, and discovering that seemingly common-sense steps to make their homes and properties more eco-friendly often run up against antiquated property laws meant to enforce aesthetic values often based on underlying, unacknowledged classism, racism and industry profits. The result? A growing movement of eco-activists taking matters into their own hands through sensible, everyday acts of civil disobedience. Far from the “eco-terrorists” who blow up buildings or destroy property in protest of exploitation and pollution, many eco-activists today are ordinary citizens working on a local level to overturn outdated laws that keep them from living gently and respectfully with the earth.
Though Julie Bass and her family might not consider themselves such activists, they’re part of that movement, too, in defending their right to grow their own vegetables on their property. The trend of growing sustainable, eco-friendly “Victory Gardens” has picked up steam among green-minded (and green-thumbed) Americans in recent years. Modeled after the wartime vegetable, fruit and herb gardens grown during the World Wars of the last century by private citizens trying reduce pressure on public food supplies, modern-day Victory Gardens combat climate change on several fronts. Using sustainable gardening techniques to grow local food means relying less on factory-farmed produce fertilized with petrochemicals and sprayed down with damaging pesticides that then must be shipped across country. Hands-on gardening helps to reconnect us with the local landscape, the local community and our own physical bodies. Michelle Obama sees her White House Victory Garden as a step in her campaign against childhood obesity, by encouraging healthier eating habits and a renewed enjoyment of fresh fruits and vegetables. As the interest in Victory Gardens increases, cities like Oak Park will face the task of re-evaluating ordinances which seek to protect property values by enforcing a specific value judgement about the aesthetic and practical concerns of landscaping and gardening.
Another way individuals are quietly embracing acts of civil disobedience is by line-drying their clothes. In many cities and towns all over the country, it is actually illegal to line-dry laundry, despite the obvious ecological and personal benefits of this age-old practice. Why? “Many homeowner associations seem to believe that the act of air drying clothing present their developments as being low-income,” saying that for some “clotheslines connote a landscape of poverty rather than flowering fields.” The advocacy group Project Laundry List works to overturn this classcist attitude by supporting a “Right to Dry” bill and helping to educate individuals about the benefits of line-drying.
Perhaps one of the neatest and most committed ways people are engaging in eco-civil disobedience is through the Small Living or Tiny House Movement. In the wake of the housing bubble and bust, people are turning their backs on the dream of a McMansion with private drive and in-ground pool, and are looking for homes with smaller ecological footprints — both figuratively, and literally! Tiny houses are small cottages or cabins built from sustainable, natural materials on trailer beds or permanent foundations ranging between 65 and 140 square feet. Not only does it take less energy to heat, cool, light and clean such a small residence, but folks who choose the tiny house lifestyle choose to live with fewer material possessions and a greater reliance on community spaces and public amenities. Some build tiny houses in gorgeous natural landscapes, trading spacious indoor rooms for amber fields, majestic mountains and spacious skies.
The problem is that the small size of tiny houses breaks many conventional building and zoning codes concerning the appropriate size of a single family permanent residence. Some cities have even gone so far as to make it illegal to camp in your own backyard, to prevent homeowners from setting up tiny houses as permanent “camps” for themselves or others. Such laws are in place for a variety of reasons — including concerns for safety, aesthetics, over-crowding and property value — though many of them were determined by the housing industry itself as a way of ensuring what Jay Shafer calls “mandatory consumption” of larger-than-necessary residences. Shafer, founder of the popular Tumbleweed Tiny House Company which designs and builds tiny houses, lists civil disobedience as one of his primary motivations for his and his company’s work, and is committed to proving that house size is not a requirement for safety, prosperity, or happiness.
The nonviolent, community-oriented principles of civil disobedience have been used effectively in some of the most profound cultural movements in the world, including the Women’s Suffrage and Civil Rights movements in the United States. And the idea of civil disobedience is not new. In 1849, the famed naturalist and philosopher Henry David Thoreau published his essay “Civil Disobedience” encouraging individual citizens to act in good conscience as “a counter friction” or resistance against the institutional “machine” of any government that produced injustice. As the writer of Walden, a book of reflections on simple living in harmony with nature and a deeply influential text for the modern environmentalist movement, I like to think Thoreau would be particularly pleased at the role of civil disobedience has played in recent years in expressing our love of the natural world and our willingness to work to protect and care for it.
Thanks. I hope you don’t mind that I sent this article to the Seers and Seekers Yahoo group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/seerseeker/
Thank you for posting this. I know Jay Shafer – and I am currently building a house of his design on a mountain. The tiny house movement is something I am very passionate about. You can check out what I am up to at my blog or if anyone has any questions about tiny houses, just let me know.
