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June 6 - 19, 2013
Getting to the root of a clash at a community garden was reinstated as a member of Dias Y Flores. “Your suspension is being reversed,” Chouloute announced. Also, it was decided that GreenThumb, working with the garden’s board, would go over the Dias Y Flores bylaws, modifying them where necessary, and these would be voted on in the fall. The GreenThumb deputy director also suggested to Wright that he could switch to one of several other local gardens where the memberships aren’t very active. Chouloute later said that Wright didn’t seem interested in the idea, but Wright told The Villager that actually he was, yet also wants to remain active at Dias Y Flores. However, Chouloute told the newspaper, “I’m not going to give him that option.” He added, “He has some good ideas, to be honest — that he could help gardens that aren’t that active.”
Continued from page 1 bership of 15 years revoked, and had been forced to turn in his key to the front gate. After being cc’d on an ongoing, heated e-mail string of back-and-forths about the flap, Chouloute decided he had to intervene. Chouloute told The Villager he became particularly concerned when he saw in one e-mail that Claude T. Kilgore, one of the garden’s board members, had allegedly told Wright to “Grow the f--- up.” At the same time, Chouloute was also alarmed that Wright was cc’ing local elected officials on his e-mails. “He’s copying people from the Borough President’s Office, the [state] Senate,” Chouloute said disapprovingly. A longtime East Villager, Wright was a leader in the effort to save the neighborhood’s community gardens when they came under threat during Mayor Giuliani’s last term. At the height of the struggle, Wright helped organize a major rally in Bryant Park that saw folk legend Pete Seeger come down to play “Guantanamera” for the garden advocates. But, despite his green cred, Wright has clashed with the board of directors at Dias Y Flores to the point where they recently felt compelled to expel him. Board members say Wright has made it nearly impossible to get anything done due to his obsessive focus on whether various of the garden’s bylaws are or aren’t being followed, and that he has tried to circumvent the board, for example, by signing up new garden members on his own. One person familiar with the situation said simply, “Jeff is an attention-seeking, loudmouth guy, who, when he doesn’t get his way, tries to dominate.” For his part, Wright calls the board a bunch of “bullies,” and charges they have repeatedly flouted the garden’s bylaws, and that he is only trying to ensure they respect the regulations.
‘Wasn’t kicked out — quit’ Some of his opponents at Dias Y Flores say Wright has been kicked out of several other community gardens. But he says that’s untrue, that he has only been booted from one other garden, Green Oasis, on E. Eighth St., and that he merely “quit” some others. An ongoing issue is the garden’s parties. Dias Y Flores has a mandatory party each month — mainly because Wright got this inserted into the garden’s bylaws three years ago. The obligatory parties include the likes of Labor Day and Halloween, as well as Leftover Day (the day after Thanksgiving), solstice, equinox and Imbolc (a Gaelic spring holiday with pagan roots). Using Facebook, Wright blasts out the invites for the parties, by some accounts, from 250 to 1,000 invites per event. The parties, however, had recently been starting to draw complaints over loudness from some neighbors. In addition, there were charges that people were getting drunk and falling down and hurting themselves in the garden. Technically, alcohol isn’t allowed in the
A FREE SPIRIT
Photo by Lincoln Anderson
Jeff Wright in Dias Y Flores garden after the May 5 arbitration meeting, as two other gardeners who don’t approve of his behavior, behind him, looked on warily.
city’s community gardens, but GreenThumb — which is under the Parks Department — is a small organization and doesn’t rigorously monitor this. Wright, however, counters that the garden was being mismanaged and becoming cluttered — for example, with an unstable pile of boards for a long-stalled shed project stacked on the ground — causing hazardous footing that was making people trip and fall.
was Jerry Trudell who, while strumming the guitar, tried to leap over the garden’s cement hob — which is usually lit with a fire for the parties. “The party was over and I said, ‘One more song,’ ” Wright recalled. “This was my fault. He said, ‘I’m Pete Townshend, watch this,’ and he jumped over the pit and caught his foot.” Hill later told The Villager that he witnessed two of the people who fell leave the party in
‘This is the East Village. This is the last bastion of freedom in America.’ Jeff Wright
The three incidents At the May 5 meeting, Everett Hill, a 63-year-old Marine veteran who is a garden board member, referred to the “three incidents” — two people who fell down and injured themselves and one person who tried to jump over a fire pit but fell into it. One woman who was hastily arriving at the meeting quickly spoke up and said she was one of those who fell — she pointed to her forehead, where she had been injured — but said she hadn’t been drinking; that she fell after her foot got wedged between the garden’s paving stones. Wright later identified her as Angela Lehup. As for the other person who fell, Wright said, “He told me he just got dizzy.” Wright, who plays guitar and sings at the parties, also later told The Villager that it
taxis to go to the hospital. “I was right here,” he said. “Serious head injuries.”
Lilacs from Chico All the charges and countercharges were duly aired at the arbitration meeting. Wright had been ordered beforehand by the garden’s board to clear out his plot, but instead he actually added some more plantings to it that very day — including lilacs that he saved from the Chico Mendez Mural Garden, formerly on E. 10th St., before it was bulldozed by a developer back in the late 1990s. In the interim, he had planted them in another garden, El Sol Brillante, on E. 12th St. The upshot of the meeting was that Wright
By all accounts, Wright, 61, is a free spirit. Originally from West Virginia, Wright is a poet who formerly edited Cover magazine and currently edits another art magazine, Live Mag! He’s also a special-education teacher in the public school system. He has two sons who are engineers, and a granddaughter. He said he’s trying to change the garden’s complexion by bringing in new members. Speaking to The Villager after the May 5 meeting, Wright said, “We’ve swelled the membership — this garden’s become the premier art and poetry garden in the city. It’s a music garden too. “This is the East Village,” he stressed. “This is the last bastion of freedom in America.”
Membership war Traditionally, the time when people could apply for membership to Dias Y Flores was one Thursday evening per month. But Wright charged this was unfair, since Thursday — a big evening for gallery openings — is “a working night” for artists. According to other garden members, though, who accused Wright of “subversive activities,” he was trying to sign up new members on his own, but didn’t have the authority to do this. Kilgore said, “He held meetings and made it sound like they could join through him — and he sent out minutes from meetings that should come from the board.” At the May 5 arbitration meeting, it was decided that there would also be one Saturday meeting per month at which new members could join. Wright’s critics were skeptical that the new people he wanted to bring into Dias Y Flores would be interested in planting flowers and composting coffee grounds. However, putting an end — at least temporarily — to any plans by Wright of a takeover of the garden by enlisting new members, about a week after the meeting, Chouloute abruptly announced that membership for Dias Y Flores was closed until the end of fall.
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