Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Join our First 2016 Blog Correspondents Cohort

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458_Volunteer_become1Do you feel passionately about ending street harassment and do you like to write? We need YOU!

Stop Street Harassment is one of the top street harassment websites in the world and we’re recruiting new members for our first Blog Correspondents Program cohort of 2015. This is an unpaid, volunteer opportunity. Build your resume and add your voice to the global conversation about this important topic!

Your words will be read: the SSH blog receives up to 30,000 unique readers per month.

Assignment:

From January to April 2016, correspondents in our first cohort of 2016 must commit to writing one blog post per month about street harassment issues in their community, region or country, for four posts total. The topics could include incidents of street harassment covered in the news, activism to stop it, interviews with street harassment activists, and street harassment in popular culture, traditions or the news. You can also write pieces that tie street harassment to relevant related issues (such as racial profiling/racism, online harassment, and campus rape).

We aim to have geographic diversity among our cohort members. People of all genders, ages, regions are welcome to apply.

Applying:

If you would like to join our final Blog Correspondents cohort of the year, please complete this short application form by January 6 and the selected cohort will be announced on January 11.

Note: If you prefer to write in a language other than English, please also indicate what language is most comfortable for you and you can send your writing sample in that language.

Please apply and/or share with others who may be a good fit!

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Thank You SSH Board Members

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Maureen Evans Arthurs speaking on a panel in Maryland, March 2015
Maureen Evans Arthurs speaking on a panel in Maryland, March 2015

Our board members span the USA and regularly take action to address street harassment locally and globally.

Here are 10 examples of what they did this year!

  1. Donate to help fund our programs.
  2. Review our Safe Public Spaces Mentoring (SPSM) applications.
  3. Advertise our SPSM program and Blog Correspondents program.
  4. Giving input on the SSH website redesign.
  5. Writing articles for outlets like Huffington Post.
  6. Co-host and participate in Twitter chats.
  7. Represent SSH at events, conferences, rallies and speakouts (this year, that included community and campus events in AZ, DC, IA, MD, MN, NE, NY, PA, and VA. I also spoke in Canada, India, and Turkey).
  8. Participate in International Anti-Street Harassment Week (including by organizing events, speaking at events, hosting sidewalk chalking, distributing information at Metro stations, and hosting online events).
  9. Attending meetings.
  10. Testifying at the DC city council hearing
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Watch Activists from Four Countries Talk about Street Harassment

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Last month, Bluestockings hosted the New York City event for the release of my new book Stop Global Street Harassment: Growing Activism Around the World (Praeger 2015).

I was joined by seven co-presenters who shared their personal street harassment experiences and activism stories. Bisi Alimi is from Nigeria and lives in London; Gaya Branderhorstof Straatintimidatie is from the Netherlands and lives in New York; Alicia Wallace of Hollaback! Bahamas is from the Bahamas and just moved to New York; Ileana Jiménez is a high school teacher in New York City who talks about street harassment with her students; she brought two of her students who shared their stories, Shana and StellaRose; and Brittany Brathwaite is a community organizer for Girls for Gender Equity (GGE) in New York City.

Documentarians Lola Godeau and Sophia Philip videotaped the whole event and kindly let me share it publicly with you all via our YouTube channel. It includes the audience Q&A.

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Grown Men Harass DC Elementary School Students

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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)
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 4th 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”

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Street Harassment Testimony Before DC Council – Moughari

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On Thursday, the DC council held an historic hearing on street harassment. This was the testimony of our board member Layla Moughari.

Our board member Layla before she gave her testimony
Layla right before she gave her testimony.

Good morning, Committee members. My name is Layla Moughari. I am a resident of Ward One and a member .of the Stop Street Harassment Board of Directors. Thank you for the opportunity to speak at this roundtable.

I’m here to request that you take action against street harassment.

Many people see street harassment as harmless, and a fact of life. But street harassment can be terrifying and inhibit mobility, and there’s always a possibility that street harassment can escalate into violence or sexual assault.

In the 10 years I’ve lived in DC, street harassment has been a regular feature in my life.  There have been times I’ve experienced it daily.

In Columbia Heights, I’ve experienced several aggressive and upsetting interactions. On one occasion, two men shouted obscenities at me because I didn’t respond to their advances. Another time, someone grabbed me as he rode past me on his bike.

And in another situation I was alone, walking to the gym at 6 o’clock in the morning. It was pitch black out and no one was around. I heard someone hissing at me. I looked around and couldn’t see anyone. The hissing continued but closer this time. I realized that someone was following me, getting closer to me, but hiding from me.  I was alone in the dark.  When the hissing continued, I felt that I was in imminent danger and completely helpless. I started to run and scream down the street. A concerned neighbor asked if I was OK. I was still scared, but I felt better instantly.

I skipped the gym that morning, and never felt safe walking home again. In fact, the harassment I experienced in Columbia Heights contributed to my decision to move from the neighborhood in 2012 after living there five years.

Unfortunately, this experience is not unique to me as is evident by the others here today and the many people who submit their stories to the CASS and Stop Street Harassment blogs. A national study commissioned by SSH found that two-thirds of women and one-quarter of men had experienced gender-based harassment in public spaces.

While some research exists on street harassment, we lack concrete data for DC and are limited in what we know about the rates, causes and consequence of street harassment here in the District, as well as the best practices for combating it.

I request that the city council assist in collecting data so we can better understand the scope of the problem and where specifically it happens. Then, once we understand the issue more, I hope the city council can work with local organizations on non-criminalizing, community-based solutions such as public awareness campaigns.

I hope that one day street harassment will be viewed the same way workplace sexual harassment is largely seen now, recognized by our culture as disrespectful,  inappropriate, and harmful.  Workplace sexual harassment was also accepted as normal not long ago.  But with research, policies, laws, enforcement of the rule of law, and culture change, workplace harassment is much less pervasive today.

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