History has repeatedly shown that women are consistently involved in organizing and leading movements dedicated to social change, but their voices are often suppressed, set aside, or completely forgotten. The Persisterhood Project at George Mason aims to change that. Joining David Ramadan are two brilliant women behind it: Dr. Robbin Warner, Research Affiliate Faculty at the Schar School and Founder and Co-Director of the Persisterhood Project, and Abbi Tesreau, one of the project's Founding Student Researchers. They explore the initiative’s mission to archive inspiring stories of women activists from 2016 to the present, preserving their oral history for posterity’s sake. Robbin and Abbi also share why this project is needed now more than ever – when democracy and women’s voices are extremely at risk.
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This episode is about memory, politics, and who gets remembered. The Persisterhood Project is an oral history initiative launched at George Mason to collect and preserve the stories of women activists from 2016 to the present. Its premise is simple, but powerful. If women in political and grassroots movements do not tell their own story, too many of those stories will be lost.
Joining me is Dr. Robbin Warner, Research Affiliate Faculty at the Schar School and Founder and Co-Director of the Persisterhood Project, as well as Abbi Tesreau, one of the project's Founding Student Researchers and a student in my graduate American government class this semester. In this episode, we'll talk about why this project began, what it preserves, how oral history differs from the commentary or journalism, and how students can help build this archive of women's political experience. Dr. Warner, Abbi, welcome to the show.
Thank you.
Thank you for having us.
How The Persisterhood Project Preserves Women’s Stories
All right, let's start in the big picture here. The why it was started. Robbin, let's start from the beginning. What is the Persisterhood Project and what gap did you think was needed to be filled?
Thanks for asking. The Persisterhood Project is about collecting and preserving the stories of women who got active because staying quiet was no longer an option. For many, that moment came after the 2016 election, when attacks on women's rights, immigrants, voting rights, and freedom of the press made it clear that something was broken. Women stepped up, spoke out, and got to work.
History shows again and again that when change happens, women are there, organizing, leading, pushing movements forward, but too often our stories are overlooked. At the Persisterhood Project, we're not letting that happen again. Thanks to today's technology, Zoom and the cameras in our pockets, we can capture these stories easily and thoughtfully while the memories are still fresh.
Timing couldn't be more important. Right now, there are very real efforts to censor, rewrite, and erase parts of history. That's exactly why this project matters. When we record our stories, we help make sure they can't be erased. When we say preserve, we mean truly preserve. Social media is full of posts and videos documenting what's going on right now, but what's everywhere one day can disappear tomorrow.
That's why everything we collect, videos, audio, photos, is going into the archives at George Mason University. The archives ensures that our stories will still be accessible 10, 20, 50, 100 years from now. We couldn't have a better partner than the GMU Archives. If you've never dealt with archivists, you've missed them. They're incredible.
This is an official oral history and we're collecting these stories to be primary historical data, so everyone who takes part in this project signs a release at the end of the interview so the interview recording and material can be part of the Persisterhood Collection. Our vision is really simple and bold. A living archive where women's voices are heard, remembered, and celebrated now and for years to come.
I'm sure it's an amazing work, but I'm curious. What makes it really an oral history project rather than a media project or documentary effort or political archive? In a looser sense, you're collecting information, putting it there. How is this different?
It's the way the interviews are conducted. Often times, someone goes into an interview with the preconceived research question or preconceived idea of what they want to talk about and have a conversation with the person they're interviewing. With oral history, the interviewer is really a listener. We start off with some questions to guide, but it's really to let the person tell their stories.
It's not about me as the interviewer and saying, “I'm really interested in this. Let's steer the conversation that way.” My job is to be the active listener and to make sure that they feel open to tell their story, not the story I want to hear. It's actually very hard for people to interview that way because often times someone will tell a story and you're like, “I’ve got one too,” and you break in. With oral history, it's about sitting back and listening.
Robbin’s Work With Grassroots Environmental Justice Movement
In addition to being a listener, you wear a lot of hats, Robbin. Faculty affiliate, activist, organizer, co-Founder of the Postcards4VA, now Co-Director of this project. How did your work lead to this Persisterhood? Tell us a little bit about your background and in what brought you here now.
Actually, believe it or not, my dissertation, which rarely ever happens. Usually when we write a dissertation, it's on some very arcane topic and no one ever reads it but your mom.
I'm not sure my mom read mine.
I have a PhD in Folklore and American studies. I was very interested in studying contemporary society anthropologically. Folklore let you do that. I ended up writing my dissertation on the rise of the grassroots environmental justice movement in the ‘80s. I spent time interviewing like the Love Canal activists way back when.
Basically, I got very steeped into social justice and organizing and social movements and my question was, how, why did people's worldview change? Why did these women who had never voted before, all of a sudden start chaining themselves to the mayor's desk? The simple answer ended up being when you're personally affected, you will do something and, in this case, it was mothers with dying children.
