South Central Los Angeles [is the] home of the drive-thru and the drive-by. Funny thing is, the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys.

Ron Finley, the South Central Los Angeles “Gangsta Gardener,” uses this line in talks and interviews about food deserts and public health in his neighborhood. Speaking from the perspective of a resident-activist, he contrasts the area’s notoriety for gun violence (“drive-bys”) with the quieter but broader harm caused by ubiquitous fast-food access (“drive-thrus”)—diet-related disease, shortened life expectancy, and chronic illness. The remark fits the period when Finley was advocating for community gardening and food sovereignty in South Central (early 2010s onward), arguing that structural conditions—zoning, disinvestment, and lack of fresh produce—shape health outcomes as much as, or more than, street crime.

The quote is a pointed reversal of expectations: the sensational violence associated with “drive-bys” is set against the normalized, commercial violence of unhealthy food systems. Finley’s claim is not that shootings are trivial, but that preventable illness and premature death from poor diet can be even more lethal while attracting less urgency, funding, or moral outrage. By pairing “drive-thru” and “drive-by,” he compresses a critique of structural inequality into a memorable aphorism: harm can be slow, legal, and profitable. The line functions rhetorically to reframe “crime” as including institutional neglect and predatory food environments, strengthening his argument for gardens as community self-defense.