Laura – I’m a big fan of your blog! It’s wonderful to see you here.
My partner Jeff and I have been day-dreaming about building a tiny house of our own some day… Seeing how others have done it is such an inspiration!
I have wanted a tiny cob house for some time now. Some day, some day.
Great article! I am a friend of Julie’s and she really is an amazing person that I would be proud to have as a neighbor.
Another Rosa Parks comparison, Ms. Parks would state that she was not looking to cause a fight when she refused to move to the back of the bus. She would say she was just really tired. Much like Julie Bass didn’t wake up one morning and say “lets start some sh1t with the local government”. It was a way to save money by covering up the damage a water main issue had left behind. It was a great opportunity to provide food for her family instead of putting in a lawn which did nothing.
As for the aesthetics of the property, that takes time. Not that it should really matter if the neighbors like the look of it but it isn’t something that will look like a magazine without throwing big bucks at it. This was something the Bass Family was trying to avoid as well by not putting in sod. I for one am glad this has brought light to the subject of governments overstepping their authority (Farmagedon anyone?) and although I know it is a hard time, the Bass family is handling it with laughter and stride. I am glad they didn’t back down and put it in the backyard (something Ms. Bass admitted she thought about briefly).
Lastly – go on the facebook page and look at the wonderful front yard gardens people have posted! It has given me so many ideas for the upcoming years.
While I have nothing for sympathy for this women, if you actually watched the news story without inferring falsities, you would see an employee for Code Enforcement saying that they warned her numerous times not to do it, so she did it in spite of the government, Rosa Parks did it because she worked hard all day, only to go home to a meager lifestyle. She stood up to opression, this women is using it to push her political agenda, which I support. This is constitutionally offensive this case, but check your facts before you make inferences
. This could have been avoided if she listened to the deparment bringing her to court.
From what I saw in several articles, she consulted the city before going ahead with her plans and they informed her that “decorative plantings” were allowed (not to mention, as I noted above, vegetable gardens are exempt in any case) – so she inferred from this not a “warning not to do it” but a recommendation about how she could appropriately comply with the ordinance by ensuring she had a well-kept and well-designed garden (which she spent quite a bit of money to accomplish).
This might just be a case of miscommunication. Julie Bass herself has actually contradicted city officials’ claims that they warned her not to go ahead with the project, saying that these claims are factually untrue. So as far as “facts” go, at this stage it’s more of a he-said-she-said situation. And considering it looks like the city can’t seem to interpret its own ordinances consistently, I’m more inclined to trust Julie Bass’ recollection in this particular instance.
Also – not to quibble
– but I find it interesting when people try to make a distinction between “fighting oppression” and “pushing a political agenda.” It seems like a choice of language meant to belittle and dismiss certain types of activities for being “merely” political (F’ex: “Rosa Parks fought oppression, but the LGBTQ community just has a ‘political agenda’” – this is so clearly a false distinction!).
As my article makes clear, the idea that anything is “merely political” is a strawman – the personal is political, and our everyday lifestyle choices do have political (by which I mean social and communal) consequences.
Growing plants is not a race, religion, sexual orientation etc. It is an action. These people have laws preventing them from being treated EQUAL. I bet the ladys neighbor isn’t being told she can do it. This has political written all over it, it is aimed at a political document. There is a VAST difference between Rosa Parks, and this women. I am in no way shape or form for the gov.ernments actions, but lets at least get facts straight…I personally am only playing devils advocate, I support Julie 150%, I just think it’s being taken quite a bit overboard. Nobody is targeting her as a person, only her front lawn. Rosa parks, Gay people, are targeted for who they are, as people, not what shrubberies they grow on their front lawn.
Being warned doesn’t make this more reasonable.
They cited her after the garden was in. She claimed that when she talked with the code official to ask if she could he did not say “No” instead he said that landscaping had to be suitable. Which she inferred included veggies and he states does not. The first warming/citation did not come until the beds were up, and at that point she decided to take a stand. Working in the building industry I can attest to code officials being SO CAREFUL with what they say they are indecipherable. Some also have a tendency to change their minds half way through and accuse you of not listening to what they said, so they do not look bad in front of their superiors.
It is also interesting that they did not provide her with a copy of the code when she asked…
It also depends on what news story you watch. I have heard Ms. Bass’ argument, read her blog,listen to the many news stories covering this and all seem to say that she researched the code – after lots of hunting to find it – and called and asked. Was told she could not put up a fence. When she asked again about the vegetables he said that he has never heard of someone doing it so probably not. Ms. Bass walked away from that thinking that just because it isn’t done doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done. She has admitted that she apparently walked away from the conversation thinking with a different point of view than the planning commissioner.
