Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

2015: 20 of Our Achievements

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THANK YOU to everyone who made our work possible this year! Here are 20 highlights from this year.

You can read more and see photos to go along with each one via our Annual Report.

Programs:

  1. Organized the largest International Anti-Street Harassment Week to date from April 12-18! Groups in 41 countries participated through marches, rallies, workshops, sidewalk chalking, putting up street signs, launching anti-harassment campaigns, flyering, tweet chats, and more. Thanks to our campaign manager Britnae Purdy for her work.
  2. Worked with three cohorts of blog correspondents (more than 35 people from around the world) across the year who wrote articles about street harassment and activism to stop it in their communities.
  3. Funded four Safe Public Spaces Mentoring teams in France, India, Romania, and USA. This fall and winter they’ve held art exhibits, high school workshops, sidewalk chalking, and street demonstrations. Our 2014 teams from Nicaragua and Kenya also completed their projects this past spring.
  4. Published around 150 contributor street harassment stories on our blog.
  5. As part of our “Campaigns Against Companies,” we teamed up with Care2 and CASS to create a petition asking the American restaurant chain TGI Friday’s to pull a disgusting ad that trivializes street harassment. More than 25,000 people signed it.
  6. Redesigned our website, thanks to donations and the work of web designer Sarah Marie Lacy.

Advised, Gave Input, and Cited By:

  1. Advised Lyft on anti-harassment issues for their drivers, in collaboration with Collective Action for Safe Spaces (CASS).
  2. Worked with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) and CASS on the 2nd wave of anti-harassment ads on the Metro system, did an outreach day at five metro stops, presented on the campaign to WMATA staff, and crafted a survey instrument that will be used to survey riders about sexual harassment in 2016. The findings will help inform our 3rd wave of ads.
  3. Met with and advised the DC police gay and lesbian liaison unit division chief and Las Vegas Rape Crisis Center staff.
  4. Entities including the following used or cited our work: the DC City Council, DC Mayor’s office, Jeremy Corbyn (a Labour leadership candidate in the UK), Fiona Patten (a member of Parliament in Victoria, Australia), NYU, and Safe Routes to School National Partnership.
  5. Received more than 85 media mentions, including coverage in the Washington Post, Guardian, Real Simple magazine, Cosmo magazine, Voice of America, The Economist, WNYC public radio, Latina.com, and the Irish Times.

Events, Rallies, Conferences and Marches:

  1. Board members spoke at 19 events, including campus and community talks in AZ, DC, IA, MD, MN, NE, NY, PA, and VA. Also including my international talks: a campus presentation in Canada and two UN conference presentations, one in India in June and a second in Turkey in December.
  2. Two board members testified at the first-ever DC city council hearing on street harassment.
  3. Board members took action as part of the protests and rallies around racism and over-policing of Black bodies in the U.S. For example, Maureen Evans Arthurs lives near Baltimore and helped distribute food and toiletries to residents in need and also participated in #BlackLivesMatter rallies in the city; Maliyka Muhammad joined the “NYC Rise Up & Shut It Down With Baltimore” rally; and I attended a “Vigil for Rekia Boyd, Black Women, Trans Women, and Girls” in Washington, DC.
  4. Joined the UN’s march on International Women’s Day in New York City. We marched with the Brazil anti-street harassment group Chega de Fiu Fiu and the American group Voices of Men to send the clear message that street harassment is an issue we must address globally if we want to see equality for women!
  5. Rallied with SlutWalk DC in front of the Chinese Embassy in protest of the jailing of Chinese feminist activists simply for distributing information about sexual harassment at transit stops (they were later released).
  6. Tabled at Awesome Con (a comics convention in Washington, DC) with Feminist Public Works/Geeks for Consent and CASS, and presented at the National Conference for College Women Student Leaders in Maryland with CASS.
  7. Facilitated a focus group with Asian-American women in Boston, MA, and added the summary to the 2014 national street harassment report.
  8. For the release of my third book, Stop Global Street Harassment: Growing Activism Around the World, dozens of activists featured in it participated in a Global Tweetchat, and various activists from the book joined me in speaking at two of my book release events in Washington, DC and New York City.

Financials:

  1. Received funding from Lyft ($3,000) and the Peiffer Foundation ($1,500). SSH also received $6,255.89 in donations from individuals. SSH’s work is largely done on a volunteer-basis. This year, $2,000 was used for part-time help for work relating to International Anti-Street Harassment Week. Approximately $3,500 more was spent on programs, the website redesign, and fees.
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