 Welcome. I'm Elizabeth Sackler and it is a pleasure for me to welcome you to the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. I'd like to say happy new year to everybody here. 2011 is pretty amazing. This is the first program that I have had the privilege of introducing this year. And we are four years now into the actualization of the center. And it's very exciting. The years are flying by and I have actually also some news that I would like. Rebecca, are you here? I don't see you. Could you stand up? This is Rebecca Taffel. Rebecca has been working for me and with me since 2007 when the museum opened. And this year Rebecca is going to be program director of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. And we provide really one third of the programming such as today's programming for the center. And so Rebecca is going to be taking up some of the reins of that. We will be alternating and doing introductions. And I invite you to introduce yourself to her after this lecture if you would like to. As many of you know, we are the home, the permanent home to the dinner party by Judy Chicago. And we are also, there are some seats in here if people want to come in and join us. We also are in educational space. And here in the forum we have political panels and talks, not just on art, but social issues, political issues, women's achievements, women's oppressions and the ongoing challenges that we all face and successes that we share, both as individuals, as a community, as a state and indeed as a country. Today it is, well it really feels and it is a particular pleasure for me. Since 1971 the Southern Poverty Law Center has been an effective and tenacious civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of our society. It was founded by civil rights lawyers Morris Dees and Joseph Levin Jr. with its headquarters in Montgomery, Alabama, which of course we think about as the birthplace of the modern civil rights movement. We have here today Shannon Sanders. You have another last name you've taken on. She's also got another thing in front of her that's about to come out. What's your new last name? Anthly. Thank you for joining us today. I have known Shannon now for a number of years and a little bit more on that in a minute. The Southern Poverty Law Center is internationally known for tracking and exposing the activities of hate groups and I think that's probably particularly relevant at this moment in time. My mother Elsa Sackler was passionate about certain organizations during her lifetime and along with the Children's Defense Fund and Planned Parenthood both local, state, national and international, the Southern Poverty Law Center ranked high on her list of essential organizations in our country to be supported and I remember her talking about its work actually since the inception of the Southern Poverty Law Center and after my mother's death in 2001 my sister Carol Master and I continued to support SPLC for its great works and initiatives nationwide and in her honor. So it is particularly thrilling for me to have invited and be here today for this very important program. As a result of my relationship with the Southern Poverty Law Center I recently received a press release that moved me to contact Shannon and the Center so that we could have an opportunity to learn more about the discrimination and harassment of women farm workers and to identify it as our problem and as our national problem. I'd like to read you excerpts from the press release. It's a headlined immigrant women backbone of U.S. food industry targets for wage theft, sexual harassment and other abuses new SPLC report fines. And it says that injustice, the little headline is injustice on our plates immigrant women in the U.S. food industry documents the workplace experiences of immigrant women who have come to the United States to escape crushing poverty. It describes how the laws that are in place to protect them from exploitation are grossly inadequate and how they are typically powerless to protect themselves. These women are the backbone of our food industry but are exploited and abused in ways most of us can't even imagine and that none of us should tolerate. That was a quote from a legal director Mary Bauer who is a co-author of the report. Fear, she said, keeps these women silent so their suffering is invisible to all of us who benefit from their labor every time we sit down to the dinner table. The report is based on extensive interviews with 150 immigrant women from Mexico, Guatemala and other Latin American countries. They live and work in states across the country, all worked in the fields or factories that produce food for America. The last part here that I'll read to you says that farm workers remain the least protected workers in America. They were intentionally excluded from nearly all major federal labor laws passed during the New Deal era. The sum laws have been amended since then many exceptions remain. So it doesn't feel like a light topic. The happy news for us is that we are here together to hear about it, to learn about it, to become new participants in it. And indeed to have here to talk to us is Monica Ramirez. And it is such a pleasure for me to welcome her. Since 2003, Monica has focused her legal career on the direct representation of migrant farm worker and low-rate wage immigrant women who have been the victims of workplace sexual violence. She provides consultation to attorneys and advocates throughout the United States on litigating gender discrimination cases, namely sexual harassment cases on behalf of farm workers and low-wage immigrant women. She is a frequent trainer and presenter on the topic of the sexual assault, gender discrimination, and labor exploitation committed against farm workers and low-wage immigrant women. In 2006, Ms. Ramirez founded and is director of Esperanza, the Immigrant Women's Legal Initiative of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC expanded the reach of Esperanza to protect the rights of farm workers and low-wage immigrant women throughout the Southwestern United States, and by executing a three-pronged approach, including litigation, education, and administration advocacy, to address the needs of those women. I'd like to encourage anybody who's standing and would like to come in not to feel hesitant to find the seats that are available. There's one, two, there are three more seats, and I can move my coat there and somebody can sit there. Okay. Monica has been a farm worker activist for over 15 years. Her family came to the United States from Mexico to work as migrant farm workers. She is among the first generation in her family to break the migrant farm worker cycle by leaving the fields and securing a formal education. And that is one of the beauties that we can celebrate today is change and how that change can happen and she is an example of that change. She's a secondary survivor of sexual violence. Her connection to the farm worker community and to the devastating problems of sexual violence have driven her passion to commit herself to improving the living and the working conditions of migrant farm workers and low-wage immigrant women in the United States. You are a graduate. Cum Laude from Loyola received her law degree at the Ohio State University as well as done international studies and has been honored with many fellow and leadership awards. I was going to list them, but they're too numerous really to mention. So you can see why I'm pleased to have her here. And I think that this afternoon is going to be an opportunity to begin the new year with new information and with ways in which we can begin to activate our year and improve the things that need improving. Please help me in welcoming Monica. Thank you so much for the lovely introduction. You know, I was getting emotional as I was listening and so I might get emotional during this talk because I often do when I talk about the work. And so having said that, I want to say to you that, you know, during my talk, if you find yourself getting emotional and sometimes the