She has thought about caving and moving it to the back yard and spending money to put in the sod to make it go away but has changed her mind because she doesn’t want the city to go and bully someone else.
As for stating that they told her numerous times not to do – well he says he did, she says he did not. When the reporters tried to talk to them again no one would talk to them. It was stated that it had to be suitable plant material and suitable means one thing to the city and one thing to the general public.
I just think people think their needs to be more to the story than what it is because it is so darn strange. Sadly this is happening everywhere and needs to stop.
So I do know my facts and I do listen to both sides of the story before I make inferences
So.. she wouldn’t be in trouble if she had just obeyed some individual interpretation of the law rather than reading the entire thing and seeing that under that law she could legally put a vegetable garden in her front yard? ummm NO. This is not a good argument for capitulation. Of course, it is the line of least resistance which too many take when dealing with government.
and who is code enforcement??? who pays them??? who makes the rules???? Time to oust the incumbents and get some smart folks in there……it will be hard since they all have their hands down each others pants…….that city council can make any stupid rule without tax payer input…Here in Hollywood fl. it is against the code to have a hedge that one can see through…..they are goung to the extremes to make money……fire them…
Sorry, Lisa. You’ve bought into the popular mythology that makes Rosa Parks such a comfortable hero for the establishment that doesn’t want change. Rosa Parks did NOT refuse to go to the back of the bus because she was tired. She was an empowered and creative agent of social change. She was the part time secretary for the NAACP. She was trained at the Highlander Folk School. She mentored teens for social justice. She was inspired by Ida B. Wells refusing to leave the train car for white women. Ida B. Wells action caused no change but Rosa Parks’ did. Why? Because Rosa Parks was part of a plan of many people working together to create social change. There had been many who were thrown off the bus for the same actions as Rosa Parks with no galvanizing effect. Rosa Parks was selected because she was above reproach and was someone the entire community could rally behind. My point: It was PURPOSEFUL *not* accidental. No laziness involved.
Julie was not intentionally flaunting the city code. Go look it up yourself. I can’t find anything that would make anyone think she was violating city code. http://library.municode.com/index.aspx?clientID=10289&stateID=22&statename=Michigan
Thank you for this – I think this is an important point that people are missing. Rosa Parks most definitely was an activist who participated in the Montgomery Bus Boycott with full intention and awareness of what she was doing. She was not the first nor the last to resist the segregation on public buses and elsewhere. She just happens to be one of the most well-known.
Which is why I point out in the article that my comparison is intentionally hyperbolic and to some extent satirical, and that Julie Bass is not an activist and does not consider herself comparable to Rosa Parks.
My point was not to compare city zoning laws to segregation laws that violated basic human rights. My intention was to point out how personal actions always have a political context, and that the same strategies of civil disobedience that have been used in fighting past injustices can also be used – and are being used – by people today to resist systemic and legislated environmental devastation.
Hi, I just want you to know that I am a black woman — and a pagan — who totally gets your analogy between Rosa Parks and Julie Bass. It doesn’t offend me in the least. If we indeed revere mother earth as sacred, then her rights are worth defending as much any human’s.
http://www.blackpagan.com
The Twist, as swivel disobedience
Lisa – Excellent points! Especially about the aesthetics taking time. My father recently redid the front yard of his house because the trees in the front had started to shade the yard so much the grass was just dying and was impossible to maintain – so he replaced much of it with native plants and shrubs. When he first did it, it looked like little more than a mulch-scape with a green twig here or there… but now three years later, the plants have filled in and it looks wonderful.
It seems to me that the city really doesn’t have a leg to stand on. I hope she wins her case!!
And for folks interested, here are two of the Facebook groups mentioned in the article:
I support Julie Bass and Her Well Maintained Front Yard Veggie Garden
Save Julie Bass Vegetable Garden
If I lived in Oak Park, you can bet I’d have by now built myself at least 4 more 4′X 4′ raised beds in my front yard, I currently have them in my BACK yard, but would certainly do it to show solidarity!! This whole thing so stinks of personal bias in a political arena, and there is no liberty implied by that kind of action.
Yup, me too.
Nice article! We own a seed company, http://www.botanicalinterests.com, and would love to send her some free seed! I hate to ask you for her address so maybe you could forward me your address and I could send YOU the seed for her? Email me at cjones@botanicalinterests.com. Thanks!
Curtis – What a wonderful offer! Unfortunately, I don’t know Julie Bass’ address, as I don’t know her personally, but you might be able to get in touch with her by looking on one or both of the Facebook pages I linked to in my response to Lisa above.
