A diverse north Long Beach community reclaimed old Fire Station No. 12 as District 9’s new Ocean Friendly Rain Garden and Community Farm Plot on Jan. 18, harvesting seeds of service in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.
The transformation included a community garden maintained with living soil for filtering rainwater, a mini park servicing the 1,300 homes in the district, and a neighborhood farm plot located behind the center. Grant Elementary will collect the farm’s produce in a one-day-a-week sale in order to cycle production.
In association with the Surfrider Foundation, council districts 8 and 9 and nonprofit organization Leadership Long Beach, locals from the neighborhood and across the city united to transform the vacant facility into part of what Long Beach natives are calling “The Uptown Renaissance.”
“It’s an opportunity to get involved, reclaim the community, empower Uptown, and ‘be the change that you want to see,’” Long Beach District 9 Councilman Rex Richardson said.
Richardson and his crew will use the facility as their central headquarters, opening their doors as a neighborhood community center with the intention of being a “hub for civic engagement,” he said.
And north Long Beach is no stranger to addressing the cry for public needs, Richardson said.
“In the past five to six years, the activism in this neighborhood has exploded. It went from four organizations to 11.”
The success doesn’t just come from the numbers, as evidenced by such a varied turnout of volunteers: from young children using toy rakes to help pull old grassroots, high school students turning out soil for the farm plot, and adults of all backgrounds shoveling mulch for the donated plants and trees.
“Working with the earth is the perfect embodiment of sustainability,” Darrell Patterson, District 9 communications deputy, said. “It teaches compassion and service.”
Patterson is a Cal State Long Beach graduate alumnus.
“While MLK Day is primarily an African-American holiday, to see all the different people combined speaks to the greater idea of service, and I feel like that’s part of what his dream was,” Patterson said. “He had a dream that people of different ethnicities and colors, regardless of what they believe, can be out here working together in service of making this world better. And that is what is happening right now.”
He believes Long Beach can be a model city, showing the world what we as a people can do.
“The hardest part is preparing the soil,” Jeff Rowe, president of the Grant Neighborhood Association, said. “Our goal here is to make this community greener, cleaner and a more vibrant place to live, and I think that our best days are still ahead.”
“Soil is transformational,” said Paul Herzog, program coordinator of the Surfrider Foundation, who donated most of the drought-friendly plants.
“It changes the dialogue in the community,” Richardson said. “Service transcends state lines, transcends generations, so today, with MLK Day of Service, it’s an opportunity to take those values, take those stories that people have to say and use this as the common denominator: an opportunity to service the community.”
“We want north Long Beach to kind of be the bright and shining light of the city, and that’s ours to do,” Rowe said.
The Office of Sustainability in Long Beach, the Grant Neighborhood Association, and the Hamilton Neighborhood Association echoed his sentiment.
Several young people were there to help, too.
Nick Garcia-Zacher, a 16-year-old Long Beach Polytechnic High School student, is a first year volunteer with Leadership Long Beach.
“I’ve never done a community service project before, and I felt like I needed to,” Nick said with a shovel in hand.
Kadeja Dennie, 17, came with a pack of Cabrillo Academy of Business members, a club at Cabrillo High School.
“It means a lot to me because I am African-American, and I’m representing [Martin Luther King, Jr.] through the community work he was involved in and making everybody a better person,” Kadeja said. “And I just feel like I am welcome here.”
“Dr. King’s mission was to help everyday people – Americans – understand that we all have a role to play in making this country great, and that we all have purpose,” author Sharon Diggs Jackson said in a morning address at the event. “That’s what he fought for.”
Jackson is a Long Beach native and the author of “Images of America: Selma.”
“While we often need a spark, we need a leader. Real change comes from the people, like our neighborhoods. The real change, the sustainable change, will come through us as individuals.”
The day commenced with the ceremonious raising of the American flag, signifying Jackson’s closing words:
“Service is not an option; it is an essential element of a true democracy.”