Changing the Composition with Ron Finley: Can You Dig This?

'Can You Dig This?' Poster Changing the Composition During his Ted Talk, recorded in 2013, Ron Finley talks about redefining the composition of our communities. He lives in South Central L.A., where there's a problem accessing healthy foods, like other urban communities.

The neighborhoods are filled with liquor stores, fast food joints, and grocery stores which do not offer a healthy lifestyle. They barely even offer a good lifestyle of living. Infuriated with the composition of his community, he decided to change it.

He planted his own garden to share with the community in the parkway in front of his house. Until, he was given a citation for planting that garden.

This spurred Finley to change the "Residential Parkway Landscaping Guidelines" within Los Angeles, which now allows planting vegetable gardens in parkways. He now advocates that more people become 'Gangsta Gardeners' as a step forward to change lifestyles and communities.

"To change the community, you have to change the composition of the soil."- Ron Finley

Aside from the want to offer better and healthier lifestyles for poor neighborhoods, there's more to it than providing safe foods. These gardens, placed within these neighborhoods, can offer solace and education.

The gardens can be one step in changing the direction of these forgotten urban communities. They offer a sense of pride and accomplishment from children to the elderly.

In 2015, Delila Vallot directed the documentary "Can You Dig This?" which explored Ron Finley's story and others who had created their own gardens in their communities.

The film peers into the lives of those living within the projects of South Central L.A. and their gardens. Each of the people provide his or her own experience in their gardening and how it has regrown hope within themselves.

No matter the age, reconnection with the earth and growing your own food can be accomplished. This documentary gives weight to Ron Finley's argument that if we change the composition of our soil, different and better plants may grow.

This can apply to people. Change and regrow the community, better outcomes will be seen. One of those interviewed within the film is Hosea, a black man who served 30 years in jail and a Vietnam Veteran.

We see a glimpse, through his eyes, how gardening gave him a sense of purpose. He found freedom in the care of his first garden.

Another is a young girl named Quimonie, who can be an inspiration to us all to eat our own vegetables. She grows her own garden in her community with her siblings and father.

Quimonie advocates better eating to help her father and becomes a business woman in her own right. Another two we follow are Kenya and 'Spicey', both in their twenties and have the want to change their lives. Although all are of different ages and areas of the neighborhoods, they have one common goal that connects them.

Change. The film has been completed since 2015, five years have passed, but the conversation of change has not. There's still empty lots and not just in South Central.

There are urban communities all over the United States and the world that need a green thumb. Ron Finley talks about gardening being the ultimate defiance in staying where the world wants you.

Finley describes that the inability to garden and cultivate your own food is like a prison. Cities control who gets to eat fresh and healthy food, when everyone and anyone should have access to their own food.

There's still cities that prevent people from growing their own food on their own land in urban communities. The Ron Finley Project focuses its efforts on creating urban gardens to teach children and bring hope to those who need it.

The project is beginning in South Central L.A., where it all began for Ron Finley and others. Perhaps, more will pick up a shovel and begin digging for their own communities.

Times are changing and it includes how we take care of our communities, by becoming 'Gangsta Gardeners.'

"Can you Dig This?" Can be watched on Amazon Prime More information about the Ron Finley Project and to donate.