Plan to Kill Gardens Has Kids in Full Bloom
By Michael Daly

Our mayor has closed the front steps to the public, so the police officer directed Adrianne Murray and her 17 second-graders to a side door leading to the basement of City Hall. A second officer directed them through a metal detector.

"The girls thought their earrings would set it off, so they started grabbing their ears," Murray recalls.

The officer did not fail to notice that the teacher was carrying a large garbage bag.

"He said, 'Do you have signs?'" Murray recalls. "I said, 'Signs?' I thought I was in trouble right there. Finally, he stuck his head in the bag."

The officer beheld 17 small signs bearing such messages as "We Want to Keep Our Garden" and "We Don't Want Anyone to Sell our Garden" in tempera paint.

"He said 'No,' we absolutely could not bring them there," Murray says. "I said, 'But this is children's work.'"

Murray then asked the officer to stick his head back in the bag so she could take his picture.

"He said, 'Why?'" she recalls. "I said, 'So we can put it on the bulletin board and discuss why signs are not allowed in.' He said, 'How would you like it if somebody took your picture?' I said, 'If it was for teaching, I'd say yes.'"

Their signs impounded, the youngsters from Brooklyn's Public School 287 followed Murray up to a chamber on the second floor. A man sat at a huge table behind a nameplate reading MAYOR, but he was only a stand-in from the public hearings unit. He remained as impassive as one of the chamber's marble busts as citizens spoke with impassioned eloquence against the mayor's plan to auction dozens of city-owned lots that have become community gardens.

Then, the second-graders got their turn. Seven-year-old Jatima Floyd offered two reasons against the sale of Block 2099, Lot 43, the 105-by-24-foot garden in Fort Greene her class hopes to plant and tend come spring.

"When Mother's Day comes, I can give all of the mothers in Brooklyn a flower and my class can make the neighborhood look very nice," she said.

The mayoral stand-in actually smiled. Jatima was followed by her twin sister, Jatina, who had her own reason the garden was vital.

"So the neighborhood homeless people can have some food," she said.

The stand-in smiled again, and yet again when 8-year-old Mark Edwards testified. Had the man behind the MAYOR sign actually been the mayor, the class might have accomplished its mission. The youngsters left the chamber as perfectly behaved as when arrived, and only the sternest adult would not have been charmed when the airy splendor of the main staircase made them a touch giddy.

"We get to go down the stairs," one exclaimed.

The youngsters reached the first floor sounding like merry sprites, and the main front doors seemed to invite them to dash out and go laughing down the front steps. The mayor's new security procedures dictated otherwise.

"We have to go to the basement," Murray said.

The youngsters grew silent as they filed down into the basement and back out past the metal detector. Murray reclaimed the black plastic bag, and once outside she decided she could at least get a picture of the children with their signs.

"When I hold up your sign, come forward," she said.

That done, she led the youngsters to the obvious place for such a photo. The youngsters scampered around to the front and mounted the restricted steps. They held up their signs and chanted "We want our garden!" as Murray raised a camera.

"One, two, three!" Murray said.

"Cheese!" the youngsters said.

An officer emerged from City Hall, looking not at all sure what to do about a crowd of spirited second-graders.

"What, are you just taking a picture? Okay," he said.

The youngsters soon came down off the steps, but they were still carrying their signs and chanting as they went back out past the police car that bars the way to City Hall. Passersby grinned and called out encouragement.

"You get that garden!" one passerby said.

"Kids, be careful with the signs, one of you just poked Shaquasia in the eye," Murray said.

The class soon neared the subway.

"All right, everyone, protest signs in the bag," Murray said. "Let me do a head count. Protesting is great, but not if you lose people."

Then, reminding them to hold hands and stay away from the platform edge, Murray led the class down steps that are still open to everyone. They returned to school to await the fate of their garden in a year when all the groundhogs are auguring an early planting season.