Actually she has nothing to do with the Facebook pages as she has no idea how to navigate them. Her friend has put them up for her. If you go to her blog http://networkedblogs.com/klM6G and she checks that daily (once the laundry, dishes, weeding and anything else a mother of 6 has on her list is done)
Awesome! Thanks for the info, Lisa!
This is really well written and very encompassing; thank you! Hopefully, as more and more people realize the desirability factor of fresh veggies vs. non-productive lawns, air dried clothes vs. the expense of dryers, and small versus way the heck too big, we’ll get back to the sanity factor that used to be a given in the US and is now the rarity. Everything isn’t for everyone (obviously), but the little bits we can do to free our lives from the negative impacts need to be done with encouragement from local governments, not harassment.
From all of the positive support Julie Bass is receiving (except from the City of Oak Park MI)it is hard to imagine that she will continue to have a problem. However, local government (worked for one for many years) can really dig in their collective heels. Ultimately, they could turn this into a positive and actually yield to the huge and growing trend across the nation to the ideas of sustainability, healthy communities, obesity reduction, and the list goes on and on. Good luck Julie, from a new admirer in California!
Mary – I hope you’re right and Oak Park does use this as an opportunity to rethink its position! It seems, at least from one of the articles I linked to, that because of the pressures of election year, the Mayor Gerry Naftaly is willing to re-examine the ordinance and try to “clarify” it (though what “clarify” means in this case is…. unclear!).
Here’s a link to an even more extreme example of this kind of case: a Vancouver Island couple, in a small town, are engaged in deliberate civil disobedience of a regulation banning residents from growing any food on their land at all. The story is particularly striking in that they’ve reclaimed the land after a previous resident had literally sold all the topsoil from the property, painstakingly healing a damaged landscape and then growing a lush and beautiful organic garden. (Strip mining your topsoil or organic gardening–guess which one is more objectionable to the town’s government!)
All over our industrial societies, we desperately need a new set of priorities. Public policy must begin to promote sustainability!
Thanks for the additional link, Cat! It’s important to remember that this isn’t just a U.S. issue – it’s an issue in countries all over the world.
I support your efforts in growing food in the front yard. I would throw in some mint and other herbs. maybe some edible plants.Just because everyone else isn’t doing don’t it don’t make it wrong. With all the crime and budget cuts why would they waste tax payers money on somebody growing food in the front of the house?
Boulder County, where I live, is the absolute worst about this kind of thing; you cannot “camp” in your yard for more than 14 days. Also, if you want a hot tub (something I need as an ageing 54 year old runner, you have to buy solar panels to offset the carbon footprint of the hot tub. To to that, the cost is AT LEAST $15,000 (and sometimes more) for those panels. The result? Only the rich get hot tubs. The other result? No one gets permits!
There are a million other stories like this in our county.
It is very important for us as a society to be careful not judge the details of these issues or judge them as conservative or liberal but rather as intrusions in our lives. This might be an opportunity for compromise between the left and the right!
For those interested (or confused by the intentional hyperbolic/satirical nature of the comparison between Julie Bass and Rosa Parks in this article)… it seems I’m not the first to suggest the comparison! Julie Bass herself jokes about it on her blog, thanking her supporters for their kind words while emphasizing just how “so astoundingly regular” she is, in a July 4th post titled “Rosa Parks I Am Not.”
Which is really the point in the end. Even Rosa Parks wasn’t ROSA PARKS the way we imagine her in the middle school history books. She and Julie Bass have that much in common – like most activists and protesters against injustice and unfairness throughout history, they are just ordinary people willing to stand up for what they believe in and refusing to be bullied by those in power.
It’s precisely because they are ordinary that their willingness to take a stand is moving, meaningful and even powerful enough to change the world.
Why do you allow people to use this for their own personal agenda and free advertising? This should not be a forum where companies are allowed to post their websites, offer free goods, etc. Yes, fence people would like to offer her free fencing, compost companies free compost, etc. This should not be allowed as in the case of the seed company offering free goods. Nice? Yes, absolutely. But should not be allowed in this forum.
Jenny, Thanks for your concern. Whether or not we allow comments that mention businesses is for the most part up to the discretion of the writer of the article. Obvious advertising and spam are not allowed. Since it seemed to me that the commenter’s offer was sincere and was an attempt to show support for the cause, I decided to it. It’s nice to know others are keeping their eye out for violations to the comment policy, though, so thank you!
This is a very well-stated article which I agree with on many points. I am just a teenager so I can’t go so far as to build a tiny house in the wilderness, but the idea does appeal to me, so maybe when I’m older.
I do take pride in maintaining my modest garden in Brooklyn, NY and was, like you, outraged about the harassment that the Bass family is receiving about such a non-issue.