Claiming the land is needed for affordable housing, New York City Mayor Rudolph Guliani has begun to destroy the community gardens which dot New York City. In the process, more than green space is lost writes PNS correspondent Sarah Ferguson, and now the Mayor's campaign has run into a wall of eco-protesters and political celebrities. The green spaces have become a global issue. Ferguson writes widely on issues of housing and eco-politics.

NEW YORK CITY -- A die-hard group of militant garden activists has put New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's real estate agenda on the ropes.

Early last week, 31 protesters were arrested when they chained themselves to fence posts and concrete "lockboxes" in a last-ditch effort to prevent bulldozers from plowing away a beloved, 22-year-old community garden to make way for a seven-story apartment building

Although their extreme tactics did not save the Jardin de la Esperanza or "Garden of Hope" on East 7th Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side, the activists did prompt the state to seek a court order that temporarily bars the city from moving ahead with plans to develop hundreds more garden lots. Meanwhile, the protesters have become the darlings of the media and Giuliani's political opponents who are making hay out of the mayor's cozy ties to the developer who flattened Esperanza.

Late last week, Giuliani's Senate rival Hillary Clinton weighed in on behalf of the garden cause, blasting the mayor for demolishing Esperanza just as lawyers for the Attorney General were in court trying to save it. "I don't think you can bulldoze your way into the Senate," Clinton told the press. "We need leaders who bring people together."

State democratic party chair Judith Hope followed suit by calling on the Giuliani campaign to return more than $32,000 in campaign contributions it obtained from the developer of the Esperanza site, BFC Partners. BFC's principal Donald Capoccia is a close friend of the mayor who has already been awarded the right to develop housing on four other garden sites on the Lower East Side.

A spokesperson for Giuliani scoffed at the allegations, maintaining that Capoccia, a member of the Log Cabin Republicans, has been generous because of Giuliani's longstanding support for gay and lesbian rights.

The unexpected political fallout from the Esperanza battle has thrown a monkey wrench in Giuliani's efforts to return more than 400 of the city's 600 community gardens to the tax rolls. Now, his administration must not only fend off unruly eco-warriors but State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer who is supporting the Esperanza gardeners in their legal appeal to regain control of their former plot. Spitzer argues that such long standing, community-tilled spaces should be considered park land.

"The state's involvement lends a tremendous amount of legitimacy to what before had been deemed a bunch of vacant lots defended by a ragtag army of protesters," says attorney Harry Kresky, who is arguing the Esperanza appeal. "Basically, the state is saying that communities should have some right to determine what happens to the land in their neighborhoods."

While Giuliani maintains that gardens must be sacrificed to build "affordable housing," the press has begun to question that assumption. Last week, the normally pro-development New York Times editorialists pointed out that only 20 percent of the 79 apartments now slated for the Esperanza site will be for low-income families. The rest will rent for what the market can bear, fueling already heady gentrification pressures in the area.

It's not the first time that the mayor's heavy handed tactics have backfired in the mounting war over green space. Last May, when the city sought to auction 112 gardens to the highest bidder, singer Bette Middler and a mainstream conservation group put up $4.2 million to save them.

Now, the media and celebrity support is inspiring more young activists, who have made crusading for New York's imperiled green oases their Redwood Summer. The dramatic eviction at Esperanza was the culmination of a remarkable, four-month long encampment which drew members of Earth First! and veterans of the recent street battles to protest the World Trade Organization in Seattle.

"The New York City garden struggle is symptomatic of the squeeze the urban geographies are feeling all over the world," says Ben Shepard, 30, who was arrested last week. "In the era of globalization, there's a lot of pressure from the market on public space and public culture -- places where people can converge and have a moment of simple human interaction without having to buy anything."

Over the months, the activists formed a powerful alliance with the Esperanza gardeners, many of whom live in the tenant-run building next door to a boarded-up plot. On Monday, protesters draped the tenement with colorful banners, then led the media and more than 200 local residents on a spirited tour of the block to underscore how the city's development agenda is uprooting the life of this formerly poor, immigrant neighborhood.

After touring the press past a brand-new luxury rental, where apartments go for $2500 to $3000 a month, they gathered on the steps of 217 East 7th Street, just a few doors away. "Back in the 70s, when this neighborhood was hell to live in, we held on because we had a garden, something to nurture," shouted Brent Sharman, the son-in-law of Alecia Torres, the 76-year-old Puerto Rican matriarch who founded Esperanza and raised her children and grandchildren there.

Sharman and the rest of the Torres clan say they aren't giving up their hold on the land. "We want to tear the plywood down and replant again," says Jose Torres. "Giuliani says we're 'out of control' activists. He's making like this is some kind of joke. But we're not kidding around. We put twenty-two years in that lot. We planted, we put money in there. It's not right for him to come in here and just wipe us out."