This April, through the efforts of Loren Redwood (Ph.D. candidate, American studies) and in honor of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, WSU students participated in the Bandana Project, a national program whose goal is to raise awareness about the sexual exploitation of farmworkers.
A student poses with her bandana.
More than 100 organizations from across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Panama host community events where advocates, individuals, and supporters decorate white bandanas with words of encouragement and inspirational art and display them in public to raise awareness.
The bandana was chosen as a symbol of resistance for the project because immigrant farmworkers often use the scarves in the field to protect themselves from violence and to disguise the fact that they are women.
Participating students at WSU were enrolled in instructor Kristine Kellejian's (Ph.D. candidate, English) introductory women's studies course, where they were asked to complete a social action project. The assignment had students go beyond the bounds of the classroom, taking action to address gender oppression in their communities by donating time to a project, writing about their experience, and sharing it in class.
Kellejian found that participating in the project was a powerful experience for students.
"My students learned a great deal about applying concepts from class to a problem in the world that affects people," Kellejian said. "They were proud to have participated, and I was proud of their active commitment to others."
"I barely knew this problem existed before," said freshman Megan Bonny in her final presentation. "Now I have more of an understanding of why we need to stop this abuse . . . Immigrant farmworker women cannot do it alone, and most of the time they are put in impossible situations."
Some of the bandanas decorated and displayed on campus by WSU students.
The Bandana Project was launched in June 2007 as a part
of a national initiative to end workplace sexual violence
against women farmworkers. It is funded by the Southern
Poverty Law Center and sponsored by Esperanza, a legal
advocacy project dedicated to the representation of
farmworkers and other low-wage immigrant women who are
victims of sexual violence in the workplace.
In 2008, Redwood was selected to be a part of an international study funded by the Ford Foundation. Titled "Low Wage Work, Migration, and Gender," the project provided funding for a portion of Redwood's dissertation research involving immigrant women laborers.
That led Redwood to Esperanza, where she learned of the Bandana Project while conducting a personal interview with founder Mónica Ramírez.
Redwood's interest in holding an event on the WSU campus was immediate and aligned with the project's goal of adding more academic communities to the ranks of its partner organizations.
"I began my organizing efforts for the project early this year," said Redwood. "In an effort to bring 'the global to the local,' I chose to recruit students to help facilitate the event."
"This experience was an eye-opening one for me, and a sobering one at that," said junior Kayleen Pieper, a human development major. "To say that I had no idea that immigrant woman workers were being sexually exploited was an understatement. Once I was informed of the seriousness of the problem, I greatly enjoyed bringing this information to others."
All bandanas made by WSU students, faculty, and staff will become part of the Southern Poverty Law Center's permanent collection on display at the Civil Rights Memorial Center in Montgomery, Alabama.
Loren Redwood holds an M.S.W. from California State University, Sacramento, and worked for more than a decade as a social worker before returning to graduate school at WSU in 2003. She expects to complete her dissertation, "Immigrant Labor Exploitation and Resistance in the Post-Katrina Deep South: Success through Legal Advocacy," in August.
The Chronicle, College of Liberal Arts, Washington State University