things that I'm talking about are really difficult to hear, please take care of yourself if you need to step out, do so and join us when you're ready. And I will keep it together up here so that I can continue giving my talk to you. He took me to a far off place in the fields. He told me that he had to show me the work that I needed to complete. I was alone with him and I was scared. No one could hear me scream. These are the words of one of my very first clients, whether Lupe. They're words that I will never forget. They're words that are embedded in my heart, embedded in my memory. And unfortunately, they're words that I hear far too often. I started my practice in 2003 and whether Lupe was one of the very, very first women that I met. And I knew going into my job that sexual violence in the workplace was a major issue for farm worker women. That's why we created the project that I started because we knew it was a problem. But somehow when I met whether Lupe and when I heard her story and when I understood the depth of her suffering, it hit me so hard that there are women like her who are so good and want only the best in their lives for themselves and for their children and for their families and for our country and for their countries. They came here to work to do the best that they could to be productive members of their society for the best interests of everyone who they come in contact with, in particular those whom they love. And so when I met whether Lupe and heard about her story, it truly broke my heart. How could it not? But you know, there is positive that comes with every negative and the positive. And whether Lupe's story is that she was wronged, yes. And when I met her, she was shattered. But whether Lupe was so strong that she decided that she was going to try to get some help and she was going to take some action because she knew that even though she was here in this country from Mexico and she didn't know exactly what her rights were, she knew that fundamentally what had happened to her at work, which was workplace sexual violence at the hands of the owner of the company where she worked, she knew fundamentally that none of us should experience this type of violence as she did. You know, the work has evolved since 2003. I've interviewed hundreds of women, not just for the report that we wrote, but in the course of giving women advice about what their rights are and in the course of educating them about what steps they could take to protect themselves and what resources exist in our country to help them where they've been victims of violence and other injustices. And over and over again, stories like whether Lupe has come to my attention. And over and over again, I think to myself, when is it going to stop? How are we going to make effective change so things like this don't continue to happen? And I still have not completely answered that question. But I think part of the answer to the question is this. I think part of the answer to that question is that through the work of the Southern Poverty Law Center, through our litigation and through the educational work that we do, I think that's part of the answer of getting to the problem, getting victims justice where they've been victimized. But the other part of addressing the problem is events like these and the support of centers like these who allow people like me to come in to talk to people like you about what is happening in our country. Because I know that none of us want any woman to become a member of the club that why the loop is part of. The club that is the survivor of workplace sexual exploitation in the agricultural fields of our nation. And so I'm so thankful to you, to the entire center for giving me the opportunity to talk about our work, to talk about the struggles and to talk about the successes because there have been successes. You know, like the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, the Southern Poverty Law Center also has a deep commitment to ending the oppression of women. We have a deep commitment to seeking justice for women and men and people everywhere in our country and around the world. And we have a dream of a world where none of these sorts of atrocity will ever exist. And so in partnership we walk. And together, as organizations and as individuals, we figure out how it is that we can best use the resources that we have, often our human resources, to try to shed light on some of the issues and to try to help those who are in pain, who have suffered and who have been wronged. Over the course of the past five years that I've been at the Southern Poverty Law Center, we have litigated a number of cases on behalf of farm worker women and immigrant women who have been victims of both workplace sexual violence and other forms of economic exploitation and illegal acts against them. Part of that work, not only have we done the cases for the women to attempt to get them recovery for what's happened to them, but we've also spent a significant amount of time doing community and public education to groups like this one. Because we believe that if people knew what was happening, then maybe we could make it stop. Because at the end of the day, what all of us want who are doing this kind of work is to see ourselves out of a job. To see the day when we aren't needed to do the cases anymore or to give the speeches about the way things are. And if we're asked to give the speeches, then maybe we'll see the day when we can talk about the way things were. And we're still working towards that. And you know, well, it is true that we've represented dozens of women like Guadalupe, Maria, Sonia, Cengolia, Luz, Reina, all my clients. We know that these women are just a very small representation of the thousands of women around our country who are experiencing similar things. And because of the work and because of the litigation that we've done, we said to ourselves, something has to be done so we can get to the place where justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. We have to keep working towards that. And how are we going to do it with a population like the farm worker population who in large part is invisible in this country? How are we going to help someone like Norma have justice done for her? How are we going to help the public understand exactly the gravity of the situation? And so for that reason we felt an extreme sense of urgency to write our report in justice on our plates because we believed that if we could get our report into the hands of people throughout our country that maybe collectively we could figure out how to address the problems. Our report was released in November right before Thanksgiving. And as Dr. Sackler said, we interviewed 150 women from different parts of the United States, including here in New York. We conducted a number of interviews here and chronicled the experiences of farm worker women in this state and in five others around the country. And what struck us was that it didn't matter if we were in Iowa or if we were in California or New York or Florida or Arkansas or North Carolina. It didn't matter which crop it was exactly that the women were working in, whether it was women who were working in beans or in sweet potatoes or tomatoes or strawberries. It didn't matter really because every one of them told us the same story, the same story. They told us about how they were not being paid what they deserved. They told us about all sorts of things that had happened to them, some of which I'm going to go into more detail about in just a minute. But I tell you this because we need to understand that as much as we would like to say this is an isolated problem that happens in this one state or this is a problem that only affects people who are working in watermelons or in tomatoes or whatever, it's simply not true. And we know that because we talked to 150 women who largely told us the same things. It didn't matter if they were working in California or someplace else. They were seeing the same things. They could leave one crew and go to another crew and it was