If a mother's kid is dying and they know they're dying because they bought a home in a housing development and letting their child play in the dirt meant that they were letting their child play in poison and that's why their kid died, these mothers just were unstoppable. That was my background in the ‘80s. Come up and I’ve been a faculty member, I taught at George Mason in the English Department, loved it there.
Tweet: Grassroots activists are not getting recognition for all that they are doing, especially older women.
I moved on to George Washington University because as we all know in academia to move up you often have to move over. I stayed associated with George Mason through the National Writing Project all these years. When Trump was elected and the women's march happened, I saw early on the beginning of a movement because I had studied so many movements historically, it was very easy to see that a movement was bubbling.
Why? It’s because all of a sudden, people start talking about a march, there was no organization actually producing the march. People were talking about it. Here I live in Alexandria, Virginia. My sister-in-law in Portland tells me she's flying out with her two daughters-in-law, my cousin in Boston is flying down and all these people were just coming together and doing it.
There was no organizing effort. For me, a movement is forming. Right away, I knew something was happening bigger than itself. I have gotten involved in many ways in it. Through postcards, through my organizing, but with this project, as we started moving along, I realized that the story of the grassroots women was absent in the press.
For example, in 2017, Northam won for governor. It was an incredible grassroots effort to get all those delegates to win and Northam. I'm at a debrief. His campaign's on the stage and they're saying, “We don't know how we did it.” All these activists were in the audience going like, “We know how we did it, what are we, chopped liver?”
I kept seeing that again and again, what do they say, failure's an orphan but the victor has a million. I just kept seeing the grassroots activists not getting recognition for all that they were doing, especially the women, and especially older women, because older women are invisible. I put all that together and I thought, I went to graduate school in folklore, spent lots of time doing oral history and all my girlfriends are professional oral historians, so I did the old girlfriend routine. I got all my girlfriends together and said, “What do you think?” They all said, “Great, we're in.”
Launching The Project Within Schar School
I can feel the passion in what you're working on there. Let's bring it back to Mason. What does it mean to have this project rooted at George Mason and within the Schar School ecosystem in particular?
Start with Mason. Mason being the big public university in Virginia, so much of the activism in America now started in Virginia. I thought it only made sense that it would be here. I can't not say that my warm feelings about Mason didn't impact that so I’ll put that on the table. I knew it was an outstanding institution and they would do a good job.
I also met Bonnie and the more I learned about what was going on in Schar and having been to a lot of events at Schar, you do the debrief every year after the election, I realized you really you understood what happens in politics and how what is reported in the press is not always what's happening and you bring people in to talk about it. You are very much the center of what's going on. Not that they aren't doing stuff at UVA and other schools.
Do you see this project, the Persisterhood Project, primarily as a preservation or is it also a form of civic education and if so how can it be used?
In terms of research, I think we need to capture this for dissertations for years to come, and we're gathering primary data here. This project is maybe another level of it will be to analyze it, but just to have a place where it will be and that people can come and read the stories about what happened. One, it's primary data.
In terms of analysis, I can't wait till we have hundreds of interviews so we can start looking at it. Even early on, you can start seeing the patterns to come about it. I gave a talk at a high school here in Virginia in Loudoun, Rock Ridge High School, and then from that, I met there were quite a few young adult authors who write about women, who were all like, “When can we get at it,” because they were thinking what great characters we can use by looking at this. I think there's going to be so many uses, but right now, it's primary data.
How Abbi Became A Founding Researcher Of The Project
Loudoun is where I'm located and that's in my backyard. I know that high school well. Let me get Abbi involved here. Abbi, I know you as one of my students, a brilliant one if I may say. Tell us a little bit and tell our readers a little bit about you and your background first, and then I’ll get a couple of questions for you.
I have studied at Mason for the past few years. I was in the undergraduate program which I just graduated from in December 2025 with government international relations. Now I'm pursuing my Master's here in the Political Science program. I’ve gotten involved in research on campus in several different modes. I was part of the Honors College research group and I’ve worked with Robbin and Professor Sabel on the GAP Center and Persisterhood.
You were fortunate enough to be one of the founding researchers on this project. How did you get involved and what drew you to it?
I got to be in this through the URAP program at Schar, the undergraduate research assistant program. I applied, I saw the posting for an oral history project based on women in politics. I didn't know a whole lot more than that when I applied to it, but I really enjoy history, so that was a key part of it for me. I wanted to look into that. Also, I wanted to help emphasize women's role in government and politics. I applied for it and Dr. Sabel thankfully took me on along with one other student researcher and that's how I got into Persisterhood.
For the readers that think oral history research is basically recording interviews and filing stuff away. What's actual student work is like?
