Monica Ramirez was born in Fremont, Ohio, to a big extended family with a long history of working in agriculture. Growing up, she was surrounded by many farmworker community members, including her own family members that continued to work in the fields. As she grew up, she began to understand and witness the fact that farmworkers do their essential work with few protections in place. With the love and encouragement from her family, Monica went on to become a civil rights lawyer. In 2003, she founded the first legal project in the U.S. focused on addressing sexual harassment and gender discrimination against farmworker women. This project was scaled to become a national initiative assisting immigrant women workers in 2006. The project was housed at the Southern Poverty Law Center until 2012. In 2014, she founded Justice for Migrant Women. In 2019, she launched The Latinx House, which creates gathering spaces to celebrate the best in Latino culture and raise important societal issues and, subsequently, in 2020 she joined nine other Latina leaders to create Poderistas, a non-profit focused on amplifying and uplifting the power of Latinas throughout the United States.
Q. What is your favorite part about being Latina?
A. Color. I love color. I think we as Latinos love bright colors and it’s a wonderful way to express our culture.
Q. Monica, you have so many skills and talents. What is your one superpower?
A. I’m a connector. I connect people, and I connect movements and organizations. Seeing them go off and create amazing things together brings me a lot of joy.
Q. Tell us about a time when you were underestimated.
A. As a new and young Latina lawyer, I was always underestimated. But there was one particular time in which I went to a meeting with another lawyer, who was my co-counsel and happened to be an older white man. The opposing counsel immediately started talking to him. And my co-counsel stopped the person and said, “I’m not the lead lawyer on this case. She’s the lead lawyer.” They thought I was a secretary and that I was accompanying that lawyer. That happens to me all the time. Early in my practice, people often thought I was an interpreter and a secretary, both of which are important jobs. They just couldn’t get past the probability of having me, a young Latina, as the lead lawyer on a particular case.
Q. Tell us about growing up.
A. I grew up in Ohio. I have a huge extended family. On both sides, my family worked in agriculture, which is the grounding for all my work. And I was fortunate because I was so loved growing up by my parents, my grandparents, everyone. I’m close with many people in my family. I think that comfort and security is why I was not afraid to do different things in my life. My family always made me feel like I could do all kinds of things.
Q. Monica, there is a clear throughline in your work, but we are curious- how do you summarize your journey?
A. My work is dedicated to my family and my community. In many ways, my work is “in honor of.” Farmworkers when I was growing up did not have what they needed. My parents did not have what they needed when they and their families were working in agriculture. They also did not have much of a community when they were migrating, beyond their own family members and other people in the camps. A throughline from family to family and generation to generation is that we have inherited a legacy of injustice. We have inherited a legacy of people doing some of the most essential work in the world without the same rights and protections that have been created for other working people. The work that I have done as an advocate and organizer is to try to help achieve justice and to help address some of the gaps. I think of it as my life’s mission.
Q. What are you most excited for right now? What excites you in this moment in time and history?
A. I’m excited about all the leaders who we’re helping to elevate. We just hosted a three part series with about 50 women from rural America, migrant women, and non-migrant women. They were so excited about having the opportunity to train in building civic power. It gave me energy and hope. I’m excited for the opportunity to continue to open doors, because it’s through the collective that we will see real change. That’s where I’m placing my bets- on the power of the collective, and being a small part of that is really exciting.
Q. What can each of us on the ground do to champion the voices and the insights of people not being heard?
A. We all have a platform. Some people can be heard more readily, but we all have a network of friends and family. I push back against this idea of being an “influencer”, and only certain people being influencers. I think we can all influence in different spheres and at different levels. But I think we have to help each other by giving people credit for what they do and what they say. If you listen to something on a podcast, or if someone says something important on social media, or at a local meeting, or even in a break room, we need to elevate those people and position them so people understand that there are leaders out there that have thoughts on particular topics. Every one of us can do that. The other piece is that people spend so much time and energy trying to tear people down. It would go a long way if we dedicated ourselves to raising people up. I think that we need to make that commitment.
Q. Who is someone else we should interview on Informada?
A. Carmen Perez. She is the CEO of The Gathering for Justice, which is dedicated to eliminating racial inequities in the justice system. She was also a board member of the Women’s March and is my good friend.