An Attack on Vermont's Liberty Food Fest
Join us this weekend in Bellows Falls: ignore the haters.
The Liberty Food Fest is very much a bipartisan education and celebration centered around food and farming. Unfortunately, certain far-left extremists have tried to slander the event and even go so far as to propose that public spaces should not be available to people with whom these delusional ideologues disagree. A particularly toxic and misguided individual named Jenevre Wetmore published defamatory letters against the Liberty Food Fest in both the Valley News and the Deerfield Valley News, publications that clearly do not exercise much wisdom in what they are willing to platform.
Free speech is about permitting others to speak and gather even if you disagree with them. I have no opposition to Jenevre and friends gathering to publicly (and delusionally) rant about ludicrous connections between race and climate change, or advocate for renewable energy products that toxify our Vermont ecosystem — it is their right to be publicly ignorant. But Jenevre has gone way off the civility reservation by personally attacking Liberty Food Fest event speakers, and calling upon a public building to be off limits to those with whom Jenevre (ignorantly) disagrees. Jenevre is childishly spreading disinformation and slander, trying to spitefully hurt local nonprofits and businesses. Perhaps people should write to Sustainable Woodstock (info@sustainablewoodstock.org) and inquire whether it should receive the same harassing treatment by surrounding communities as that displayed by its irresponsible Executive Director against this Liberty Food Fest event. It is far more justifiable to criticize a nonprofit for the outrageous conduct of its Executive Director than for the ancient comments of a single guest speaker out of 18. Does Sustainable Woodstock condone this reckless behavior by its toxic leader?
We Vermonters don’t like language police. And if we ever embrace the idea that citizens should silence others from speaking at public events, the first mouths to be silenced are ignorant haters like Jenevre Wetmore, who clearly learned nothing of basic constitutional law at Vermont Law School. What a shame.
Here is Jenevre’s attack on our upcoming event:
Festival speakers will take liberties with truth
This year’s Liberty Food Fest will host at least two public figures who have a record of spreading misinformation about COVID-19: Margo Baldwin and Joel Salatin. I believe that the public should be aware of the background of these speakers before paying for an event ticket. I would also encourage the residents of Rockingham and Bellows Falls Opera House not to platform these speakers by hosting the event.
Margo Baldwin is the co-founder of Chelsea Green Publishing — a company that publishes books on homesteading, the environment and alternative health and wellness. In 2021 they published “The Truth About COVID-19,” by Joseph Mercola and Ronnie Cummins (Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote the book’s foreword). According to Seven Days, the book suggested that COVID-19 vaccines were more lethal than the virus itself and that vitamins C and D could effectively prevent and treat severe COVID-19 infections. In 2021, the FDA issued a warning letter to Mercola, one of the book’s authors, for selling unapproved and misbranded supplements intended to mitigate, prevent, treat or cure COVID-19.
As part of the event, Baldwin will co-present a talk with Joel Salatin. Salatin has published books with Chelsea Green and is also known for spreading COVID-19 misinformation. He is the founder of Polyface Farm, and became famous after being featured in Michael Pollan’s book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” Salatin has downplayed the seriousness of COVID-19 and claimed that masks are not effective. He promoted false content on his blog, including the idea that “Covid-19 developed as a result of massive 5G rollout and is a result of too much EMF radiation,” thus shutting off your cell phone would protect you from infection.
The Liberty Food Fest will be held at the Bellows Fall Opera House. An event that platforms speakers like Margo Baldwin and Joel Salatin should not be hosted in a building that is owned and operated by the citizens of Rockingham. Hosting these speakers sends the message that the town endorses their views, and further spreads misinformation.
Jenevre Wetmore, Strafford, Vermont
Here is my response to this ridiculous attack:
I am writing to disagree with a letter to the editors of the Deerfield Valley News and the Valley News titled “Food festival offers platform for misinformation.” Jenevra Wetmore of Strafford wrote that this year’s December 12-14th Liberty Food Fest in Bellows Falls
“....will host at least two public figures who have a record of spreading misinformation about COVID-19: Margo Baldwin and Joel Salatin. I believe that the public should be aware of the background of these speakers before paying for an event ticket. I would also encourage the residents of Rockingham and Bellows Falls Opera House not to platform these speakers by hosting the event.”
The letter criticizes Margo Baldwin for publishing a book by Joseph Mercola about vaccines, and condemns Joel Salatin for “downplay[ing] the seriousness of COVID-19 and claim[ing] that masks are not effective. He promoted false content on his blog….” These complaints are misplaced – this is an event about food and farming, for which Joel Salatin and Margo Baldwin (whose company has published hundreds of titles devoted to farming and homesteading) are eminently qualified. Joel Salatin is literally “the most famous farmer in America.”
The Liberty Food Fest has nothing to do with vaccines. There are a total of 18 speakers, including Vermont Lieutenant Governor-Elect John Rodgers, indigenous environmental rights activist Winona Duke, and health educator and aquaponics expert Yemi Amu. The event features local businesses and restaurants, including food sold at the venue by Julian Johnson, aka “Jamaican Jewelz.” There is an exclusive movie showing on Friday evening (“Off the Grid with Thomas Massie”), and food, crafts, and gifts from local artisans will be available on both days. The Opera House likely receives a fee for the use of its facilities to celebrate food, which is then used to support and preserve the building. Yet, Jenevre Wetmore advocates preventing this public facility from hosting any of these speakers, farmers, or local businesses because of what Joel Salatin allegedly said about vaccines years ago….
