Her mother was 5 years old when she was first taken to the cherry fields in Michigan; her father was 8 when he started picking cotton in Missouri. Monica Ramirez has spent a lifetime watching farmworkers sow their American Dream in a country more likely to value their labor than their humanity. 

She was 14 when she started speaking up about those injustices. When her local paper, the Fremont News-Messenger in Ohio, failed to acknowledge the farmworkers returning to town to work the fields, Ramirez got on her bike, pedaled over to the paper and confronted the editor. “Well, why don’t you write about it?” the editor told her. From ages 14 to 21, she wrote about the plight of farmworkers, a focus that would turn into a career as a civil rights lawyer. 

Much of her work has focused on the epidemic of sexual violence against farmworker women. It’s personal, she said: “From the time I was little, I knew about violence and I knew what it did to families.

In 2003, Ramirez founded the first legal project in the country focused on addressing sexual violence and gender discrimination against farmworker women. She dedicated it to her older sister, Luisa, who was a survivor. 

Since then, she has scaled the initiative and founded others, including the nonprofits Justice for Migrant Women in 2014 and Poderistas, which she co-founded in 2020 to amplify the power of Latinas in the United States. 

She has not stopped writing. In 2018, as actors began to speak up about harassment they faced, Ramirez wrote a letter detailing how the problem went beyond Hollywood. It was published in TIME, went viral and sparked the Times Up movement. 

“Dear Sisters,” she wrote. “We do not work under bright stage lights or on the big screen. We work in the shadows of society in isolated fields and packinghouses that are out of sight and out of mind for most people in this country. Your job feeds souls, fills hearts and spreads joy. Our job nourishes the nation with the fruits, vegetables and other crops that we plant, pick and pack.

She continued: “In these moments of despair, and as you cope with scrutiny and criticism because you have bravely chosen to speak out against the harrowing acts that were committed against you, please know that you’re not alone. We believe and stand with you.”