Ron Finley's Speech In The Story Of The Food Desert

Ron Finley, an artist and designer who lives in South Central Los Angeles starts telling the story of his city, which is that he lives in a food desert—an area where healthy food is difficult to obtain—and he relates particular problems like how people are dying of curable diseases. Then he tries to solve the problem of the food desert by starting planting a garden in front of his house, which is the parkway, but the problem is that the parkway is owned by the city. However, the government does not allow planting many fruit trees on the streets. Then he received a citation saying that he needs to remove his garden because somebody complained about his garden. He resists and tried to do everything to not remove his beautiful garden. He joins

He persuades people to grow their own food. He focuses on who is him to influence people. He said “I am an artist and gardening is my graffiti” like ganger people do the graffiti on the walls of the streets, he does his gardening in vacant land in the streets. His claim is “plant some shit” which means growing your own food to solve the problem of the food desert. He uses ethos, phatos and logos appeals in his speech. For example, he uses ethical appeals when he said, “obesity rate in [his neighborhood] is five times higher than Beverly Hills”. Finley is knowledgeable because he lives in the poor neighborhood, and knows that most that live there don’t have access to good food compared with Beverly Hills. The author uses an ethical appeal of credibility. Finley lives in the poor neighborhood and for this reason he is an expert telling people what problems his community has.
Finley also uses logic appeals when he said, “Food is the problem and food is the solution”, so in order to solve the problem we need to finish with the food desert. People need to have access to healthy food to be healthier. Finley uses a method of persuasion based on reasoning. He has evidence about the problems that the food desert is producing. For example, he said, “I see wheelchairs are bought and sold like used cars, [and] dialysis centers popping up like Starbucks”, so he figures

However I believe that if I start planting many fruit trees in my yard that can be a problem for me. Nowadays the houses in the city of Houston have many cables on the land. I know that because one day my mother and I were making a hole in the yard to plant a fruit tree and because the tree was large, she made the hole deeper, and we saw some cables in the ground. So I noticed that we could provoke an accident like destroying the whole electric system of my house or my neighbor’s houses. So I think that growing my own food has some benefits, but I just have to make sure that the food I plant does not take extensive amounts of land. For example, planting tomatoes it is a good idea, and I notice that because my mom had planted some in the yard. Tomatoes do not take too much space, do not grow too much, we save money, time, and we eat healthy. Because we have grown our own tomatoes, we can eat them happy knowing that we are eating high quality of food. In addition, I believe that growing my own vegetables in the yard decreases the chances of having diseases like cholesterol, and high blood pressure. Therefore, I am interested on knowing the benefits that people could have if they eat more organic