public harassment Archives | Page 8 of 20

Grown Men Harass DC Elementary School Students

December 9, 2015 By HKearl

Anti-abortion protesters outside of the Two Rivers Public Charter School, which is next to a new Planned Parenthood facility that is under construction in Washington, D.C., shown here in November 2015. (Courtesy of Two Rivers Public Charter School)

“School leaders at a public charter school in Northeast Washington filed a lawsuit [today] against anti-abortion protesters who they say are harassing students in their efforts to stop construction of a Planned Parenthood facility next door.

Two Rivers Public Charter School alleges in a complaint filed in D.C. Superior Court that the protesters have engaged in “extreme and outrageous conduct” during the past several months, targeting school children as young as 3 years old with gruesome images of aborted fetuses and messages about the “murder facility” going in next to their school. The school is asking the court to order protesters not to talk to the schoolchildren or approach them outside the school.” Read more in the Washington Post.

The DC Mayor’s office reached out yesterday to SSH and other relevant groups to see if we would write a letter in support of this lawsuit. Our board of directors unanimously agreed!

Here it is:

“Stop Street Harassment (SSH) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to documenting and ending gender-based street harassment worldwide. We are based in Reston, Virginia, and do work locally, nationally and internationally.

Locally, one of our initiatives is partnering with WMATA and Collective Action for Safe Spaces on an anti-harassment transit campaign in the Washington Metropolitan Region. We are proud to be part of that effort because we want everyone in the region to feel safe on the Metro trains and buses.

We also want people, including children, to feel safe in other public spaces. For that reason, we are dismayed that people protesting the construction of a Planned Parenthood health center on 4^th Street are targeting elementary school children at Two Rivers Public Charter School next door, including with signs reading, “They kill babies nearby! Tell your parents to stop them.”

We believe that street harassment is a human rights violation because it denies harassed persons equal access to public spaces by making them feel unsafe and unwelcome there. This is exactly what the anti-Planned Parenthood protesters are doing. Elementary school children should have the right to go to and from school without feeling unsafe and unwelcome — and without feeling threatened and intimidated — but the Planned Parenthood protesters are denying them that right each time they protest and target them.

We support both the Two Rivers’ complaint and request for preliminary and permanent injunctive relief and the Mayor’s efforts to protect the students at the school and Planned Parenthood’s work in Washington, D.C. from this systematic harassment and intimidation.

Sincerely,

The Stop Street Harassment Board of Directors”

#16Days of Activism: Creative Youth Projects (Day 14)

December 8, 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).

Whether it’s by making art or a video or organizing a march, youth from Azerbaijan to the United States are undertaking creative ways to address street harassment.

“What do you get when you annoy girls? They just think you are a bad person,” “You shouldn’t do it, bro,” and “Be a good man,” six teenage boys tell their peers in a mixture of Azerbaijani and English in a 2012 YouTube video. Jake Winn, an American youth development Peace Corps volunteer was in Azerbaijan, from 2010 to 2012 and had daily interaction with many young boys and men. He told me he noticed that “street harassment was a learned behavior and most were sincerely ignorant to the dangers and problems with street harassment.”

When he brought it up with them, there was little resistance to the idea that it needed to stop. It was just something they had never thought about. And for the boys and men who did think there was something wrong, he said, “they didn’t know how to bring it up, how to resist, how to convey a message to their peers that it wasn’t OK.”

After Winn showed the youth an American video of men telling other men to stop harassing women, the boys decided to make their own. “They wrote it, filmed it, edited it. … They loved making the video and were proud to show it,” Winn said. “Few had ever taken the time to think and reflect. It was great to see how inspired girls were to realize how many allies they had among the young men.”

To date, it has been viewed more than 6,000 times, and it received a standing ovation when it was shown at a youth film festival in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku. Winn also developed a lesson plan and discussion questions for other Peace Corps volunteers to use with their own students, and more than a dozen volunteers did so. The materials are available on the SSH website in both Azerbaijani and English.

2014 Hey Baby art in Tucson (Abril is two in from the left)

Hey Baby | Art Against Sexual Violence launched in Tucson, Arizona, through the Southern Arizona Center Against Sexual Assault in 2009. Inspired by an art-centric Hey Baby project in North Carolina, up to 50 students and 30 adults participate in the Tucson initiative each spring. Their artwork addresses themes of prevention and support for survivors of homophobia, street harassment, relationship abuse, rape, and child sexual abuse.

