Archives for December 2015

Street Harassment Testimony Before DC Council – Kearl

December 4, 2015 By HKearl

Yesterday the DC council held an historic hearing on street harassment. This was my testimony.

Good morning, members of the Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee on Housing & Community Development. My name is Holly Kearl. I am the founder of Stop Street Harassment, a consultant for UN Women’s Safe Cities Global Initiative and the author of several books about sexual harassment in public spaces, or street harassment.

I’ve lived in the area for more than 10 years and across 8 of them, I was in DC daily for graduate school and then work. Like probably everyone in the room, I’ve personally experienced numerous instances of harassment here.

I am thrilled this roundtable is taking place. Only three other city councils in the country have held sessions specifically on this topic: NYC in 2010, Philadelphia in 2013, and Kansas City in 2014.

Yet, street harassment is a pervasive problem across the nation. My organization commissioned the largest nationally representative survey to date last year and it found that 2/3^rds of women and 1/4^th of men had faced street harassment. Women mostly faced sexualized comments and nearly 1 in 4 reported being touched sexually in a public space.

For men, homophobic or transphobic slurs were most common. As part of the research, I also conducted focus groups nationwide, including one with gay and bisexual men in Washington, DC, many of whom shared numerous harassment stories.

For most people who took the survey, street harassment began before age 17. This is not okay.

Addressing street harassment matters because it makes people feel unsafe, objectified, and uncomfortable in public spaces. It can limit people’s lives in significant ways, including where they go, when, with whom and what they do.

For this reason, a growing number of governments as well as the United Nations view street harassment as a human rights violation and something that prevents full equality.

I am grateful that Washington, DC leaders are acknowledging this too, most notably, on the transit system. Nearly four years ago, I testified about harassment before the city council during WMATA’s performance oversight hearing. I am glad that WMATA quickly agreed to begin tracking incidents, train their staff, and create PSAs. I can’t help but smile each time I see a poster on the system.

We join other capital cities who have recently launched transit campaigns in London, Paris, Tokyo, Delhi, Cairo and Bogota and in American cities like Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, and NYC.

WMATA has committed to another PSA campaign next year, for which I’m grateful. We’ve discussed having its message focus on encouraging bystanders to speak up. For a first recommendation today, I want to emphasize the importance of bystanders being the focus.

Bystander intervention is important for many reasons and one is that it can help a harassed person get through a terrible situation more easily. I have heard over and over from women who say that an experience was so much worse because there were people all around when the harassment happened but no one said or did anything. If they are taught what to do, bystanders may be able to interrupt or stop the harassment, or at the very least, check in with the harassed person to see if they are okay and thus help them recover more quickly from what happened.

Harassment of course, is not limited to the transit system. It also happens on the streets, in parks, in bars and clubs, and in stores and restaurants. For that reason, my second recommendation is that the city council work with local groups like CASS and SSH on collecting data so we can better understand the problem and work to end it, using community-based, non-criminal solutions.

And last, because many people feel alcohol or the relaxed atmosphere of a bar or club makes inappropriate behavior okay, I would also suggest a special focus on addressing harassment there. A few cities have campaigns to train bar and club staff about harassment, including Boston and Iowa City and the whole state of Arizona. In the UK, the Good Night Out campaign works nationally with more than 100 night life venues.

Locally, CASS and Defend Yourself have a Safe Bars program and I hope the city council can help give local establishments incentives to work with them.

I am proud to live in an area where street harassment is taken seriously and I look forward to collaborating and working with the city council in the future. Thank you.

Historic DC City Council Hearing

December 4, 2015 By HKearl

The fourth ever hearing on street harassment was held in Washington, DC, on December 3, 2015. The first was held in 2010 in New York City, the second in Philadelphia in 2013 and the third in Kansas City in 2014.

The hearing was requested by Ward 1 D.C. Councilmember Brianne K. Nadeau and co-convened by the Committee on the Judiciary and Committee on Housing and Community Development. Our ally organization Collective Action for Safe Spaces was instrumental in helping the hearing happen, organizing witnesses, and crafting talking points and assisting people with their testimonies.