What I did as like the first part of it, we were trying to flesh out the idea of what Persisterhood was going to look like. I did a lot of background research on several other oral histories through like the Smithsonian archives, PBS archives, things like that to look at what was good in those, what did we want to take from that, how did we want to format our oral histories and then also looking for potential partnerships for the project.
What surprised you the most when you started the work?
I think the whole work really surprised me because I was someone who thought, “I’ll just be doing interviews,” and formatting videos or whatnot. I didn't really know much about the background of how to create oral histories, so all of that initial research that we did really surprised me.
Choosing Stories To Record From 2016
All right, now get a couple question to both of you. You take it whoever would like to take it first. How do you decide whose stories to record?
We're not doing life histories. We're just doing stories from 2016 through now.
You're not going to do every story from 2016.
No, people have to choose to want to be part of it, and our methodology is to let people interview each other. In oral history, you always have to establish rapport. This way, they're already friends and they go through a training on how the project works as well as how to interview and then they each get a time and we've set it up to make it as technically easy as possible so that they can just go on Zoom and everything's recorded.
Tweet: In oral history, you always have to establish rapport.
Now, whose story do we want? Since we're looking for primary data, if somebody was active, they self-select. They have to come to the orientation and find a partner to be their interview partner. We have yet to have an interview that's come in that hasn't just wowed us with what people have done in it. In terms of outreach, the first year we spent building it and being able to scale it up. We're now at that point where we're promoting it more because we can scale up because we know exactly the whole process from somebody saying they're interested in to having the interview and the photos ready to submit into the archive in it.
I like the idea and I think that makes it powerful that people interview each other here. Besides that, what makes for really powerful interview in oral history?
I’ve been doing oral history for a long time and I’ve yet to listen to an interview that didn't have a great moment. Our interviews we ask them to schedule two hours. Normally, they're about an hour, hour and a half. They don't really take the whole time, but we want to make sure there is that. There's usually a moment. One story that's really memorable.
A lot of the stories are interesting, but I have found a snippet is what I call them of every single interview that we've used for other presentations to tell stories. Some people their story that really moves them is what I call their genesis story. How they got involved. For other people, the story is how they came to understand what's going on and their role in it. We've interviewed a lot of people who ran for office and to hear them talk about what inspired them to run and why they ran. I'd say a good part of them didn't win, but the impact that had and what they did next. Really, I haven't had a dud yet.
I'm sure you're happy that you haven't had a dud yet. Abbi, what moments there, powerful moments or so that got your attention and are you seeing any themes emerging from these interviews?
Yeah, I think the powerful moments like Robbin was talking about of why they decided to start running or what spurred them to say, “I need to get involved now.” I think there's a common theme among all of those, there was some moment that either they were very upset about their daughter's future or something that they wanted to get into being taken away or they got angry they got fed up and they said, “We need to go change this,” and they took the first steps. I think that was the common theme that I found through a lot of these stories. They finally said, “Enough is enough, I'm going to be the change.”
Why Should A Mason Student Care About This Project
All right, let's talk a little bit about why does this matter? Robbin, why should a Mason student in public policy, government, history, gender studies, or even communications care about this project?
First, historically. This is the first time in my lifetime where history has actually been attacked and being pushed back. In fact, the American Historical Society actually issued a statement and they don't do this thing, but a bunch of academic organizations got together and made a very strong statement about the erasing of history. Once it's collected and housed, it's very easy to try to get to wipe it out what somebody isn't holding the documents. We made sure we're collecting our stories so they are in a place. Right now, it's the political tenor of that.
Historically, I'm with you. From a student point of view, why should they care? They may like you and like a story, like Abbi, but why should they care?
This is an opportunity to capture history that's happening right now around them. Often times, we don't capture history till it's in the past. We have the technology to interview people who are doing something that's going to have a profound effect and be remembered in American history. This time period right now will be remembered the way people think of World War II or the right after the Civil War. This is a major moment in American history and we have the opportunity to capture it. These students they lived it.
Tweet: We often do not capture history until it is in the past.
How is it a major moment?
We have not been on the precipice of losing our democracy this close in my lifetime, which is a lot longer than today's students, but they're living through it. This is their JFK moment. There are always moments in history. This moment in time is going to be that way. They can be a part of capturing it. Having the stories and every interview that they help with, that's one more story they can tell.
All those books that have been written about World War II, all of that, this time period's going to be addressed just like that. In the past, we waited to collect this primary data until people were old. Memory changes over time. Being able to talk to people who have a profound effect on what's happening now while it's still fresh in their mind is it.
For example, you talk to people about the ‘60s movements and they think everyone got along so well back then. I'm like, “Really? Have you ever looked at the primary documents?” We tend to romanticize things, everybody got along.
Love, pot and sex. That was the ‘60s.
Right, but now you can talk to people and they'll tell you what went on, very candidly.
