Staking a claim to community garden

From the Wall Street Journal:

Despite its serene setting and rows of flowers and vegetables, a community garden in Flushing, Queens, has turned into a battlefield.

Violent fights, death threats and shouting matches, sometimes involving fistfuls of dirt, have become routine at Evergreen Community Garden, leading to volunteer guards at the entrance and police patrols. And almost all of the tangles involve elderly Korean gardeners, officials and witnesses say.

The disputes grew out of the city Parks & Recreation Department's decision last year to take control of the 5-acre garden from a Korean-American senior citizens' group, which had transformed the trash-filled public space into a working garden back in the early 1980s.

A fight broke out at a news conference by elderly Korean gardeners upset that New York City took control of their park in Flushing, Queens. Mellad “Sam” Massoud, a member of the Evergreen Community Garden who supports the city’s control of the park, is seen shouting in the video because he was upset that the news conference was taking place. He was injured in the fight and spent three days in a nearby hospital. He said he was "simply reacting to the situation,” adding, "The fighting has gotten bad and we need to stop.”

The parks department—which contends the seniors' group had been improperly selling produce from the city-owned plot and excluding outsiders—turned control of the park over to its GreenThumb network of community gardens and installed a manager last year.

But the older gardeners are still trying to reclaim the land, at times by drastic means.

A year ago, the garden's 75-year-old former manager clutched a lighter and container of gasoline, threatening to light himself on fire if he didn't get his old job back, city officials said. The incident prompted a police hostage negotiation team to respond and two nearby schools to be locked down.

Then earlier this summer, 100 gardeners signed a petition saying they feared for their safety around one of the garden's new managers—and one person took out a restraining order against him, according to court documents. That manager now has a gardening schedule, set by city GreenThumb officials, so he doesn't violate the court order.

Parks officials say they are trying to keep the peace at the garden, located in Kissena Corridor Park.