Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Archives for February 2015

Kenya: Outreach around Street Harassment

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SPS Kennya’s outreach event

Last week, SSH’s 2014 Safe Public Spaces Mentoring team in Kenya was finally able to hold their event. Originally, they planned to hold an awareness campaign on their ferry in December, a site of much harassment, but it has been too unsafe to do so in their region due to terrorism. Other challenges included their banners were stolen, and the replacement venue was in a less populated area so their turnout was lower than anticipated.

But, they persevered and were able to set up a tent in Mombasa. They had peer educators and youth outreach workers who spoke with 475 community members about street harassment across two days. They had a loudspeaker that attracted people to them, women were fully in support of the campaign and some men said “they will from now on respect women and protect them from harassment.”

Organizer Mr. Cosmus W. Maina, Project-Co-ordinator-TEEN WATCH CENTRE, said that going forward they hope to train community outreach workers about street harassment, hold a sensitization forum for community stakeholders and police officers, and hold community road shows.

 

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Making Street Harassment Connections in South Africa

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Hello from South Africa! I am here for my new job with the Aspen Institute’s New Voices fellowship. One of our current year fellows is Elsa D’Silva, an amazing anti-street harassment activist in India who co-founded Safe City two years ago.

One of last year’s fellows is writer Sisonke Msimang who wrote a very powerful New York Times oped last month on street harassment and backlash against African women advancing. She was briefly in town today and I got to meet with her, too.

Meeting role models, allies, compatriots in efforts to stop street harassment always makes me so happy 🙂

 

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Romania: Street harassment in rural Romania

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Simona-Maria Chirciu, Bucharest, Romania, SSH Blog Correspondent

Photo by the author

I want to share with you all one of my experiences of street harassment. It was so awful and terrifying. I was in the village where I grew up and where I used to go and relax in the summer. Is a small village with a predominantly older population. There are some teenager and people in their 20’s and only about 12 children.

I was walking down the rural road on my way to my grandma’s house. It was dark, because in some Romanian villages the light goes on after 10 p.m. Four boys where following me that night but I didn’t see them and I didn’t care about that. I was in a bad mood that night and I did not respond to their catcalling me and leering at me when I was passing by.

When I got back from my grandma’s house and I was going to my uncle’s house, not so far from her house, those guys started to throw rocks at me. It was very dark, I had my hands full with apples, a big bottle of honey and my mobile phone as I was on the phone with my boyfriend. I managed to avoid being hit, but I yelled at them that I’m not scared of them. Then they started to walk behind me, so I stopped and let them pass, to let them be in front of me because  then I felt safer. But I was wrong! They laughed and tried to intimidate me. I was so nervous; a feminist and activist feeling unsafe and vulnerable in front of those guys!

Most of the time when I get catcalled I respond and I wanted to do that then too! My boy friend heard all of the discussion and tried to calm me down, demanding me to let them be and to stay quiet. But I was furious! This wasn’t the first time I was harassed in my village. I didn’t even know them so why were they acting like this toward me? I felt the urge to respond back! So I started acting fiercely, saying that I don’t fear them and that they are just some dumb harassers. One of them got nervous and started threating me, saying to shut up. I didn’t want to shut up. Why for?

He approach me and threatened me again. So I screamed out in his face that I’m not afraid. So immediately he punched me very hard in the face. Twice! I tried to fight back, but my hands were full. So he pulled my hair in a very brutal manner that I felt my cervical spine snapped. Then he put me on the ground and punched me in the face and the head. Then he and his friends left… while I was laying there, in acute pain. But I didn’t want to feel a victim so I managed to get up, to grab my telephone and other things and I faked that I was calling the Police. They heard and started running. Nobody heard my scream even though people from rural Romania are so curious and always behind the fences, looking on the street to see what’s happening and the next day to gossip about it. But when it comes to violence against women, they do not care!

After a short time, Police came and said to me: “Come on miss, stop crying, it’s not so bad, you’re overreacting!”

I had a swollen cheek and blood came out of my mouth, my hair was damaged. I was in shock! They blamed me for that incident. The officers heard all of my declarations and the guy that hit me, fled. When I confronted the Policeman he said and did nothing about it. Moreover he said the one that hit me me has mental disabilities and he can’t be punished and that he beats his mother and harasses other women too. And because I am not from that village, the Policeman said the declaration has no value if I want to press charges and I can’t come back here every month. For one week my cervical spine was all swollen and sore. I didn’t manage to move my head even an inch. Everybody in my family said to me that was my fault, a girl must never argue with a guy and why I was wandering in the village after dark? Why couldn’t I just mind my own business? Ohhh! All this discourse discouraged me so I didn’t continue with the Police complaint.

Even now, two years after the incident, sometimes my head hurts in those places where I was hit and once more I get terrified when I remember the hate in his eyes towards me. The very cherry on top was that a few weeks from that incident an unknown mobile phone number sent me messages like “I know you! How are you, you sweet girl” and then called me.. It was a familiar voice: it was that Policeman from my village, the one that took my declaration and said to me that I was overreacting! I threatened to report him and he stopped, but still I was petrified that he did this!

This experience gave me the motivation to fight harder against street harassment. Harassers don’t stop easily, so we keep on fighting!!

Simona is the Vice President of a feminist NGO – FILIA Center and a PhD student in Political Sciences, working on a thesis on street harassment in Bucharest. You can follow her on Facebook.

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Collaboration with Lyft

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Lyft connects people who need a ride with trained community drivers. Along with Collective Action for Safe Spaces and Hollaback!, next month SSH will be collaborating with Lyft on creating sexual harassment training videos for their drivers. They are also joining the White House It’s On Us campaign to address sexual violence. We are thrilled that Lyft is prioritizing this issue and committing to creating safer vehicles for passengers and drivers alike.

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SSH in Tucson and Toronto

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This week, SSH board member Manuel Abril distributed SSH materials in Tucson at an important conference. From Manuel:

“The Annual Youth and Peace Conference (YPC) is a unique Tucson event empowering youth to become courageous leaders and creative peace builders in our community. Youth violence is still considered by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to be an epidemic problem in America. Arizona’s youth violence and homicide rates are higher than the national average. I am an organizer of the Peace Conference but used my presence at the event to promote Stop Street Harassment’s mission as street harassment is often a young person’s introduction to the violence of public space. Public space is also the stage in which youth are called upon to internalize and enact their own marginalization when they curb or constrain their own movement to be safe.”

In mid-February, I spoke to a packed room at Centennial College in Toronto. Afterward, students could write pro-respect, anti-harassment messages on a poster for their campus.

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