Hollaback! Belfast is a new group in Belfast, Northern Ireland and they jump-started their chapter during International Anti-Street Harassment Week!
Chapter director Helen shares what they did (view their photo album):
“As chalk walking isn’t legal in Belfast City Centre, we came up with an alternative. We made our own chalk boards using cardboard and chalkboard paint and made portable-chalkboards.
The Student Union at Queen’s University, Belfast were kind enough to let us use their grounds to chalk and discuss with passers by the idea behind Anti Street-Harassment week.
One in particular passerby argued that we were making the place ugly with our slogans. His argument was that as a tax payer, he had a bigger say in what happened at the publicly funded Student Union. I informed him that I too was a tax payer, as well as a alum of QUB and so had also paid for the SU with my university fees. This seemed to placate him enough to allow me to be there, and while he disagreed with my method, after a long discussion, he agreed with our message.
Other local cafes and business’ around the city allowed us to take over their chalk boards and discuss street harassment with customers and passersby. Nearly everyone we spoke with recognized that street harassment is a problem, but had no idea how to solve it.
It was a really successful day as it gave us a lot of ideas on how to tackle street harassment in Belfast, and raised some awareness on the virality of the problem.”
