Fremont, OH – April 4th, 2022 – Justice for Migrant Women kicked off celebrations for The Bandana Project’s Quinceñera during Farmworker’s Awareness Week, and will continue to highlight the campaign initiative throughout Sexual Assault Awareness Month this April, by sharing photos and videos of the beautiful bandanas that have been decorated over the past 15 years. The campaign is meant to be a visible demonstration of support for farmworker women to end workplace sexual violence and a commitment to ending this consistent horrific problem.
Educational community events are being organized throughout the country as part of the campaign. On April 1st, Justice for Migrant Women staff and supporters gathered in Fremont, Ohio for a signature ‘bandana-making event’, an art-activism and advocacy campaign to raise the awareness needed regarding sexual assault in the workplace. PHOTOS OF EVENT. At these special events, community members, advocates, government representatives, activists, and allies come together to decorate white bandanas with words of encouragement, motivating statements, inspirational pictures and art to send their message of solidarity. These bandanas are then hung in public places such as community centers, health clinics, museums, schools, and other places, as a visible demonstration of support for farmworker women and girls to affirm their right to live with dignity and to work under safe working conditions. Thousands of bandanas have been decorated around the United States, Mexico, Canada and other parts of the world over the last 15 years.
The Bandana Project uses these bandanas as a symbol of the movement to end workplace sexual violence against farmworker women. The bandana was adopted as a symbol of this movement because farmworker women have said that they use their clothes, including bandanas, to help protect them from unwanted sexual attention while working in agriculture. The color white is symbolic of peace.
The problem of workplace sexual violence against women is rampant. Farmworker girls who also work in the fields are also susceptible to this violence.
Campaigns such as The Bandana Project aim to shine a light on this pervasive problem. It was also created to show farmworker girls and women that they are not alone, that they are seen, and that they have allies. They aim to support and fortify farmworker women as they face this difficult situation in the hopes that they will no longer suffer in silence.
“Fifteen years ago we set out to send a message to farmworker women and girls to let them know that they are not alone in the fight to end sexual violence, while also sounding a clear message to perpetators that we are watching and that we will support survivors as they seek accountability and justice.” says Mónica Ramírez, President and Founder of Justice for Migrant Women. “I could not have imagined that this project would have grown to engage and reach thousands of people around the world, while simultaneously highlighting a problem that has been kept secret for far too long. Together, we have been able to not only raise awareness, but we have also been able to help to make significant strides in the fight to end this endemic problem through litigation, advocacy, public education, not to mention to support survivors in their healing.”
The Bandana Project was created by Mónica Ramírez in 2007 while working as an attorney at Southern Poverty Law Center, where she founded Esperanza: The Immigrant Women’s Legal Initiative. Ramírez and SPLC have continued to partner over the years. This partnership led to SPLC allowing Ramírez to continue to organize this project through her non-profit Justice for Migrant Women, the organization that Mónica created in 2014. The organizations was founded with the mission to eradicate sexual harrasment and other forms of gender discrimination against farmworkers and other migrant women workers. Justice for Migrant Women also focuses on economic justice and security; promoting leadership and power building among migrant and rural women; and changing the narrative about migrant women, Latinx people and rural communities.
Photos will also be shared via Justice for Migrant Women’s Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts to continue sending the critical message to perpetrators that there is support for farmworker women and that accountability will be demanded.