This is from Councilmember Nadeau’s website:

“Unfortunately, many residents in the District have experienced some form of street harassment, which can include vulgar remarks, heckling, insults, innuendo, stalking, leering, fondling, indecent exposure, and other forms of public humiliation, often focused on the individual’s perceived gender, gender identity, race or ethnicity, or disability. Street harassment impairs the ability of District residents to move freely and safely and contributes to a broader culture of violence. The roundtable will provide an opportunity for stakeholders to identify additional steps that could be taken to better understand and address the issue.”

The hearing lasted for four hours and 15 minutes. During the public portion, there were people representing various organizations, including CASS, SSH, Defend Yourself, Muslim American Women’s Policy Forum, Casa Ruby DC, and the Washington Area Bicyclist Association. There were individuals who shared heartbreaking and moving stories, including a mother and her teenage daughter, three transwomen of color, women of all races, and four male allies, including three men of color. CASS did a commendable job ensuring that a range of voices and viewpoints were represented in the panel.

Government officials also testified at the end, including the chief of police for the transit system and a representative from the mayor’s office in the department of human rights.

I was proud to join SSH board member Layla in testifying. You can read or watch her testimony here and read my full testimony here.

It was exciting to have SSH’s national study cited numerous times by the council members and people testifying. Many of us who testified advocated for the city council to collect DC-specific data so we can better understand the problem and work on non-criminal, community solutions. There was a special focus on asking for help working with bars — common sites of harassment — for CASS and Defend Yourself’s Safe Bars program.

Many people live tweeted throughout the event using #RaiseTheBar. A Storify will be available soon.

Photos:

(Click on the photo to see a larger version.)

DC councilmembers Anita Bond and Brianne Nadeau with their staff	First panel of speakers (L to R): Paris Sashay, Nelle R Pierson, Holly Kearl, Jessica Raven
Second panel of speakers (L to R): Schyla Pondexter-Moore and her daughter Carol Pondexter, Krystal Leaphart, and Lauren Taylor	Third panel of speakers (L to R): Melissa Yeo, Darakshana Raja, Robyn Swirling and Layla Moughari
Fourth panel of speakers (L to R): Star Silva, Dave Chandrasekaran, Ramin Katirai, and Julia Strange	Fifth panel of speakers (L to R): Tanisha Phllips, Ruby Corado, Lissa Alfaro, and Marty Langelan
Sixth panel of speakers (L to R): Mindi Westhoff, Rudhdi Karink, Shannon Kreider, and Jazmin Gargoum	Seventh panel of speakers (L to R): Carshena Chambers, Melissa Kleder, Valenteen Love, and Ben Merrion

Testimonies:

You can watch the entire hearing via the DC Council’s website. Closed Caption is available. I also recorded videos of several people who testified and those are available in this playlist on the SSH YouTube Channel. These are two of my favorite testimonies.

An amazing mother-daughter duo talk about how this issue unique affects teenage girls.

A passionate plea from a survivor of sexual abuse.

Media Coverage:

NPR interviewed councilmember Nadeau and CASS’s interim director Jessica Raven for a morning segment before the hearing (I was thrilled to hear on my drive to the hearing!).

In the evening, there were segments on NBC4, Fox5, and WUSA9.

The Washington Post, Washington Blade, The DCist and the Washington City Paper covered it too.

#16Days of Activism: Working with Nightlife Venues (Day 10)

December 4, 2015 By HKearl

Nov. 25 – Dec. 10 are the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. To commemorate the week, we are featuring 1 activism idea per day. This information is excerpted from my new book Stop Global Street Harassment: Growing Activism Around the World (Praeger 2015).

Groping, grinding, and verbal harassment are common problems at nightlife venues across the world. Groups in both England and the United States have programs to address and combat this unfortunate reality.