the same things that were happening to them. So what does that mean for us? That means that we have to treat this issue, these issues, the economic and sexual exploitation of farm worker women. We have to treat them like what they really are. And what they really are, in my opinion, is we're faced with a national epidemic. We're faced with a national problem that has to be dealt with and looked at from a national lens. And it's a problem that we have to really think through in terms of what is the most beneficial thing that we can do both for the individual victim who experiences the problem but also for the community at large and how can we do it in the most effective and the most expedient way possible. And that in large part is what we have tried to do at the Southern Poverty Law Center is be strategic about the steps that we will take on behalf of these women and part of the strategy was letting you know and our government officials know and the farm worker communities know about, one, what's happening with the farm worker community members, the fact that they are not alone in this. That there are other people who are experiencing similar things and that there are people around the country like my organization and like you that care and want to help them get the help that they need. You know, when I was doing the interviews for this report, I think maybe I'm just generally kind of an emotional person. I've already showed that card to you. But when I was doing the interviews for the report, I was personally really struck because I thought as I looked at these women who were mothers, they were daughters, they were sisters, they were aunts, they were grandmothers. I couldn't help but think about my own family, my own mother, my own grandmother, my aunts, my cousins, all of whom worked in the fields and all of whom experienced their own injustices as agricultural workers. And you know, I think that one of the problems is that the perpetrators who are exploiting these women don't see them as human beings. They don't see that these are people, these are mothers, these are daughters, these are sisters, they are people. And as such needed to be treated with respect and dignity. And listening to the stories of the women and they talked to me about, you know, all of the things that had happened and the words that had been used to belittle them and the ways in which they had suffered harm. And it just kept coming back to me, why can't people see that these are people who deserve the same kind of respect as every one of us in this room and who really just want to make a better life for themselves and their families? Why can't we get that message across? And so I'm hopeful that, you know, together we will figure out a way to send that message. In the meantime, I think that we have to remind ourselves that while there are people in this country who do not see these immigrant women as people, we do have our work cut out for us. We do have a responsibility to do the cases, to do the advocacy that we do. And we have on a very personal level the responsibility to talk about something that no one's talking about because farm workers feel as though they've been silenced in this country. And so at some level, they look to us as their allies to talk about what they don't feel that they can talk about. So I want to talk to you about what it is that we learned from our report. And I'm giving you a job because when I'm done talking, I have the expectation that you're going to do something with the information. So if you need to take notes, this is a good time to get your paper and pen ready. There are an estimated three million farm workers in our country. More than 600,000 of the farm workers in our nation are women. 75% of farm workers in our country are from Mexico. A large percentage of farm workers in our country are U.S. born. And there are farm workers who are here from Haiti and many other countries around the world. The population is one whose work is known for being, at least the images of the women, their work is characterized as being extremely difficult and dangerous work. The farm worker women who we interviewed for the report worked in the fields. They worked in processing plants. They worked in packing sheds. There are farm workers who work in nurseries. There are farm workers who conduct many, many different jobs that are necessary to make the wheels of the agricultural industry turn. And though that they are responsible for bringing in billions of dollars for our economy, for the agricultural industry, the reality is that their salary is extremely low. And in fact, the salary for a farm worker is on average about $15,000 at this point. Not very much money at all. Their work is not only characterized by low pay and dangerous conditions, but it's also characterized by the fact that many farm workers, particularly those who are migratory, those who travel with the crops from state to state, they typically are provided housing but it's often substandard housing. It's often terrible housing and where the workers are seasonal, they might be living in trailers like this one and they might have 10 or 12 people to a trailer and they might be each paying $200 or $300 to live in that trailer, even though it has holes in the floor and maybe doesn't even have all the utilities needed for a home, for a safe and clean home. The women that we interviewed and farm workers around our country work around and beside and sometimes operate very heavy machinery. That's one of the reasons that the work is so dangerous because people often get hurt in the fields. A large number of farm workers are injured to the extent where some of them actually die because of injuries that they experience in the fields on machinery or due to machinery. The farm workers who we've worked with and those who we interviewed talked to us about the fact that they are not given the tools that they need to do their jobs. They often aren't given stable ladders to work on. They're not given the implements that they need to properly cut the produce or prune or what have you. They get injuries from the repetitive work that they're doing but also because they're not given adequate tools to do their work. Farm workers are often exposed to harmful chemicals and pesticides. Women who I've represented talk about the fact that as they work in the fields they would feel themselves being drenched by the spray of the chemicals. I worked on a case in Florida in which the women talked to me about they were literally being sprayed with pesticides. There was a pipe right above them that periodically would spray the pesticides and the plants they were working on and I think that they were sprayed about every couple of minutes every day of these chemicals. And as a result of the pesticides that the women and men who work in the fields are exposed to, they get rashes, they get headaches, they're nauseous. A number of the women that we interviewed for our report talked about suffering, miscarriage. A number of women talked about babies. The report actually has an entire section discussing some of the children that have been born to farm worker mothers who were not born with all of their limbs or had major deformities because of exposure to chemicals as they worked while they were pregnant. And there are laws that prohibit things like drenching people with chemicals while they work. There are laws that prohibit not paying workers adequately. There are federal laws that protect these workers but often as was said in the introduction those workers are not followed, they're not enforced. And the workers typically don't know where to find advocates who might be able to explain their rights to them or might help them enforce their rights because of the isolation. I've been working with farm workers doing outreach and direct work with the farm worker community since I was 18 years old and I recall going out to the fields once in Ohio and I remember that the fields were so isolated and the group of workers that I talked to asked me where they were. They didn't know