Rosalinda Guillen is short of stature, but she commands a striking presence when talking to activists about her passion for organizing immigrants and forming cooperatives.

Guillen is executive director of Community to Community, a grassroots immigrant advocacy organization based in Bellingham, Washington.

Born in Texas to a migrant worker family, Guillen moved with her parents to northwest Washington state in 1960 when she was 10 years old. She says she became radicalized in the 1980s when the Rainbow Coalition asked her promote the presidential candidacy of Jesse Jackson in the state of Washington.

Later she left her job at a bank to organize farm workers and eventually became an executive board member of the United Farm Workers union, spending four years as their chief lobbyist in Sacramento.

In 2004 Guillen decided to return to her hometown of Bellingham to form “Communitiy to Community,” (www.foodjustice.org) focusing on organizing farmworker women for what she calls “systemic change.”

Lately, that has included frequent clashes with the U.S. Border Patrol (Bellingham is only a short drive from the Canadian border) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.

I caught up with Guillen recently at a California Council of Cooperative Development conference in Los Angeles. She shared her thoughts with him about grassroots organizing, why it is important that women take leadership roles, and why she believes worker owned cooperatives should not merely be businesses, but engines of radical social change.

What compelled you to work for a new vision of farm worker and immigrant organizing?

Rosalinda Guillen: I had been to the World Social Forum twice in Brazil. It was amazing to see what farm workers and farmers are doing there for a sustainable food system. I said to myself, we have to do this in the United States. So we formed Community to Community.

MD: Can you summarize your mission statement?

RG: We are an organization that is women-led, intentional, grassroots, and we work for a healthy society and community. We seek to create strategic alliances that strengthen local and global movements toward social and environmental justice.

MD: How do you meet those goals?

RG: We do our best to empower underrepresented people so they can have an equal voice in the decision making process. As immigrants we bring to this country valuable knowledge and a culture that needs to be absorbed and enhanced and not blocked. We need to do everything we can to restore justice to our food, land and cultural practices.

MD: You seem to do a lot of social analysis in your work and to constantly question your role as organizers.

RG: Yes. The key to place-based organizing is that you have to accept the community that you are in, environmentally and physically. You need to know what is going on, who are the natural leaders, the ones that the people go to. And as organizers we need to ask ourselves who we are. Are we willing to make sacrifices? Are we spiritually strong? What are our goals?

MD: At the very beginning of Community to Community you had a big fight with the Minutemen.

RG: In April of 2005 they came to the border. We told them: “You guys want to chase farm workers with your guns and we will not put up with it.” We monitored them. We led protests against them and let people know that a racist KKK group was in our community. Our battle with them went public with forums and meetings. They appalled everyone, and after that they were done.

MD: And after that came the struggle for immigration reform?

RG: Homeland Security did a big raid a one of our workplaces. Officers dressed in battle gear with big guns arrested 38 workers, mothers with small children. We did a vigil supporting those workers. We protested at a 1,500 bed immigrant detention center. We were appalled by that. We were able to delay the deportation process by five years, getting the women legal stays in appeal after appeal.

MD: So the idea of building a women’s cooperative came out of this struggle?

RG: Yes. After the struggles with the Minutemen and with ICE, I asked these women what could be done to make them economically self sufficient. “Let’s form a cooperative” they said. We did some fundraisers and since most of them were good cooks, they formed a catering coop they called “Las Margaritas.” We studied how other coops got started. We got assistance from an attorney who helped us draw up the bylaws and from a Spaniard who developed the organizational structure, based on the Mondragon coops in Spain.

MD: How did the process go of developing the cooperative? I imagine it calls for a whole new way of thinking.

RG: Yes. We developed a process of understanding each other’s skills, strengths and the role of ego. We developed a curriculum called “El pasaporte Cooperativo.” To form a cooperative, you have to move from stage to stage to understand operations, finances, policies and our responsibility to the community. You walk a cooperative road and you need to get your passport stamped.

MD: What were the benefits for the coop members?

RG: These women were undocumented. They had just been arrested at gunpoint. Their children were traumatized. It was really important that they see themselves as fully accredited citizens of our community—as people who have the same rights s anyone else. The cooperative process stresses leadership development, which means they are public about being members of the coop. In our cooperative, everyone takes a turn at the microphone. That’s part of the training.

MD: What kind of food preparation do these women do?

RG: Currently they are selling tamales and tortillas. And we are the only ones who prepare organic and non GMO healthy Mexican food. We cook healthy food with zero waste. And out of this has come the cocinas saludables (healthy kitchen) project. They want their own people to eat this food not just the ones who can afford it. Now we are teaching men how to cook, and kids how to cook. We try to stick to cooperative principles of behavior with each other.

MD: So for them, a coop is not just a money making proposition.

RG: No. We got into coop development with the idea of systemic change. Yes, the women do want to make money. But they are also learning how to self-govern. And part of what they are doing is to serve the community.

Mark Day can be reached at: mday700@yahoo.com