Abbi, if one of your colleagues, if one of our students at Schar or any of the other schools read this episode and say,” I want in,” what are the real entry points? What should they be doing?
If they want in on the Persisterhood Project specifically, you can go to the website, you can sign up to be a volunteer, you can list your strengths, what you're good at, and they'll email you back, hook you up, get you in the project, get you going. If you're interested in things a little more broadly along the gender and policy line, getting in with the GAP Center, going to their events, or emailing Dr. Sabel. She runs the GAP Center or any professor in there saying, “I want to help with research or I have a research topic that I want to get into.” You just got to reach out and they're going to try to get you in wherever you want because they want more students involved.
If they say, “This is interesting, I want in because I'm interested,” but then they're having dinner at home and they share this with their parents or with their colleagues and roommates in their dorm and somebody says, “Yeah, it's interesting, but what skills are you going to learn from this?
You can get a lot of skills out of this depending on what you want from it. For me, I got a lot more research skills out of it, specifically with the methodology and learning about oral histories. You can get skills on marketing, you can get skills on leading focus groups. It's whatever you want to get out of it, they'll help you get that.
Future Of The Persisterhood Project
Robbin, looking ahead, where do you want this project to go?
My hope is after we get to a critical mass, we will be able to move from the collection stage to the promotion stage of people using it. I have no doubt it'll be used for dissertations, that's an easy one. I look forward to having the archive call me, historical fiction writers and historians are using it and wouldn't it be great if people went to it because they want to do documentary movies? Now, this is primary data so people are being interviewed on Zoom. Not always the best quality, but it's their first chance to hear these stories. They would have find more people to interview in a much better quality.
Abbi, 2, 3 years from now, or 5, after you finish your Master's degree, hopefully you went to a Doctorate because I'd love to address you at Dr. Tesreau one day, and you're reflecting on this. What are you going to remember?
I'm going to remember just the amount of people that I was able to meet and hear their stories in get a lot of inspiration from these women who came before me of how I hope to get involved and be involved just like they are in the future.
Discussion Wrap-up And Closing Words
Any final thoughts?
I guess my final thought is that this is not a project for people who have had necessarily a long life of activism. This is we're capturing the activism at the moment. If you're organizing on campus, you're helping people with voting, you're thinking of running for office. All of these stories are worthwhile collecting now. We hope you would want to be a part of it not just as a researcher but also as a narrator.
Tweet: Capturing activism at the moment and the stories behind it is a worthwhile mission to do right now.
Abbi, final thoughts?
I think just echoing what Robbin said, get involved, go visit the website. If you're doing activism right now on campus, you can be interviewed, you can be a part of this story.
Dr. Warner, Abbi, thank you both. This is exactly the kind of project that shows what universities are supposed to do, preserve memory, deepen public understanding, create meaningful opportunities for students to do real work. For our readers, the Persisterhood Project is collecting and preserving the stories of women activists from 2016 to now. Mason students and members of the wider community have been invited to learn how they can get involved. Until next time, stay informed, stay engaged, and make sure somebody's telling the story.
Important Links
- Persisterhood Project
- Dr. Robbin Warner on LinkedIn
- Abbi Tesreau on LinkedIn
- Postcards4VA
- Women’s Summit
- Friday Power Lunch
- The Grassroots Connector
- "Who is Going to Tell Our Story? We Are!" Persisterhood Oral History Project - Spotlight #1
- Persisterhood Oral History Project – Spotlight #2 Michele Hornish and Linda Meigs
About Robbin Warner
Robbin Warner, Ph.D., is a Research Affiliate Faculty member with the Gender and Policy Center. She is the founder and co-director of the Persisterhood Oral History Project, which collect and preserves the stories of women activists since 2016.
She also co-founded Postcards4VA, the first statewide grassroots postcard-writing organization, helping to spark the national postcard-writing movement. In addition, she produces the annual Women’s Summit (now in its 10th year) and helps produce the weekly video podcast, Friday Power Lunch, that amplifies the voices of Virginia grassroots leaders in politics, culture, and women driving change.
Robbin has taught folklore and writing at George Mason University and writing at George Washington University. She has published extensively and authored the first books on internet advertising and nonprofit use of the internet. She currently serves on the editorial board of the Grassroots Connector Substack.
She holds a Ph.D. in Folklore and American Studies from Indiana University, where her dissertation examined the women who launched the grassroots environmental justice movement in the 1980s.
About Abbi Tesreau
Abbi Tesreau is a graduate student at George Mason University studying Political Science. She is a founding student researcher for the Persisterhood Project and is involved with the Schar School’s Gender and Policy Center as a student organizer.
Her research has focused on contemporary American political issues, such as book bans and women in activism. Abbi graduated from George Mason in 2025 with a degree in Government and International Politics and a minor in French.