where they were. They were on a random street in some random place far away. They knew they weren't in Mexico but they didn't grow up saying, I'm going to leave my town in Mexico and I want to go and work in this small town in Ohio. You know, they don't know where they are in the country. And so they certainly don't know, they don't know what state they're in. They certainly don't know how to find advocates who are doing work on their behalf to help them when they're in need. And so yes, there are laws in our country that protect workers and there are laws that say that it's not okay to spray people with pesticides and that you should not discriminate against people. But the challenge is finding a way to get the information to the workers. The challenge is finding the resources to be able to represent the workers when they've had problems. The other challenge is of course trying to help the workers when they're fearful of taking any kind of action because they think that if they do anything to try to improve their situation that something worse will happen to them. And so when we talked to the 150 women that we interviewed we heard these stories over and over again. They're stories of fear, stories of shame, stories of isolation. They talk to us about the fact that they go to work and they work long, long hours and often for the women if they are employed because often women are not given jobs right away. They're typically given to male workers because male workers are perceived to be stronger and better workers and so when it is the case that women are hired they aren't given the same opportunities as men. They're not paid the same as men. The case that I talked to you about the one in Florida where the women were being sprayed with pesticides there was an investigation into that particular company and those women when the investigation was done it was determined that they were not being paid like their male counterparts. In fact they were being paid about a dollar an hour less than the male counterparts. In fact every woman in that entire company was being paid a dollar an hour less than their male counterparts. So the women talked to us about not receiving the pay that they were due but they also talked in terms of because of discrimination but they also talked to us about the fact that they might work for hours and hours a day and they might pick trays of produce or have buckets full of produce but at the end of the day and at the end of the week they're being robbed because they're not being paid for all of the produce that they're picking and they're not being given all the money that they deserve for the work that they're doing. And one of the unique problems that we found with farm worker women when we did the report was that farm worker women if they're working alongside male family members their husband or their father or another male family member they're not being paid with their own paycheck. Their wages are being given to the male family member who's working alongside of them. You know a number of the women who we interviewed told us stories of the trauma that they'd experienced that in part caused them to leave their countries of origin. They talked to us about domestic violence and sexual violence that was one of the reasons that they decided to leave their country and so imagine a situation in which you have someone who was victimized in their country domestic violence or sexual violence and then they arrive here and maybe they're with an individual who's abusive there were a number of women who we interviewed who talked to us about domestic violence that they'd experienced here in the United States and so what kind of situation is created then when you have an individual who's a victim or at risk of violence who doesn't even have the opportunity to receive her own paycheck what money does she use what money does she have to get away when she needs to and so that was a particularly alarming issue that came up and you know many women who we talked to from one end of the country to the other said yeah we don't get our own paycheck it's given to our husbands well how do you know which hours were yours how do you know which part of that pay is yours well you don't know you know someone it's just one check and they figure it out often when that happens especially where there's some wage shortages going on I think the two incomes are sort of put together to try to appear as though the company is complying with the federal minimum wage Aside from wage stealing, wage theft the women talked to us a lot about gender discrimination and not just sexual violence I'm going to talk a little bit more about sexual harassment but right now I want to talk to you about some other types of gender discrimination that we came across the women talked to us about the fact that if they're working in a crew that has male workers you know it's not uncommon for the male workers to get extra hours the women are typically sent home early they're laid off the women aren't given the same kinds of breaks you know I represented some women who talked to who part of their case was about the fact that the men were allowed to take bathroom breaks and the women weren't allowed to take bathroom breaks because women take too long so the women just weren't given the opportunity to take those breaks Aside from lack of opportunity to take breaks like those which are essential they're also not being given the same opportunities for advancement in the fields in agriculture operating heavy machinery is a higher paid job but women aren't being given those jobs they're being given the jobs they pay at minimum wage or they should be paying the minimum wage although they often don't receive those wages women talked to us about the fact that when they became pregnant they were often fired when their crew leaders or supervisors found out that they were going to have children they would tell them that they were no longer good workers they were no longer useful I had a client whose employer told her that because she was pregnant she could no longer think as well that kind of evidence is useful in a case but it's something that's happening far too often and not enough women are able to sort of get any relief because of what's happened and so there's all kinds of discrimination and injustice that's happening right now in the fields of our country but the gravest one that every single woman every single woman that we talked to reported was sexual harassment and sexual harassment in the field in agriculture range is not just from inappropriate sexual comments and touching but for farm worker women the sexual harassment that they're experiencing is quite severe in fact sexual assault and rape is a very big problem a very pervasive problem in the farm worker community there have been studies that have been done only a couple but there have been studies done on the issue of workplace sexual violence against farm worker women the data that we have reflects that between 80 to 90 percent of farm worker women who have been interviewed interviewed report sexual harassment and many of them have experienced the entire continuum of violence so from the inappropriate comments and touching to sexual assault and rape as I told you many of the women that we interviewed were victims of trauma and other at other stages in their lives a number of the women that we talked to talked to us about rape and migration where as they left their country of origin they experienced sexual assault during the process of migrating to the United States some of the women at two borders some of the women entering into Mexico others entering into the United States in some cases at both borders and in fact sexual violence and migration is now such a problem that women before they leave their country of origin have begun taking birth control so that they don't get pregnant by the perpetrators and women that we interviewed talked to us about the situation that people know that before you leave you need before you leave your country of origin you need to take care of