Nightlife harassment stories make up a significant portion of the stories submitted to the Hollaback! London website. Co-Directors Bryony Beynon and Julia Gray wanted to do something about it and lucked out when in 2013, one of London’s biggest and most famous clubs, fabric, contacted them acknowledging that it had a harassment problem. Beynon and Gray worked with the club to create the first anti-harassment policy of its kind in the United Kingdom. “The results were amazing,” Beynon told me. Kristi Weir, the press officer at fabric, agreed, saying, “We’ve received some really positive messages from women thanking us for taking this stance and having their backs since we started publicising the campaign.”

After their success at fabric, Beynon and Gray created the Good Night Out Campaign and launched it as a London pilot on International Women’s Day in March 2014. Only a few months later, it spread across the United Kingdom and Ireland, and within a few more months, 95 licensed premises had signed on to the campaign. The women told me the establishments range from “superclubs to tiny pubs, university union bars, from theatres to pizza joints” and that more are signing up every week.

The women customize the program to meet each establishment’s needs and only move forward once everyone there is committed and will sign the pledge, which in part reads: “We want you to have a Good Night Out. If something or someone makes you feel uncomfortable, you can speak to any member of staff, and they will work with you to make sure it doesn’t have to ruin your night.” The premise must post this pledge very visibly around the venue. This is “so that customers really see them and are aware that they’re in an environment that doesn’t tolerate harassment.”

The staff members of each premise receive an hour-long training session about harassment and handling reports that includes what to say to avoid using victim-blaming language. They also can get other training tools like a hints and tips sheet for the back bar areas. The Good Night Out Campaign is expanding quickly. Through a new partnership with their local council in Southwark, the campaign will soon deliver the training to every venue in the area. Through another new partnership with the national alcohol awareness nonprofit organization Drinkaware, the campaign will “provide training and advice on a pilot project aimed at reducing harassment on nights out by placing hosts in licensed premises to provide help and support.”

Similar programs are underway in the United States in Washington, D.C., Arizona, Iowa City, and Boston. Washington, D.C.’s program Safe Bars is a collaboration between grassroots groups Defend Yourself and Collective Action for Safe Spaces. In Arizona, the program is run by a sexual violence prevention arm of the Arizona Department of Health and Human Services. The Rape Victims Advocacy Program and Women’s Resource and Action Center at the University of Iowa is working with bar staff at venues in downtown Iowa City. The Boston program is run through the Boston Rape Crisis Center in collaboration with law enforcement and the Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission.

The reach of each program has been much smaller than the Good Night Out Campaign, but feedback from venues that have used the training has been very positive, and staff members feel better able to address harassment in their establishments.

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#16Days of Activism: Transit Campaigns (Day 9)

December 3, 2015 By HKearl

Harassment on public transportation is a universal problem, and individuals and groups have organized awareness-raising campaigns by distributing literature, performing skits, and sponsoring anti-harassment ads in countries like Colombia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

In Bogota, Colombia, the Latin American Women and Habitat Network created a no-groping campaign on the bus system in 2011. They hung posters at every bus stop and station and gave bus drivers shirts with slogans against harassment. They also role-played sexual harassment scenarios on the bus. Women dressed as men performed scenes about groping and then asked passengers what they thought about the behaviour. ‘We generally get positive responses,” wrote group member Marisol Dalmazo in a post for Love Matters. “More and more, people think sexual harassment should be condemned, that this kind of behaviour mustn’t be tolerated.’”

Whistle for Help is a popular campaign that launched in Myanmar in 2012. Initially, 150 people came together each Tuesday morning for nine months to distribute whistles and pamphlets to women at eight busy bus stops in Yangon. The pamphlets informed women to blow the whistle when they experienced sexual harassment on the bus and advised them to help other women who blow the whistle. The whistle campaign was so popular that riders regularly asked for extra whistles to pass out to their friends and family, and the campaign expanded to other regions, including Burma.

