Darryl Hannah arrested over farm protest

Darryl Hannah, the actress well known for her role as a mermaid in the 1984 film Splash, was arrested along with dozens of protesters fighting to prevent a Los Angeles farm from being destroyed on Wednesday reports BBC.

"I spent the last 23 days down at the South Central farm, which is the largest urban farm in the nation and provides food for hundreds of families," Hannah tells PEOPLE. "The subsistence farmers are from one of the poorest communities. This farm should be a model for sustainable urban agriculture. It needs to be replicated, not eradicated."

For the past three weeks, Hannah and protest organizer John Quigley had been sitting 40 feet above the ground in a large walnut tree. Folk singer Joan Baez and anti-logging activist Julia "Butterfly" Hill had also taken shifts in the tree, although neither was present when the arrests were made.

Hannah was pulled from a walnut tree at Los Angeles' South Central Urban Garden by the local police. .

The removal of the protesters marked the end of a three-week celebrity-studded campaign to save the community farm in an impoverished area of south-central Los Angeles.

"I’m very confident this is the morally right thing to do, to take a principled stand in solidarity with the farmers," Hannah said by mobile phone before the officers reached her.

Los Angeles Sheriff's Department spokesperson Kerri Webb said the protestors were arrested for violating a court order and obstructing sheriff's deputies who were enforcing the order, two misdemeanors.

Police arrived at the garden without notice at 5 a.m. Tuesday, but because some demonstrators had attached themselves with "chain links, handcuffs, and 55 gallon steel drums filled will cement," it took officers several hours using power tools to break through the devices.

"Arrests were made from 6 a.m. in the morning until 1 p.m.," said Webb.