yourself you need to protect yourself they know that sexual violence is a real threat and migration women talk to us about experiencing it and witnessing it so we have a situation in which we're being victimized in their countries domestic violence or sexual violence and then we have people who are being victimized on the way to the United States and then they arrive in the United States and they're victimized yet again in this time in the workplace the women told us that they felt like they had to remain silent about things that were happening to them and we asked them why they felt like they had to maintain their silence and they said because they've been told over and over again that no one cares about them here that they don't have any rights that if they complain no one's going to help them so the women talked to us about the fact that they feel completely isolated they feel completely alone here many of the women didn't have other family in the United States there's this misconception this is one I try to challenge all the time there's this idea that women who come to the United States from other countries come here just to join their families they come here to join their husbands who are already in the United States but the reality is that now more than half of the world's economic migrants are actually women so women aren't just leaving their country to meet their spouses they're coming here to the United States to make a better life for themselves to work in the United States and so a lot of these women that we talked to and some of the women who I've represented don't have other connections here they aren't meeting their spouse they might not have any other brothers or sisters here and so we're in the communities that they're living they're very small communities they're very tight communities so they feel like the isolation isn't just isolation in the sense that it's us and the people who do care about them and know that they have rights but the isolation is also related to sort of feeling as though they can't speak out in their own community because they're afraid of what's going to happen to them if they do they're afraid that then they'll be put in a situation where they don't know anyone who can help them in the support of them here in this country and at least the other workers who they know on their crew are people who in some ways support them because they understand what it means to be a migrant in the United States when we talked to the women about why they were not in a position to make reports to law enforcement because we asked people whether or not they'd ever reported a crime to the police and they said no they didn't feel as though they could and one of the reasons being because they didn't know how and one of the reasons being that they didn't think that they would be helped you know I think we think about the situation in which we have a community of people who are being victimized and they're not reporting we have to sort of look at what's happening in our country and think about why it is that people feel like they don't have a voice and that no one will help them and I think that this explains it some the active hate groups in the United States are quite numerous here in your area of the country there are 142 active hate groups the Klan white supremacist groups anti-gay anti-immigrant all these groups around the country are the people who are sending a loud and clear message to individuals like the women who we interviewed and those whom we represent that tells them that they're not wanted here they're not welcome over the past decade there's been a 50% increase in active hate groups in the United States and the hate isn't just sort of isolated to the blogs and to the websites and to the gatherings of these hate groups the hate has now reached the streets where you see comments like this they're all in graffiti they've reached the airwaves they've reached the media anti-latino hate has risen substantially just since 2003 to 2009 there are situations in which individuals like this young man Jordan Gruver he was one of our clients in a case that we had against the imperial plans of America we represented him because he went to the county fair with his family Rocky in 2006 and members of the IKA were there at that county fair to recruit new membership and when they saw him they decided that he was a perfect target for them so they found him alone and they beat him savagely they kicked him with their steel toe boots because they didn't like his kind they didn't like the way he looked the IKA was led by this man Ron Edwards and these are the men who savagely beat Jordan Gruver we sued them and you can see that Ron Edwards doesn't like us very much the result of the lawsuit was a 2.5 million dollar verdict in Jordan's favor the case is currently being appealed but we can say one of the things that I'm happy to talk to you about a success a change is that when we began our work against the IKA they had this many chapters 16 today they have two back to Lou right so right now in our country we have a situation in which there are terrible things being said all over the news about immigrants in our country they're taking the jobs opportunities they're taking advantage of our federal benefits in Lou's case he said that undocumented immigrants brought 7,000 cases of leprosy to our country within a three year period I don't know if you remember when all of this happened with Lou Dobbs he had because of the kinds of comments he was making he had a fan base with the storm front this hate website in the United States and we told Lou that what he was saying was not true and that he needed to retract the comments and we thought to ourselves when you have a fan base like this one calling for you to be president you have to wonder why is it that a group like this would be among your followers but Lou didn't take back the comments and he didn't question why it was a group like this would be part of his fan base and so we had to go to the data to prove him wrong because he wouldn't retract his comments on his own and the data actually reflected that yes there were 7,000 cases of leprosy in the United States but they didn't they weren't 7,000 cases of leprosy in three years there were 7,000 of leprosy over a 30 year period and there was no way to tie that leprosy to undocumented individuals SPLC worked with the New York Times to expose the lie to let people know that what was being said on the news by Lou Dobbs on CNN was not true and even though we asked him and we sent an open letter asking him to retract his statements he didn't he then jumped on the birther bandwagon and said that our president was not a US citizen and after months of working to get him off the air Lou finally resigned another success because what that meant was he could no longer continue to spread these lies but during the time in which he spread those lies many many people heard him many people believed what he was saying was true and what that meant for immigrant community members was that it wasn't safe and so the fact that immigrant women farm worker women who we interviewed said they didn't feel safe and they didn't feel welcome well it was understandable because then you have situations like this one and this one I think is one that hits home happened here in New York these young men decided they were part of a gang they called themselves the Caucasian crew and they decided that they were going to go quote unquote beater hopping and they were going to beat up any Latino immigrants that they saw they they enacted they engaged in this activity over a period of time eventually these young men encountered this man Marcelo Lucero who they attacked and murdered in 2008 as a result of this situation as PLC issued a report called the climate of fear where we interviewed immigrants and immigrant rights advocates here in New York and Suffolk County to understand what it was that immigrants were experiencing and how they were feeling about their situation as immigrants in the U.S. you might have seen the article that