In 2010, when fresh vegetables became inaccessible, Ron Finley chose to grow his own on the strip of grass between his house and the sidewalk in south central Los Angeles. He started small and was initially ticketed by city officials for misuse of public lands. But he persisted, and after nearly a decade, he's grown a “food forest” in front of his house. He's also taken his model on the road, teaching community members to grow their own vegetables and supplying fresh produce to those unable to access it. Finley is building literal grass roots of justice, Ruha Benjamin tells us, growing a more beautiful and more fair world one plant at a time. Benjamin's Viral Justice is a montage of stories like Finley's, strung together with personal memoir and a deeply optimistic political philosophy about the contagiousness of small, individual acts toward justice.
Viral Justice offers a synthesis of...