Domestic violence impacts 1 in 4 women (and many men). Like street harassers, perpetrators of domestic violence engage in the harassing or violent behaviors not because of anything their target has done but because of their desire to exert power over the person. And most abusers, just like most harassers, get away with it, in part because of our culture of gender inequality and disrespect for women and the lack of prevention methods or penalties for abusers.
Fortunately, many organizations, people, and even governments speak out against domestic violence and work to make it unacceptable. October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month and the government of New York City is taking action.
Tonight, you can help the Manhattan Borough President’s Office Shine the Light on Domestic Violence at Times Square in New York City. Meet there at 6:30 p.m. to hear speakers and receive information on what domestic violence is and what to do about it.
Stop Street Harassment is one of the many co-sponsors of the event and two of SSH’s male allies/volunteers (who each wrote male ally blog posts earlier this year: Alan Kearl | Nick W) will attend and help pass out informational packets, so look for them and say hello!
Alan says
I attended this inspirational event. There were about a thousand people there for specifically this event. It was really neat to see many of the electronic Times Square bill boards in purple colors to honor the event, the typical red in the Bank of America signage was purple as were the letters in “Forever 21”. And it was fascinating that within five seconds of the end of the program, all the purple lights instantly went on to a more commercial advertising color.
There were city and state officials, activists and survivors of DV who all spoke, about eight of them for a total of 30 minutes. The rain, predicted all day, was not evident until about 10 minutes after the program ended.
The talks were impressive and awe inspiring. was uplifted and motivated by being there with so many people committed to making a change and ending abuses to women.
Thank you for this website and for the many, many posts. You are heroines for us otherwise, lug-headed men. I hope I may never cause fear or uncomfortableness to any woman or group of women.
HKearl says
Thank you for attending the event on behalf of Stop Street Harassment, Alan and for the report on how it went. It’s very encouraging to see the NYC government and the businesses with billboards at Times Square address the serious issue of domestic violence with the event.