Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming
There are cats against catcalls, but now dogs are having their day!
#HoundsAgainstHarassment!
I’ve been harassed with my dogs and they don’t always notice it, but when they have, they haven’t liked it. They would like for us to be able to run together harassment-free.
Do you have a dog who is against harassment?
Send a picture my way! hkearl @stopstreetharassment.org and I’ll share it over social media during International Anti-Street Harassment Week.… which starts tomorrow!!
Katie Monroe, Philadelphia, PA, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent
There’s a great quote from activist Emma Goldman – it comes in various forms, but basically it says, “A revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having.” I couldn’t agree more.
Philadelphia’s Hollaback chapter has been doing a lot of innovative work lately – from launching a subway ad campaign that got tons of press last year, to helping create a comic book about street harassment, to managing to get a City Council hearing about street harassment this past fall, they’ve been working hard.
But they’ve never had a dance party before. Until April 5, during International Anti-Street Harassment Week.
The party’s at Underground Arts in Philadelphia, an awesome space that hosted the bar for Philly’s LiveArts/Fringe Festival for the past few years. Doors are at 8pm, $5 presale (http://tktwb.tw/1kLRxfL) /$8 at the door. There will be various DJs, spoken word, and more, all to benefit HollabackPHILLY.
Rochelle Keyhan, Founder and Director of HollabackPHILLY, says, “We’ve been talking about wanting to have a dance party frequently over the past few years. It would be a great way to rally behind a cause in a more lighthearted setting than our usual events. Despite wanting a dance party, we were never quite sure of how to pull it off. Last Fall we heard about Get Lucid and loved what they were doing, so reached out to them about partnering up. We met with the awesome Get Lucid team, Pete, Miguel, and Cedric, planned this event to coincide with Anti Street Harassment Day, and couldn’t be more excited!
We went to the last Get Lucid party which fundraised for Philly Urban Creators, and the crowd and vibe was so supportive and energetic, while highlighting a great cause in our community. We’re excited to see who else Get Lucid highlights throughout the year!”
For those not in the know, Get Lucid! The Activist Dance Party describes itself as “featur[ing] a blend of innovative local musicians and djs with unique visual and performance art. The result is a visceral experience for attendees, where we hope to unite passion with activism. Get Lucid! provides a safe, fun, and collaborative environment for all communities to network and rally around local social justice initiatives, for which the Get Lucid! events themselves become a tool for promotion and fundraising.”
Sounds good to me! As someone who’s experienced plenty of harassment – verbal and physical – on dance floors in Philadelphia, it’s exciting to imagine a dance floor full of folks who are all there because they respect the other humans dancing around them… perhaps I’ll be able to actually dance without being groped, leered at, aggressively approached from behind, etc.
RSVP on Facebook here / Get your presale tickets here.
See you there!
Katie Monroe founded the Women Bike PHL campaign at the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia and she works at the Philly nonprofit Gearing Up, which gives some of Philadelphia’s most marginalized women – those in transition from incarceration, addiction, and/or abuse – the opportunity to ride bicycles for exercise, transportation, and personal growth. Follow her on Twitter, @cmon_roe.
International Anti-Street Harassment Week starts in just 5 days!!
While women are the main targets of street harassment, entire families and communities are impacted by it — when women aren’t as safe in public spaces, everyone suffers. And so it’s in men’s best interest to get involved in challenging street harassment, and, as the main perpetrators of street harassment, they are in the best position to stop it.
Many men get this and will be involved in International Anti-Street Harassment Week this year, including male-led initiatives like:
* Hey Baby Art Against Sexual Violence (they’re hosting an event/rally at a high school in Tucson, AZ)
* London Tae Kwon Do School (they’re talking about street harassment during all of their classes that week)
* Masculinity U (they’ll be posting information on social media about street harassment)
* Men Stopping Violence (they’re hosting the April 4 Tweet Chat at 2 p.m. EDT, #EndSH).
Individual men will be involved too, like Mark Webster in Virginia who will donate his photography skills to photograph a sidewalk chalking event in Washington, D.C. on Sunday; Joe Samalin, a SSH blog correspondent who will speak at the NYC rally against street harassment on April 5; and Alan Kearl, my dad and HUGE SSH supporter who will join my mom in putting up flyers in South Beach, FL, this weekend.
