Seeds in the Concrete

When the community garden in downtown Portland was bulldozed to make way for another luxury apartment complex, something unexpected happened. The displaced gardeners — refugees, single mothers, formerly unhoused neighbors who had found dignity in tending tomatoes and collard greens — did not simply grieve. They gathered. They showed up at city council meetings. They organized. And within eighteen months, they had secured not one but three new plots on vacant lots, each one larger than the original.…