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Presented by:
Rosalinda Guillen, Edgar Franks, and Lucy Lopez-Madrigal
Audience: Community, Young Adults (14+) Workshop capacity: 30
45 minute panel discussion with 35 minutes for question and answer and discussion. The panel discussion will focus on mutual aid efforts during COVID-19, wildfire smoke, the heat dome and recent flooding. A conversation of C2C’s evolving political perspectives in relation to our vision and mission after 18 years of community organizing in Whatcom County. These perspectives will focus on the local food system, recent policy initiatives, the NW Sector HQ of Homeland Security in Blaine/Lynden, the growing number of climate change crises in food production and recent political actions taken by the City, County and the established power structure within our community and electorate.
C2C’s statement of purpose- We believe that another world is possible and we are active participants with other popular people’s movements. We strive to reclaim our humanity by redefining power in order to end settler colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy in their external and internalized forms – is considered radical by the majority of industrial agricultural actors from the local to the national
C2C is a people of color led organization that is still in struggle with a white supremacist industrial agricultural industry that grew a powerful US economic system with the cruel forced enslavement of Black people from Africa on the stolen land of Indigenous Peoples in the Americas. We are inspired by the Reverend King’s many examples of addressing the reality of current political moments with community in sustained actions that will lead us towards liberation from Capitalism.
We believe we will bring much needed updates about what is happening within our community and we will have some calls to action.
Rosalinda Guillen [she/hers] is the founder of Community to Community and a lead strategist and visionary within the non-hierarchical ecofeminist leadership of C2C. Her perspective is fundamentally influenced by her introduction to the multi-racial, working-class community organizing model of the Rainbow Coalition, the Cesar Chavez house meeting model, The World Social Forum, the Landless Workers Movement (MST) of Brazil and growing up a farmworker in La Conner, WA. Rosalinda has organized farmworkers in WA State and the strawberry fields of Salinas CA. She has represented farmworkers in the Legislatures of California and Washington State and in ongoing policy and Movement building dialogues on immigration issues, climate change, labor rights, trade agreements, ecofeminism and strengthening the food sovereignty movement towards a Solidarity Economy.
Edgar Franks [he, him] is the Political Director for Familias Unidas por la Justicia, a local independent farm worker union based in Skagit County. Raised in a proud farmworker family he has been an activist in his community in Mt Vernon since high school. A seasoned farm worker organizer, he represents the union in the fields, the WA State Legislature and in national and international spaces advocating for the rights of farm workers and rural communities. His expertise on policy and the politics of climate Justice within a Just Transition framework took him to Scotland this year to represent US Based farm workers at COP-26.
Lucy Lopez-Madrigal [she, her] is a bilingual Chicana and woman of color born and raised in Skagit County. Her roots are in Michoacán, Mexico. She is a proud daughter of hard-working parents who migrated in the 1980’s in search of the “American Dream.” She is a strong advocate for human and farmworker rights. Not afraid to speak her mind, Lucy is the C2C Promotora Coordinator in Skagit County. She coordinates a Promotora and represents C2C in the community as she leads efforts, along with the C2C Leadership Team and others, to bring awareness of farmworkers’ living and working conditions. She supports her community by promoting justice and equity.