LUNGS is working in conjunction with the Green Guerillas and the New York City Community Garden Coalition to coordinate a Day of Action this Saturday 12-4pm at El Jardin del Paraiso, 710 E5th St between Aves B & C, you can also enter on E.4th St.

This Day of Action coincides with GreenThumb’s City-Wide Community Garden Harvest Fair at El Jardin.

Our purpose is to make a public statement supporting community gardens and our total opposition to the gardens being put on a list for development. The gardens are too important to lose, we must protect them for our families, ourselves and future generations.

On Saturday we will collecting signatures and making posters and signs to express our love for our community gardens. This is an all out effort, we are asking you to wear green on Saturday to show your support. We need to make our voices heard. We must be proactive.

We’ve been through this before. In 1996, Giuliani was mayor, and he tried to auction off every community garden across the city to developers. The gardens were listed by the city as empty lots. Gardeners mobilized city-wide, demonstrations, pranks, and arrests followed. We lost some gardens but ultimately prevailed.

In 2015 de Blasio proposed building housing on over 40 community garden sites. After fierce advocacy, 36 of these gardens were preserved.

Losing green space to buildings is obscene. This is not a housing issue, this is a developers scheme. Once an open public space in NYC is gone, it will be lost forever.

We are supporting the work of GreenThumb, and welcome the chance to meet gardeners from across the city.. But our message to Mayor Adams is Hands Off Our Community Gardens!

Please Print this out and circulate, we need this Saturday at El Jardin del Paraiso

Preserve Our Gardens, Protect Our Future: Tell Mayor Adams to Stand with Community Gardens!

Beginning in 1973, the NYC Community Gardens movement is the largest urban gardening program in the United States. Community gardens provide free, public, green space to the residents and visitors alike. These community gardens provide ecological, nutritional, and health benefits to the all and provide space for community building. Many community gardens sprang up on vacant or abandoned lots that the City of New York owned. The city issues 10 year licenses to community groups to steward and maintain the gardens under the NYC Parks Department’s GreenThumb program.

However, on August 21, Mayor Eric Adams issued Executive Order 43, ordering all NYC agencies to review city property to identify potential sites for housing development. NYC Parks Department property is included in this review.

We demand that Mayor Eric Adams issue a clear directive exempting community gardens on city-owned land from Executive Order 43, reaffirming their protection, and ensuring that any land review process fully recognizes the irreplaceable value these spaces bring to our city.’

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Please join us Saturday, the GreenThumb Harvest Fair will be fun!

LUNGS 13th Annual Harvest Arts Festival continues this week, see the complete schedule HERE.