Cloquet’s Emma Swanson was fiddling with some scraps of paper after making a sign advertising a special at Bearaboo Coffee.
Swanson, an incoming senior at Cloquet High School, has been working at Bearaboo since the winter when her parents bought the Stanley Avenue coffee shop.
After finishing the sign, she started rearranging the scraps and using a silver marker to draw designs on the black paper. As she played with the design, she started to see something that looked familiar.
“Like a lot of the things I do, it just came to me,” Swanson said. “I took a step back and I was like ‘Wow, that looks like Rosie the Riveter.’”
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“Rosie the Riveter” is a World War II-era cultural icon who represents the women who went to work in factories and shipyards building munitions and war supplies after men left their jobs to join the military, according to the History Channel's website . The war-time poster produced by J. Howard Miller in 1943 depicting a woman flexing her muscle and saying “We Can Do It!” became a symbol used to promote feminism starting in the 1980s.
Swanson added the iconic slogan in her own bubble and felt she had something that would resonate in a world dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and widespread protests against racial injustice.
“I think right now, with COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter, it’s important to remember we can all do it together,” she said.
Swanson hopes her symbol can bring a little hope during a trying time and, more importantly, help bring about social justice reform in her community and beyond.
Swanson put the design on T-shirts and stickers, selling shirts for $20 and stickers for $2 each. To help bring about some of the changes she’s advocating for, Swanson is donating a portion of the proceeds to Cloquet’s REACH Mentoring Program.
The shirts and stickers are available for purchase at Bearboo.