In Lucknow, India, a survey found that 97 percent of women were harassed while riding in auto-rickshaws, and most drivers stayed silent when it happened. Through a Safe Safar campaign launched in 2010 by Zeeshan Mohammad, a man in his 20s who worked on gender and youth issues, the auto-rickshaw drivers received sensitivity training and learned how they can play a proactive role in helping women feel safer. This not only included how to speak out when harassment happened, but they also received instructions to not play offensive music and to remove photos of scantily clad women from their vehicles. In its first four years, the program reached 2,000 auto-rickshaw drivers and has received recognition for its success.

The flash mob approach has been used in a few countries. In Delhi, India, members of the Please Mend the Gap campaign took off their jackets to reveal bright-yellow shirts with anti-harassment messages and create a bright chain against harassment. Upset by a man who pressed his erection against her and ejaculated onto her while she rode the London Tube into work, Ellie Cosgrave returned to the subway line on International Women’s Day 2013, held up a sign explaining what had happened, and then danced. “I danced my protest, and it felt right … I was responding with my body in the exact place that my body was abused, and while I couldn’t sing or shout very loudly, I could dance loudly,” Cosgrave wrote in an article for the Guardian. Her protest was met with kindness and support from other passengers.

Volunteers with Chicago’s CTA: Courage campaign and Washington, D.C.’s SSH, Collective Action for Spaces (CASS), and Voices of Men role-played harassment scenarios on subway cars and showed how witnesses can intervene to help stop the harassment. In both cities the groups distributed anti-harassment literature and received support and encouragement.

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#16Days of Activism: Patrolling (Day 8)

December 2, 2015 By HKearl

At various times and places, a spate of well-publicized attacks on women in public spaces has inspired people to set up patrols or volunteer escort services. In recent years, this happened in Norway, the United States, and Egypt.

In 2011, after reading about men raping several young women who were walking home at night in Oslo, Norway, four young women in their early 20s formed Action Against Rape (AAR) and decided they would patrol the city after dark to help make the environment safer. The first weekend they went out, around 200 people joined them. During the next year, AAR organized patrol groups of 4–6 people every Friday and Saturday night from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. Wearing yellow vests, they fanned out across the city. They rarely encountered harassers, but AAR co-founder Lisa Arntzen felt their very presence deterred harassment and violence. “I was 21 and didn’t have the power to make the big changes, so this was something easy I could do,” Arntzen told me. “That’s why so many people joined us. They realized they could contribute and it wasn’t hard at all.”

Similarly, in response to numerous sexual assaults of women in Brooklyn, New York, American bike messenger Jay Ruiz reacted by starting the Brooklyn Bike Patrol in 2011. He recruited 10 volunteers, and they began escorting women home from five neighborhood subway stops from 8 p.m. until midnight most nights. People could simply call them to request an escort. Within weeks, they expanded their volunteer base and service area. Wearing florescent-yellow T-shirts, the volunteers continue to receive up to a dozen calls each night.

Because many men in Egypt take advantage of crowds at protests and holidays to harass, grope, and commit gang assaults against women, activism groups set up patrols during these times in 2012. Wearing bright-yellow vests, they look for harassment situations and break them up. They also publicize a phone number people can call if they need help. For example, in 2012 during Eid-ul-Fitr, the holiday at the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, volunteers with Bassma (Imprint) interrupted many instances of harassment and helped police arrest several harassers each day. Founder Nihal Zaghloul wrote for the SSH blog, “It is OUR RIGHT as women to walk in the streets safely, and [since] NO ONE will give us this right, we must take it ourselves.”

Similarly, during political protests, as many as 300 volunteers with groups like Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment wear shirts proclaiming Tahrir Square a “safe square for all” while standing at every checkpoint, atop watchtowers, and throughout the crowd. They pass out hotline numbers and instructions on handling rape trauma victims. After one of their patrols in December 2012, Yasmine Abdelhamid said it was the first time since the uprising that she felt it was safe for her to protest in Tahrir Square.

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