Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Apply for 2014 Safe Public Spaces Mentoring

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Chicago team in 2013

Stop Street Harassment (SSH)’s Safe Public Spaces Mentoring program empowers people to consider what efforts might decrease street harassment in their community, and then propose and carry out a project. Across three months, selected activists receive advice, network connections, input, and up to $250 for expenses from SSH.

In 2013 we worked with three pilot sites who held high school workshops in Afghanistan, conducted focus groups and organized a youth seminar in Cameroon, and created three short films and held a community event in Chicago, USA.

APPLICATIONS NOW AVAILABLE!

The 2014 period is September 1 through December 1.

** To apply, complete & submit this online form & complete and email this excel spreadsheet for expenses to hkearl@ stopstreetharassment.org. **

DEADLINE: AUGUST 8, 2014.

Who can apply?

Groups (or a very motivated individual) anywhere in the world!

We will accept and fund up to four mentoring sites this year.

Notification:

Applicants will be notified of the decision by August 18 and their program can start as soon as September 1.

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To clarify what SSH is about

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Ever since the #YouOkSis tweet chat on Thursday focused on Black women’s experiences with #streetharassment, a bunch of people on twitter have been attacking me, saying I started the hashtag (@FeministaJones did) and the whole movement against street harassment (yeah right, women have been organizing against this issue for 100+ years) in order to push my “agenda” to jail Black men. They have also targeted the Black woman who led the campaign and many other women who participated during the chat.

Of course I have dealt with criticism (constructive and vicious) but this is a new level of willful misinformation and hate. People have been calling me Jim Crow, saying I dupe Black women, saying I have an agenda to jail all Black men, and a few men have said sexually explicit things about me. Some men have also photoshopped my head onto images like one of me crushing a Black woman in a chair with her underneath me. Yes, this is all upsetting.

I have followed the guidance of the woman who started the hashtag and not engaged with them. I wasn’t going to mention it on this blog, even.

However, I just received an email from a presumably white man saying he whole-heartedly agrees with my campaign to jail Black men and called them racial slurs and says he wants to contribute money to my campaign. That is disgusting and unacceptable and I emailed him back to tell him so. I don’t know if it’s a joke or not, but it’s unacceptable regardless.

But it makes me realize I can’t not say something publicly about this. Misinformation spreads fast.  So ENOUGH.

Let me be clear: I do not have an agenda to jail anyone.

What do I want? I want everyone to be safe and unharassed in public spaces. I want interactions in public spaces to be respectful and full of consent.

Street harasser does not mean Black men. Far from it.

Men across all backgrounds are harassers (and some are harassed, primarily in the LGBT community).

On the flip side, women across all backgrounds experience street harassment (and a small number are harassers).

I have collected thousands of stories, done two online surveys, commissioned a nationally representative survey, and conducted 10 focus groups. I’ve given 125 talks where I’ve heard stories. I’ve written two books, a master’s thesis and 50 articles. I don’t know everything about street harassment, but I know a hell of a lot.

And here’s the thing. Street harassment is a societal and global problem. Street harassment does not happen in a vacuum. Sexual harassment is a problem in our schools and workplaces. Rape is a problem on our campuses and in our military. Domestic violence and teen dating violence are problems as is incest. Street harassment is one component of the sexual harassment/sexual violence/domestic violence spectrum and grouping — and it happens in every country.

I’ve been speaking out for years specifically on street harassment because so few others have been.

And so this is my agenda: bring attention to this problem, provide a place for people to share stories, and help create a culture where everyone has the right to be safe and unharassed in public spaces. Read about SSH’s work here.

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Today at Noon EDT: #YouOkSIS? Tweet Chat

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Via News One:

“If you’re a woman, there’s a good chance you may have been harassed on the street. Have you ever wanted to someone to help you when you were in that most uncomfortable situation? Or if you’re a man, have you seen a woman being harassment on the street but wasn’t sure how to help her? Well, NewsOne interviewed some women in New York City and asked them to give their suggestions of ways someone could intervene in the event they are being harassed.

Also, NewsOne, along with special guest @FeministaJones, will host a town hall on Twitter TODAY, July 10 at 12 p.m. on the issue of street harassment and we’ll discuss practical ways we can all help stop it. Use the hashtag #YouOKSis?

For now, check out our video to see what women have to say about street harassment.”

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Serial Groper on NYC Subway Stops Because of PSAs

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DISGUSTING AND DESPICABLE!!! Via NY Daily News:

“For decades, John had a routine: Get up. Get dressed. Look for someone to sexually abuse on the way to work.

“I’d go into the subway thinking, ‘I’m going to find someone to touch’ and invariably I would,” John said. “If I didn’t, I just didn’t. But I usually had some kind of opportunity.”

A Daily News analysis of subway crime last month revealed women reported being victims of subway perverts more than 3,000 times during a five-year period ended in July 2013.

The NYPD Transit Bureau made an arrest in a majority — 67% — of those cases, Chief Joseph Fox said.

Unfortunately, John never felt the cold steel of handcuffs. He never spent time in a concrete jail cell with a bunch of bigger and bolder predators who would knock his teeth out just to pass the time.

“I never got arrested,” he said. “I only had a few really bad incidents. The worst was one in which a woman glared at me and said, ‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’ ”

John started slithering through crowded trains looking for “targets” when he got his first job making deliveries by subway, he said. He was 16. He continued while commuting to a white-collar job, and then into retirement, he said…

This subway sicko claimed he stopped three years ago.

That’s when the Metropolitan Transportation Authority began broadcasting announcements urging riders to tell a transit worker or cop if they were a sex abuse victim or a witness to a sex crime. The fear of getting caught and exposed in a police crackdown became too great to continue, John said.

So let the crackdown begin. Put cameras in trains, triple undercover sting operations, post photos of repeat offenders in stations.”

It’s good to know at least one sexual abuser has stopped thanks to the PSAs… but it also makes me wonder if he’s just shifted to abusing women in other spaces instead.

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Petition: Banjo Billy’s Bus Tours: Stop harassing women on the street!

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Check out and consider signing this new Change.org Petition!!

“Banjo Billy’s Bus Tours have been helping tourists fall in love with Boulder, Colorado with their nautical bus decorations and fun stories about local folklore since 2005. However, they took their goofy humor too far when they installed a button that the driver can push to make the bus produce a loud and cartoonish wolf whistle towards a women as the bus passes her.

I was that woman a few days ago when I was crossing the street in front of the bus, and felt the familiar embarrassment and disrespect that always comes with street harassment as the busload of tourists laughed at my expense. When I called to complain, the company was sorry I was offended but maintained that the button was all in good fun.

I have recently turned eighteen and I believe it is unacceptable for a bus driver twice my age to make judgments about my appearance to entertain his passengers. Please help me tell Banjo Billy’s Bus Tours that this street harassment has to end!”

H/T Hollaback!

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