was written in the New York Times about the situation as a result of the report and as a result of some of the media attention around the incident Governor Patterson asked for there to be an investigation into the crime committed against Mr. Lucero and these young men did in fact have to face the justice system for what they've done you know I look at these young men and I'm sad sad because I wonder how we got here I'm sad when I think about the immigrants who live in fear I'm sad when I think about the women who we interviewed who just talked to us about how they didn't feel like they could go to the store or the park or the church that they didn't feel like they could report the violent crimes that they're experiencing I felt I feel sad for the women who I know are suffering in the exact same way as Guadalupe and many of my other clients and I don't know exactly how this happened I think it's probably many things that came together to create the situation in which we're in and you know as an activist and as an advocate I can't stay in that place of wonder or sadness because that isn't how we make change we make change in figuring out how we can turn things around and we take something away from these terrible situations and make positive changes and I think that why you're here today and why I'm here today to share with you is to talk about what it is exactly that we can do and should be doing so that we can prevent situations like the murder of Mr. Lucero and the sexual assault against Guadalupe and some of the other things that are happening the way that we start is with education teaching tolerance is one of the publications of the Southern Poverty Law Center and it's given for free to youth around the country so distributed to teachers we do this educational work as part of the Southern Poverty Law Center because we believe that we need to get this information into the hands of children if we can teach children tolerance and if we can teach children the importance of diversity and the fact that just because someone looks different than you and just because someone might not speak with your same accent that doesn't mean that they've done anything criminal or that they're bad people in addition to the magazines we've created some kits some movies and educational kits for educators to talk to students about some of the historical events that have happened in our country so they have a better understanding of the civil rights movement one of our most recent kits is Viva La Cosa which is a movie that was done on the Great Boy Cat the United Farm Workers Great Boy Cat as a part of the kit we created a worksheet so that we could educate children about how the different social justice movements tie together and how the different leaders are connected so it talks about Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez and one of the important messages of course in that is an understanding that those great leaders were leaders who believed in nonviolence you know all of us have a responsibility to educate ourselves and we have a responsibility to educate the young ones that we come into contact with because we don't want to be put in a situation where we are remedying the wrongs that have been committed against people we want to be in a situation where we're preventing the wrongs from ever occurring in addition to doing education with our children and with other people that we come across our friends and our family members who maybe don't have the information about exactly what's going on to the immigrant community members and particularly farm worker women in our country you know we also have the strength in our voices to let our political leaders know that we don't agree with some of the legislation that is being enacted or that we don't agree with the fact that some of the laws that have been passed exclude farm workers or that they don't go far enough and that we need to create better protections where the protections are not strong enough and where there are no protections that we need to create new laws to help people be safe so they can work and live in our country with the same protections as any other citizen of this country this is a picture of Mary Bauer who was mentioned earlier this was a hearing that she attended she gave testimony on the situation of tomato workers in the state of Florida you know in the state of Florida some of you might be familiar with the coalition of farmers and they had a big victory recently where they were able to achieve a penny a pound more for farm workers picking tomatoes I think that's the next place that we have to use our energy and our voice not just with the politicians as I mentioned earlier you know each of us not just Mary Bauer not just those of us who have access to government officials have a role in terms of convincing our representatives about what we believe is right and good we have to have an extreme amount of power a penny a pound more for farm workers in Florida that was a huge fight it took many years to achieve a penny a pound more and you know I think that part of what we have to do as consumers is we have to let companies know that until we are in a situation where not only are the crops not being sprayed with harmful chemicals but the people who are picking the crops that are being sprayed with harmful chemicals we're not going to give them one penny more right? we're not going to give them another penny if they're not going to ensure that the workers who are bringing the food to our tables like the 150 women that we talked to we're not going to give them our money if they're not going to ensure that women like those women and the women around the country and the children and the men who are working in the fields if they're not going to do their part of the conditions well then I'm not interested in giving them my money and I think that as consumers we all have to take that position you know I have some dietary restrictions and I know that when I go to restaurants and when I go grocery shopping and things I look very closely at the label because I don't want to get sick and I look closely at labels for other good reasons other health reasons I want to know if my food how it's been processed and I want to know whether or not chemicals are being used but when are we going to get to the place when we're not asking just about what goes into the product that we're consuming when are we going to get to a place in our country when we're asking what is it that the workers who are bringing us the food are experiencing how are they being treated are they being paid are they being treated like slaves are they victims of human trafficking are they victims of sexual violence are the women not getting their own paycheck are women not being hired because they're being told that they're not good workers because men are the good workers and they aren't as strong or as skillful we don't ask those questions enough I think that there are definitely people who ask the questions and I think that there are organizations like the coalition who push companies to make changes and to give better conditions to workers through boycotts and things but I think that as a public we need to figure out a way that we start applying some pressure to these companies to say to them until you can verify until you can commit to ensuring that not only your products are not bad for me to consume but they're also not bad for the people who are bringing that food to my table then we're not going to give you our money and I think as consumers we have a lot of of weight and it's something very easy that we can do as people I think when we leave today you can access information about some of the boycotts that are going on and you can see some of the measures that are being taken against companies who are not responsible who are not following the laws but I don't think that consumer boycotts alone are going to solve the problems I think that consumer boycotts certainly have been a way that there have been changes made like the great boycott I think that we have to