Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming
All around the world, people are taking a STAND against street harassment! Tens of thousands of us came together to hold rallies, workshops, wheat pasting, sidewalk chalking, and tweet chats from March 30 – April 5, 2014 for International Anti-Street Harassment Week.
This is the brand new wrap-up report about it. Check it out. THANK YOU to everyone who participated. You’re making a difference!
By Kendra Corbin, SSH Intern
After what seems like an eternity of winter, spring is finally here! This means that my college graduation is just around the corner and that my time spent as an intern with Stop Street Harassment is coming to an end. This internship has been an amazing opportunity for me to learn more about the issues of women around the world. It’s also given me the opportunity to educate my family and friends about harassment in public spaces.
I’m mostly grateful to have had the chance to educate my mom about street harassment. My mom is an incredible woman. She’s empowered, supportive, and beautiful inside and out. She comes from a generation when street harassment was not given the attention that it deserved. It seems that street harassment was once considered something that women just had to deal with. However, over the last few months, she has listened to me talk about my internship, my personal encounters with harassment, and has read every article that I’ve written (hi mom!). She shares my articles on her Facebook page so that her friends can read about street harassment, as well. I cannot express how wonderful it’s been to watch her transition from not having much of an opinion on street harassment to now actively engaging with me in conversations about it.
For International Anti-Street Harassment Week, I planned a small chalking event on my college campus. My wonderful boyfriend joined me along with other students at Shenandoah University to chalk empowering, pro-respect messages around our campus. When I spoke to my mom after the event, she said to me, “I had thought about asking you if I could come and help you, but I didn’t want to embarrass you by having your mom there.” That moment both broke my heart and made me smile at the same time.
* First, I would never be embarrassed of the woman who gave me life.
* Second, I would have been proud to have had my mom join me in taking a stand against street harassment. The fact that she even wanted to help still means the world to me.
I would just like to thank my mom for being so supportive of me. She listens to me talk endlessly about street harassment, rape culture, and feminism. She takes an interest in what I care about. I couldn’t ask for a better mom. Finally, I would like to say how grateful I am that this internship has allowed me to connect with her on new level. Hopefully neither one of us will ever forget what we’ve learned together.
Kendra Corbin is senior at Shenandoah University. She is majoring in Mass Communications and minoring in Women’s Studies.
Stop Telling Women To Smile from Dean Peterson on Vimeo.
“It’s important for me to show the process behind creating these pieces. Each portrait is an actual woman who has a story, who goes through this treatment daily, who has something to say about it that deserves to be heard.
I initially decided to portray the women as drawings instead of photographs because it was my natural inclination as a portrait painter. But also, drawing someone’s portrait makes you really look at them. You have to recognize their humanity not just physically but personally. And I hope that’s what comes across when people see these portraits in the street.” -Tatyana Fazlalizadeh
By: Rebecca Nagle, Codirector of Force: Upsetting Rape Culture
A group of community members came together at the Martin Luther King, Jr Memorial Library in downtown Washington on Wednesday, April 2nd, to have a conversation about the Monument Project: a call to create a national monument to survivors of rape and abuse in the United States. The group strategized about concrete next steps for the Monument Quilt, which will be both a precursor to and way of getting buy-in for the Monument Project itself. The Monument Quilt is a collections of stories from survivors of rape and abuse that creates public healing space.
Attendees also discussed why we want a permanent monument, including the presence of permanent healing space for survivors, public education, and having a representation of the power we can have when we come together. Last, the group brainstormed ways in which the Monument Quilt can support current and future policy initiatives to improve response systems that support survivors as well as prevention efforts.
The event was organized by Collective Action for Safe Spaces and Force: Upsetting Rape Culture as part of International Anti-Street Harassment Week. CASS helped organize the advocacy effort that led to the recent passing of landmark sexual assault reforms in DC. Read more about the effort here.
Force just announced a 10-city tour for the Monument Quilt and are currently hosting a Kickstarter to fund the tour. Pitch in if you can!
Dear Community –
THANK YOU for making International Anti-Street Harassment Week so impactful this year.
* We had our largest number of co-sponsors and from the most countries yet — 25!
* We had more than 30 major news hits, including New York Times, with more to come.
* There were rallies, events, sidewalk chalking, flyering, street theater, wheat pasting, and lots of online engagement.
* We raised awareness from Australia to Nepal, from Germany to Peru, from San Francisco to Boston.
And that’s what this week is all about — raising awareness and amplifying each other’s voices.
If you participated in the week, please:
* Report on your actions! This will be used in the annual report and potentially in blog posts/articles about the week.
* Send photos to hkearl @ stopstreetharassment.org for our Photo Album!
Now that the week is over, of course our work isn’t done. We will continue speaking out on this issue daily and hope you will, too.
Next up for Stop Street Harassment is the release of our national study on street harassment in the USA — out on May 20!
Thanks again for your involvement in another great week of awareness,
Holly