In the "A Guerilla Gardener in South Central Los Angeles" Ted Talk, Ron Finley is the speaker and his intended audience is basically everybody, but especially the people of South Central LA, or as the speaker likes to call it, "home of the drive thru and the drive by." Ron Finley is a gardener and an artist trying to transform his city into a better place. Finley's main purpose is to convince the people to take action. To do this, he first presents his argument. He states that there are too many fast food restaurants and that there is no access to healthy food in South Central. He also mentions that disease and obesity rate are extremely high because of this problem. He compares South Central to another city nearby called Beverly Hills, saying that South Central's obesity rate is five times more than Beverly Hills which is only ten miles away. Finley presents his information by showing a before and after transformation. He begins by showing pictures of South Central LA, then he presents pictures of South Central after the gardening.
Ron Finley presents his thesis in the beginning of his speech. "Food is the problem and the solution" is what the speaker is trying to get his audience to understand. He supports his thesis by showing pictures of the problem and introducing statistics to the audience. He also talks about his own experiences in the "food desert" in which he lives. For example, he says that he has to drive forty-five minutes to get an apple that is not impregnated with pesticides.
After presenting his thesis and argument, he finally introduces his audience to the solution to the problem. He says that the solution is gardening. He talks about the gardens he began on the parkways owned by the city. He mentions a few problems that he had while doing this, but at the end, his "food forest" was a success. With the help of a few volunteers and the council members, Ron Finley managed to get a petition with nine hundred signatures marking the start of his new project.