take our role as consumers very seriously but I also think that we have to take that together with an understanding that we have to commit to education we have to commit to reaching out to our politicians we have to use the resources that we have available to us that the farm workers who I represent and some of my other colleagues who are in the room represent they don't have that they don't feel that they have that resource they don't feel that they have the same kind of strength in their voice as we do and so in order to really make effective change going forward we have to educate ourselves in one another we have to talk to our politicians about what it is that we think they're doing right what it is that we think they're doing wrong why we think the laws are working and why the laws are not working and why we have to go out against anti-immigrant legislation and then we need to figure out how it is that we as individuals are going to address the companies and be supportive of the companies who are doing things the right way because there are companies who have made meaningful changes to improve the working conditions of their workers and those companies are the ones that we should be giving our money to those are the companies that we should be supportive of and for those that are not having some deeper conversations with us consumers to say we're not going to be supportive of you there is opportunity here whenever I meet people and they ask me what I do for a living it's sort of like a stop conversation situation hi I'm Monica what do you do for like oh that's usually how it goes it's not very uplifting but there is opportunity here right we've made changes things are getting better women like Guadalupe, Maria and Sonia and Sandra they're bringing lawsuits because they know that as human beings they deserve certain protections and they shouldn't be treated the way that they've been treated and there are groups that are doing education and there are forms like this that are happening there are changes being made and yeah we have a long way to go we're still not here right this is the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama we're not at a place yet where we can say justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream we're not there yet but we're moving forward we're making change we're making progress and each one of you in this room will join me in writing the next chapter of our civil rights history my work is extremely sad, hard and difficult and I'm very bad at the computer it is sad and difficult work but I'm proud to be able to say to you that I know that we've achieved justice for women and I know that that there's been something powerful and releasing a report like injustice in our plates a couple of the women who we interviewed for a report participated with us in some of the events that we did related to the report we had a press conference in DC when the report was released and there was a woman putting ideas from New York who attended and she talked about how she felt finally the first time that she'd been in the United States that she wasn't alone that she did have some support and that she did have a voice the report for a lot of the women that we interviewed was empowering positive change that women feel as though they're finally in a situation where they are being heard and that they can start organizing themselves and that they can start accessing resources those are positive things but we still have more work and we still have to write the next chapter of the civil rights of our civil rights history and the next time that we write the new chapter of our civil rights history then that chapter that there was a day when farm worker women were being sexually violated in the fields and there was a time when their weren't being paid and there was a time when they weren't believed to be good workers but that time is a time of the past and we are going to be able to write that chapter because of you and because of the farm worker women and because of the work that our organization does and because of the work at the center we're going to be able to write that chapter Yes, the question was whether or not we have copies of injustice in our plates in Spanish so that they can be distributed to farm worker allies and to others in the field and community members I suspect as well. We currently have an English version of the report which is in the back and you can take a copy if you'd like and we are in the process of having the entire report translated and we will have it soon and it will be available on our website. I believe it's going to be released in March but I'm happy to give you my card and you can email me and I can get you some copies. The bandana project is the question is SPLC related to the bandana project and the bandana project is a project that we started in 2007 and what it is is that farm worker women have talked about the fact that they use their clothes as weapons in the fields to guard off unwanted sexual attention and of course as a part of their coverings they also wear bandanas to cover their faces and so farm worker men and farm worker women wear long sleeve shirts and wear bandanas to protect them from the pesticides and to protect them from some of the other conditions that they're working under but one of the things that women have reported is that they use the bandanas to try to cover up as much of their face as possible so they won't get unwanted attention and so in 2007 we took the bandana as sort of the symbol of our movement to end workplace sexual violence and we launched a campaign where we've asked organizations around the country and now there have been organizations in other parts of the world who have participated in our bandana project and done public events where they've decorated bandanas and then displayed the bandanas and typically it's in conjunction with a presentation or some kind of training for the workers or for the community members and so that's a very long yes but yes and I'm not sure if you have materials related to the bandana project but for those people who want to do projects we send the bandana project kit to individuals which includes white bandanas to be decorated a CD with many materials that can be used for community education and outreach and some posters and action cards so if you would like a copy feel free to contact us it's also a free kit that is available to groups who would like to do the project yeah that's a great question and the women who we've represented typically have not gone back to that same place where the incident happened in particular the women who have been victim to sexual harassment you know they don't want to go back often when we met with the cases that we've handled and not I think I think the majority of the women were no longer working at those places so the sexual harassment that happened to them caused them to leave the company because they couldn't you know put up with it any longer and what and so in those cases the women were not working there and the cases where we've represented women who were experiencing sexual harassment or other forms of discrimination or other problems they typically chosen not to stay with their employers they've gone you know other places to work in some of the cases some of the women who we've represented because they were victims of crime some of the women were eligible for those who were undocumented some of the women who have been eligible for a special that visa eligible that victims of certain crimes are eligible for and so there's some people who have been able to acquire that remedy and in some cases the individuals that we've worked with have decided to go home you know we we've represented women in the law suits but we should what you should know is that you know we receive calls all the time from people who we educate about their rights and sort of the resources available to help them but they decided that they do not want to take legal action so part of what we do because we believe in a holistic model of representation is