Dallas, Dallas, Quite Contrary, How Does Your Community Garden Grow?

I covered a community meeting last night at Winfrey Point on White Rock Lake to discuss plans for a community garden off Fisher Road in East Dallas, and ... what can I say? It was pretty much a total rout for the gardeners, portrayed as an ominous invading horde by...

By Jim Schutze

January 8, 2010

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I covered a community meeting last night at Winfrey Point on White Rock Lake to discuss plans for a community garden off Fisher Road in East Dallas, and ... what can I say? It was pretty much a total rout for the gardeners, portrayed as an ominous invading horde by an angry crowd of neighbors near the proposed site. And it was sort of a rout for moi.

I have portrayed city officials as an ominous obstructionist horde for dragging their feet on the approval of community gardens on city-owned land. If last night's conclave proved nothing more, it demonstrated that city staff have been right in their view that gardens on city-owned property are a potentially divisive issue requiring fully developed conflict-resolving policies.

I hate it when they're right. More on this in my column for next week's "print product," as we have come to call it. (I use to think of myself as a newspaper man. Now I'm a print product man.)

I'm working on a theory that City Hall is right but in the wrong way. That would make me wrong but in the right way. As I say, workin' on it. Working hard.

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Jim Schutze has been the city columnist for the Dallas Observer since 1998. He has been a recipient of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies’ national award for best commentary and Lincoln University’s national Unity Award for writing on civil rights and racial issues. In 2011 he was admitted to the Texas Institute of Letters.

Contact: Jim Schutze