While the program is currently evolving, in the past, the art has been displayed in public libraries across Tucson during Sexual Assault Awareness Month and online. “I think it is important for youth to engage with troubling social issues in a context where they have control over the processes used to solve that problem,” the program’s manager (and SSH board member) Manuel Abril told me. “This means that instead of making youth [feel they] have to identify with social issues (social systems dispense blame for social problems affecting them onto marginalized communities) they are able to investigate it, to unravel it aesthetically, and to give it back to society.”

#16Days of Activism: Raising Awareness on Campuses (Day 12)

December 6, 2015 By HKearl

A growing number of colleges and universities from Egypt to the United States have been addressing street harassment, often during Sexual Assault Awareness Month or in conjunction with International Women’s Day or International Anti-Street Harassment Week. They host workshops and street demonstrations, write sidewalk chalk messages, distribute materials, screen documentaries like the 1998 film War Zone, and create their own videos.

In 2012, members of Pennsylvania State University’s Triota, the women’s studies honor society, held an anti-street harassment demonstration on a busy Friday afternoon in October in downtown State College, Pennsylvania. They held signs proclaiming their anti-harassment message and even included specific remarks that had been yelled at them during their time at Penn State like “Hey girl, you want my big dick?” and “I’ve always wanted to cross a fat girl off my list.” They also held up anti-street harassment messages like “It’s not a compliment; it’s harassment.” Julie Mastrine, one of the organizers, wrote about it for the SSH blog:

Don’t be mistaken: these types of incidents aren’t rare in this town. Street harassment is a widespread problem in State College, where nearly every woman I know has experienced some form of it: catcalls, taunting, lewd remarks, leering, sexually objectifying remarks, you name it. And this type of harassment functions as part of a larger issue in this town: rape culture. We saw a lot of stares and furrowed brows from passersby. Only a few people approached us to express their support, but it doesn’t matter—getting this issue in the eyes and ears of the State College community is important if we want to combat harmful behavior and attitudes toward women.

In Egypt, college student Holly Dagres created the Fight Harassment 101 (FH101) workshop in 2012 to educate female students about harassment and the use of self-defense. For 10 weeks at the American University of Cairo, 15 students took part in FH101 for two hours a week. Dagres wrote for the SSH blog about how the workshop entailed sharing information and stories about street harassment and then practicing self-defense for 90 minutes. She wrote: “It gave them a sense of empowerment to defend themselves in the worst-case scenarios. At first they were shy about sharing their experiences, but once they found it was a common occurrence and learned that it was not their fault, they felt the need to fight against it

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#16Days of Activism: Making Businesses Safer (Day 11)

December 5, 2015 By HKearl

In the United States, a few advocacy groups have worked with businesses to make safer spaces for customers and community members. In 2011 in Arizona, the Southern Arizona Center Against Sexual Assault, for instance, launched Safe Streets AZ to address street harassment, particularly harassment targeted at LGBTQ youth. One component of the campaign is Safe Sites. Staff at restaurants, bookstores, and coffee shops take a 30-minute Safe Sites training, which then allows the establishment to be listed as a place where youth can seek safety if they are facing street harassment or feel unsafe. Nearly 30 businesses have gone through the training, and it is endorsed by the Pima County Small Business Commission, the Southern Arizona Chamber of Commerce Alliance, and the Pima County Public Libraries. Each site is listed on a Google map on the Safe Streets AZ website.

Inspired by the Good Night Out campaign in London, the members of Baltimore’s Hollaback! Bmore launched a Safer Spaces Campaign in 2013. They work directly with a business to ensure its current employee guide and/or security policies are comprehensive and sensitive to experiences of gender-based violence. Then Hollaback! Bmore provides a free training workshop on street harassment basics and crisis response that includes role-playing real-life situations. Once a majority of employees have gone through the training, they sign a pledge, hang an informational poster (provided) in plain view, and receive the Hollaback! Employer’s Guide to Ending Street Harassment. Hollaback! Bmore then supports and advertises these spaces on its website. So far, eight venues are completely trained, two are being scheduled, and 14 more have expressed interest.

Help fund our work in 2016, donate to our end-of-year giving campaign!

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

December 4, 2015 By HKearl

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.

Help fund our work in 2016, donate to our end-of-year giving campaign!

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