Men: the best way you can get involved is to talk to other men about this issue. Tell them why it’s not cool to harass. Speak up when you see harassment happening. Join us in any way you can. We need you!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
03/24/14
Contact:
Holly Kearl, hkearl@stopstreetharassment.org
International Anti-Street Harassment Week Draws Attention to the Problem of Street Harassment
23 Countries to Participate in Week of Awareness
WASHINGTON — In its fourth year, International Anti-Street Harassment Week will be observed by at least 150 groups in 23 countries from March 30 – April 5. Tens of thousands of people will participate in the awareness-raising week to tackle the prevalent social problem of gender-based street harassment.
“What could be more basic than the right to walk down one’s street safely, without facing harassment? For too many people – especially women and all members of the LGBQT community – this is a right they are routinely denied because of street harassment, or the threat of it,” said Holly Kearl, author two books on street harassment and the founder of the nonprofit organization Stop Street Harassment. “More and more people are recognizing street harassment as a human rights violation and each year we join forces, amplify each other’s efforts, and draw global attention to the problem.”
Groups in Egypt, India, Germany, Peru, Nepal, Colombia, and the United Kingdom will host activities, ranging from sidewalk chalking parties to informational workshops. Safe City Nepal members will distribute leaflets about harassment in Kathmandu. HarassMap in Cairo, Egypt, will run a campaign called Mesh Sakta (“Don’t be silent”) to encourage everyone to take an active role in speaking out when street harassment happens. Stop Harcelement de la Rue will hold a “Safe Bar” event at a famous Paris, France, venue, followed by sidewalk chalking.
Stop Telling Women to Smile is a primary co-sponsor of the week and any interested people and groups can download PDFs of their famous “Stop telling women to smile” posters and paste them on walls in their community. Founder Tatyana Fazlalizadeh encourages everyone to paste the posters in the evening of April, 4 so that on April 5, “The walls around the world will bear the faces and words of women protesting street harassment.”
Events hosted in the United States include campus workshops on street harassment from Arizona to Pennsylvania, a film screening in Massachusetts, a Unity March in Texas, a rally in New York City, and distributing flyers at a Metro station in Virginia.
There will be many virtual events as well, including a Google+ Hangout panel on March 30 and six Tweet Chats on topics like the impact of street harassment on people’s lives and street harassment and teenagers (use hashtag #EndSH).
Participants in the week who are smartphone users are encouraged to use the new, free phone app called Safetipin that allows them to quickly conduct a safety audit wherever they are and see what other reports have been made in their area. “Our hope is that more people upload and use the information to advocate for safer streets and safer cities,” says Safetipin founder Kalpana Viswanath an advisor to the Jagori Safe Delhi Initiative. All pins for a city are clustered showing a color to indicate the level of safety (Green for Safe, Amber for Less Safe, and Red for Unsafe). A special report will be issued for all individual reports made that week.
Street harassment is a pervasive human rights violation. Around the world, studies suggest that most women and LGBTQ individuals face street harassment, ranging from verbal to physical forms, and it limits their access to public spaces.
Any individual can help speak out against street harassment during the week simply by sharing stories on and offline. Visit www.MeetUsontheStreet.org for more information about the week and how to be involved
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Stop Street Harassment is a nonprofit organization dedicated to documenting and ending gender-based street harassment worldwide through public education and community mobilization. SSH organizes International Anti-Street Harassment Week annually and helps activists with local campaigns through the Safe Public Spaces Mentoring Program. SSH just completed the first-ever national study on street harassment in the USA which will be released May 20, 2014.
Rosamund Urwin writes for the London Evening Standard about her street harassment stories
“The road I live off — Acre Lane in Brixton — seems to host regular auditions for the Bad Boyfriend Club. Most days, a couple of men stand near the McDonald’s uttering “Hey, sexy” and other Oscar Wilde-worthy witticisms at passing women. I’m pretty sure that the success rate of this strategy is lower than Lottery jackpot odds (ie, zero), that no woman has ever ripped off her knickers in response. Yet still they persist, day after day….
Almost every woman I know has similar — or worse — stories. They’ve been sworn at. Hollered at. Leered at. Groped. These incidents occur on the street, in buses, trains, clubs and bars — regular reminders that, as a woman, public spaces never quite belong to you…Let’s reclaim the streets from London’s leches.”
If you live in London and want to help reclaim the streets, you can join Rape Crisis South London for their “London Landmarks Against Street Harassment Event” from 30 March to 5 April for International Anti-Street Harassment Week!