Jenevre Wetmore boasts a master's degree in Environmental Law and Policy from Vermont Law School and is Executive Director of Sustainable Woodstock, a 501(c)(3) entity that claims one of its goals is “improving long-term food security.” It is unseemly for the leader of a supposed sustainability project to so aggressively and unfairly attack another nonprofit’s event that is themed around local food security, let alone call for unconstitutional restrictions of others’ clear free speech rights.
Jenevre ends their unfounded attack by calling for the Liberty Food Fest to be banned from using the Bellows Falls Opera House:
“The Liberty Food Fest will be held at the Bellows Fall Opera House. An event that platforms speakers like Margo Baldwin and Joel Salatin should not be hosted in a building that is owned and operated by the citizens of Rockingham. Hosting these speakers sends the message that the town endorses their views, and further spreads misinformation.”
This is false disinformation: the use of public spaces is not government endorsement of speakers’ views unless the government filters content as Jenevre counsels. It is further disinformation to dismiss “their views” about food security and the importance of regenerative agriculture (topics on which they are both established experts) based on alleged vaccination misstatements made years ago (or, in Margo’s case, a single book her company published by someone else) and that have zero to do with this event’s itinerary.
It is unconstitutional for government to filter event content at public facilities in the fashion Jenevre proposes. So-called “disinformation” is protected free speech – even Jenevre’s call to use public property to violate others’ liberties, and these perverse attack letters against an educational food and farming event. Dumb speech like Jenevre’s is protected, so why shouldn’t smart speech by educated people (and their constitutional liberties) be protected, too? Or should Vermonters boycott any activities by Sustainable Woodstock because their Executive Director – not a visiting guest – writes baseless wackadoodle attacks against other nonprofits doing good work? That’s not historically the way Vermonters discuss issues – Leave it Better, the host of the Liberty Food Fest, states on their website that “We listen to everyone, all sides; Our community is part of our creative process; We combine different points of view to make something better; We greet new ideas with curiosity.” Perhaps they don’t do that at Sustainable Woodstock under Jenevre the Slanderer, but that’s what we do at Liberty Food Fest – I will be speaking on Friday and Saturday about food and its importance for all people and their cultures.
Perhaps Jenevre should attend the Liberty Food Fest in Bellows Falls on December 13 and 14 – they might learn something.
John Klar, Esq. (and co-speaker at the 2024 Liberty Food Fest, libertyfoodfest.com)
Brookfield, VT
Join Us This Weekend!
Please consider joining us for good food, intelligent speakers, and great entertainment this weekend in Bellows Falls. Event details are here. It is a rare opportunity to hear Joel Salatin talk about farming, and it will be interesting to hear what our next Lieutenant Governor, John Rodgers, will have on offer on Saturday afternoon. The fact that toxic, dishonest people like Jenevre Wetmore don’t want Vermonters to attend a nonprofit venue about food security and health is a prime reason to do so!
All are welcome — even Jenevre!
I would ask if you are kidding but I know you are not. Just…wow. As for promoting that masks are not effective, I can specifically address this issue due to my former career, which included entering BSL 3 and 4 labs (biosecurity) suited up like an astronaut. I am not exaggerating. I was sprayed down with God only knows what on the way in and out of said labs. I knew that a cloth mask was preposterous and was merely a token of compliance. I still see folks wearing that bit of nonsense. And I know they watch TV and drank the proverbial Koolaid. I really hope that this event is successful. The importance of wholesome, healthy food cannot be overstated.
John Thank you for sharing your story, light is always the best disinfectant. Maybe Invite Jenevra to eat some food, perhaps she is famished from all her “fact-checking”.
As soon as the words “disinformation, misinformation and malinformation” were revealed to the public (end of 2020-beginning of 2021 around vaccine rollouts) I knew there was trouble in River City. These are terms of art for the intelligence community (an oxymoron on its face) and refer to strategies of propagandists (principally, but not exclusively the parlance of OUR intel community) to manipulate public discourse, private thought and human behavior. Disinformation, misinformation and malinformation were only to be known to the foreign recipients of our military grade psychological operations in the abstract, and watch their society, culture and government crumble before the awesome power of the mind manipulators.
If you haven’t read Mattias Desmet’s excellent book “The Psychology of Totalitarianism”, check it out. He points out that totalitarianism (often inflicted by our intel services on foreign populations, see: Ukraine, Syria, Iraq et al) is always from the ground up. It is caused from above through the atomizing of individuals through psychological warfare and “misinformation”, but then the populace yearns for the chains of oppression in order to give meaning and structure to their atomized life. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn points out, the worst terrors of the Soviet regime weren’t the boots on your throat, but knowing that someone in your family had ratted you out for the “common good”.
It was mothers turning in their own sons and fathers turning in daughters. That is the end stage of the misinformation, disinformation and malinformation propagandist system.
The fact that Jenevra uses the propagandists’ term of art “misinformation” shows the ancestry of the thought process which has led to this madness. Our own intelligence services have used and are currently using military grade psychological operations to “misinform” the public on all sorts of things, but almost everything that was touted as “harmful misinformation” regarding COVID-19 has turned out to be true.
My point is that Jenevra is deep in a mass formation. She has been mind controlled by the mind controllers. I too was in her spot until about May of 2021, so I have incredible sympathy for her position. It has been incredibly humbling and frankly terrifying to see that all of the “facts” around us are not what they seem. She has to accept that the CDC, the Vermont Department of Public Health, Middlebury College, FDA, NPR are either liars or just plain wrong. This destroys her idea space and gives here nothing to hold onto.
Let us have sympathy for Jenevra and let us understand that the terms of art of the propagandists: misinformation, malinformation and disinformation are terms of art of the CIA in order to overthrow peoples, cultures and governments, but they have no place in a free society where truth is ascertained through discourse, not fiat. The best antidote to totalitarianism is liberty.