… the developer [Ralph Horowitz] went ahead with his plans to evict the farmers, seeking their removal when the option-to-buy period ended. Meanwhile, Villaraigosa cast himself and his office as heroic champions of green space who were concentrating all their superhuman political will on somehow saving the South Central Farm from doom. At one point, the mayor even suggested Horowitz sell the land back for what he bought it for last, $5 million.

“That’s a wonderful suggestion from the mayor,” Horowitz huffed sarcastically. “Over the last three years, we had to carry the land, we had to pay the taxes, we had to pay the insurance, and immense legal bills. We’ve had immense cost.”

Horowitz added, “I thought giving the city a soccer park was enough,” referring to a 2.6-acre donation he promised to make to the city in his 2003 buy-back deal. The soccer fields are still a go.

On Tuesday, sheriff’s deputies fulfilled Horowitz’s wishes and carried out the eviction of the South Central Farmers — or, more accurately, 17 of their supporting activists.

…

The ordeal, broadcast nationwide, ended a 14-year history of urban gardening at 41st and Alameda. Born from the ashes of the 1992 riots, the South Central Farm ended with police in riot gear breaking apart activists who staged a sit-in on the street outside the farm, the last stand in a struggle supporters saw as a black-and-white battle between “humble” immigrants and one “greedy” developer.

The story, of course, is a lot more complicated. The recap is that the city took the land from Horowitz in 1986 through eminent domain, goofed on plans to build a trash incinerator there, and sold it back to Horowitz in 2003 for $5 million. By then, the land was a full-scale farm.

…

Then celebrity tree-sitters arrived. The spectacle factor skyrocketed.

He who works the land, owns the land.

As for Horowitz, was he ever moved by the concepts of green space, self-reliance, urban gardening, immigrant agriculture? Ever? Even slightly?

“No,” he said. “They sued the city and sued me as thanks for letting them use the land for free for 12 years. I thought the gardeners’ conduct completely deteriorated after that. Why should I reward that kind of conduct?”

Police forcibly removed actress Daryl Hannah from sitting in a tree on the grounds of the 14-acre inner city L.A. urban farm that capitalist landowner Ralph Horowitz wants to turn into a warehouse.

All sorts of celebrities have voiced outrage and solidarity [but frighteningly little cash] about the situation. ( Joan Baez took a tree seat there recently.)

Tuesday’s event featured dozens of chanting protesters, who’ve been squatting on the land to prevent its conversion, and 120 protest-busting deputies [You know, pigs and union busters]. It yielded 39 arrests — it’s not clear whether Hannah was one of them.

”I’m very confident this is the morally right thing to do[ha ha ha ha ha. see "putting money where mouth is" above], to take a principled stand in solidarity with the farmers,” Hannah told the Associated Press by cell phone before the fire truck raised police into her tree.