that we help the women get the services that they need and so sometimes the services that they need are you know health care counseling maybe they need relocation maybe we're safety planning with them to try to help them from experiencing further violence and so we help counsel those women and connect them with the resources they need but ultimately they choose not to take an illegal action because that's not something that they feel equipped to do or ready to do and so in those cases they're you know they're a number of people who go on with their lives maybe not working at that company anymore but they're like they're slowly putting themselves back together because of the violence they've experienced so you know the women that we represented are amazing and strong and they are healing and they are going forward with their lives and they're you know I've been so amazed by so many of them because they've sort of become spokespeople on this issue as well some of them have gone out and talked to community their community members about what their rights are in fact some of our outreach materials that we use for our work are materials that our clients recommended that we create so there's a material there's a book that we use it's called voices for justice in it in it we tell women stories almost every woman that's in that book is someone who I represented and the women have told their stories for the benefit of other women so that other women could know that they could take action and that they would could that they would live through it right that they that there was it sort of a light at the end of the tunnel and sort of and then aside from having the women stories on the flip side there's information about the rights that people had with respect to pay or discrimination or what have you so the women have you know their community activists now some of them and they're you know they're doing wonderful things but when you're a victim of sexual violence it's a long process to heal and it's a continuing process that's a great question the question is whether or not since 2003 when the project was created has there have we seen a rise in violence against migrant workers because of some of the anti-immigrant sentiment that currently exists and particularly with respect to those working along the border you know we don't have any data that can concretely show how things have changed because as I said there have only been a couple of studies that have been done but I can tell you from my work in doing outreach and in the representation of women that I do think that there's been an increase because what we're hearing more from the women who we have contact with is that now immigration threats of having people deported even if they even if they're not people who who could be deported you know they might be us citizens or maybe they're permanent residents or people who have status here in the country threats of immigration or a law enforcement activity against them is their their common threats are being made and those threats are being used to force the women to engage in sexual activity unwanted sexual activities with perpetrators I we've heard of situations in which perpetrators have told women that they if they did not do what they were being asked to do that they would have immigration and go after their relatives they would have immigration go into their neighborhoods you know in one case one of the perpetrators said that he would send immigration in to go and knock on every trailer door in the community where people were living so immigrant so I think that there has been an increase because now we see that perpetrators are essentially using immigration status in this anti immigrant sentiment in our country as a stick against the victims to force them to engage in unwanted sexual activity I'm not aware of a database like that I know that there's been some talk in the advocacy community about creating a label to put on products it would say a farm worker friendly and they would either have to be certain things that employers would have to assert and prove that they're complying with yes we're paying people our wages yes we're paying we're not discriminating what have you and if they're proven they're shown to be farm worker friendly then the label would go on certain products but as I know as I know at this moment there's not a database like that some there at a point in time the United Farm Workers on their website had information about people about companies that had engaged you know part they had contracts with them or they considered to be good companies but I'm not aware of sort of a national database thanks Trisha the question is what are the advantages to approaching these issues from a legal standpoint and I just have to ask for a point of clarification do you mean through litigation or do you mean through the enactment of different laws sure that's a good question I actually grappled with that when deciding to go to law school and you know ultimately what drove me to law school and made me decide that I wanted to be attorney was that I feel as though there is a way in which we can use the law to get a measure of justice for people whether it be by bringing a lawsuit and getting them a judgment in a case that we've won or you know in the cases that I handle sexual harassment cases that I handle a huge part of the relief that we're seeking is not monetary for the victim certainly they're entitled to relief under the law and we seek that for them but really I think that part of the importance in bringing the lawsuit isn't changing the practices for the companies forever so when we have a company that we sue we ask them as a part of our settlement to change their practices they have to change their policies they have to do certain trainings they need to create certain materials in the cases that we've done with where the US government has been involved the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission which enforces the anti-discrimination laws and investigates complaints we've litigated cases with the government and in those cases you know there's monitoring by the federal government for a period of years of those companies where they as a part of the settlement and so I think that that is an advantage because you can get relief for individuals who have been harmed and you also can change the way people are doing business but I think that honestly with these kinds of cases it we really need to be looking at it holistically because the legal piece is is important in terms of you know allowing people to assert their rights and get some sort of compensation for the harm that's been committed against them and changing practices but the women I represent have a lot of needs they need housing they need doctors they need they need counselors and so we really have to sort of be looking at this from a holistic perspective because otherwise the women aren't going to be able to really move forward in the way that that that they need to you know and we certainly don't make any determinations about what it is that anyone needs we let our clients tell us what it is that they need and then we help make the referrals as appropriate but I think that when you don't look at the other issues outside of the legal issues you know as an attorney if I'm only focused on the legal case and I and I don't pay attention to the fact that people need to be relocated because they're in danger or we need to do safety planning or what have you then the likelihood is that that individual will not continue with their case because they have to take care of their basic life needs first so we really need to be doing it together it's illegal and the social service sure so CNN heard that we were doing this event and they invited me to attend to go to their offices to do an interview actually following this so they are going to be you know focusing on this issue doing interviews so that they can air something for the nation to have a better understanding of what's happening and have more information about our report.