Five years ago this week, NY City Council Member Julissa Ferreras called the first-ever hearing on street harassment. My first book was used in the briefing papers and I was the first to testify. More than a dozen of us, ranging in age from 14 to 52 and representing many races and genders, gave testimonies about street harassment and how it impacts our lives. The hearing was covered by scores of outlets and CM Ferreras has remained committed to the issue in various ways ever since.
One of our former volunteers Raquel Reichard works for Latina.com and did a great interview with CM Ferreras this week. Here is an excerpt, but the whole interview is worth a read!
“In 2010, when you were chair of the committee on women’s issues, you organized the first-ever city council hearing on street harassment. Why was it important for you to do this?
As young girls, we are taught to ignore this behavior, but then we are told to not put up with domestic violence when we are grown up. How does that make sense? So, for me, it was a great opportunity to share with women that their situation mattered.
I had just gotten elected in November of 2009, so I felt I had the opportunity to use my authority as a council member to have a hearing on this topic. Seventy-five women came up to testify. Women took time off from their day, sat through testimonies and talked about street harassment, because it’s an important conversation.
How can governments make streets safer for women?
For starters, it’s important to create a space where we can hear women speak about the problem. When I held the hearing, I heard stories about girls and women being harassed when walking up the stairs to elevated trains. If you stand underneath the stairs, you can look up the girls’ skirts. Maybe we need to rethink the way we build train stations and the stairs, and that becomes a governmental issue. Also, here in New York, we deal with Daylight Savings Time, meaning it gets dark when we still have whole days ahead of us. And we know, from studies, that women feel unsafe in dark settings. So we need to work on improving lighting in neighborhoods, and we need to work with small businesses that might leave their lights on throughout the night. I’ve done this in the past, and bodegas are willing to leave their lights lit if it’s for the safety of their community
But also, we need to get police departments to take this issue seriously, to listen to women and take their reports.”
The city council hearing is featured in my book Stop Global Street Harassment: Growing Activism Around the World (Praeger 2015) and I will be talking about it, among other issues, at my NYC book event at Bluestockings on Nov. 5.
Also, if you’re in Washington, DC, you can participate in a city council roundtable on Dec. 3, organized by Collective Action for Safe Spaces. Info.
