March 24, 2022 Dena Jensen

PR specialist, Gerald Baron is at it again, continuing to carry out the agenda he described in a 2018 book promoting the defeat of activists, and specifically of Rosalinda Guillen of Community to Community Development (C2C). You can read all about their leadership and ecofeminist efforts at https://www.foodjustice.org/team.

During the last couple days, C2C has been on the ground, actively providing support to striking bulb workers at the onset of the annual tulip festival in Mt. Vernon. And as this non-profit organization consistently does, they are demonstrating their trust in the words of farmworkers who share their experiences with them. Workers at Washington Bulb Company are in the act of organizing a union to negotiate in good faith with their employer to address issues of health and safety threats, along with wage equity and transparency in their workplace.

Save Family Farming, a non-profit corporation located in Lynden, Washington, and on which Baron serves as governor, posted a release on their website, making an appeal to media outlets which, in his same book, Black Hats, White Hats, Why Activists Almost Always Win and How to Defeat Them, Baron seems to feel are attractive objects to manipulate.

John Roozen, a princal of Roozengaarde/Washington Bulb Company, also is listed as a governor for the Save Family Farming corporation.

Here is part of Save Family Farming’s proposition that was posted yesterday:

“We strongly encourage all news media outlets to get the facts before publishing or broadcasting the false accusations of Guillen and her team. It is our commitment to help the community and those interested in knowing who is to be believed.”

It seems advisable that before media outlets let themselves be schooled on what the truth is and what it is not by Save Family Farming, they might want to take a look at Gerald Baron’s 2018 game-plan, paired with his own willingness to make reckless and unsubstantiated statements about Rosalinda Guillen in conservative media. For example, Baron has accused her of knowingly lying, and of signing a contract with a farm to take money from workers’ paychecks, in both cases offering no evidence of the assertions being true.

Meanwhile, luckily the media has been showing up to see for themselves what is happening with striking workers and the company at which they seek better working conditions. And Community to Community keeps building community, hands on, founded in dignity, year after year, and does not need any instruction on how to discern the truth from their brothers and sisters who labor in the fields.