City Of Trees Summary

This documentary, City of Trees, is about a non profit organization that began in 1990 called Washington Parks and People. The goal of this organization was to plant new trees to turn around parks in hopes to reduce poverty and violence in these neighborhoods. Is evident in just a few interviews that the founding and leading members of the organization have a great love for what they do and that their constant struggle is to make others, especially members of communities in the parks that they are turning around, to find the love for it too. Their hope is that if they can instill a love for the new, greener, parks then they will become a safer space for the community to use. Instead of hiring the people who have the most experience in planting and agriculture or seemed like they had good work experience, they gave out paid training

There were times when they would be yelled at for taking up all the space that children would play on and where they would picnic. The irony here being that there was no one using the parks in the summer because, due to lack of tree canopy and shade, it was too hot to play and no grass was able to grow sufficiently. There were times that they were threatened with violence when they were working and times when their vans tires were slashed. This led them to hire one of their old trainees as a community outreach coordinator. Early into the project, it seemed to make the most sense to work on the park first and hope that the community agrees with after. They were taking an ask for forgiveness rather than permission approach. Upon very little community engagement, it was realized that in their approach they were taking away what little power the residents had left. Their worry was that, like other organizations that had come before, once the money was up they would leave again and no longer assist the