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Street Harassment Testimony Before DC Council – Moughari

December 5, 2015 By HKearl

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.

Street Harassment Testimony Before DC Council – Kearl

December 4, 2015 By HKearl

Yesterday the DC council held an historic hearing on street harassment. This was my testimony.

Good morning, members of the Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee on Housing & Community Development. My name is Holly Kearl. I am the founder of Stop Street Harassment, a consultant for UN Women’s Safe Cities Global Initiative and the author of several books about sexual harassment in public spaces, or street harassment.

I’ve lived in the area for more than 10 years and across 8 of them, I was in DC daily for graduate school and then work. Like probably everyone in the room, I’ve personally experienced numerous instances of harassment here.

I am thrilled this roundtable is taking place. Only three other city councils in the country have held sessions specifically on this topic: NYC in 2010, Philadelphia in 2013, and Kansas City in 2014.

Yet, street harassment is a pervasive problem across the nation. My organization commissioned the largest nationally representative survey to date last year and it found that 2/3^rds of women and 1/4^th of men had faced street harassment. Women mostly faced sexualized comments and nearly 1 in 4 reported being touched sexually in a public space.

For men, homophobic or transphobic slurs were most common. As part of the research, I also conducted focus groups nationwide, including one with gay and bisexual men in Washington, DC, many of whom shared numerous harassment stories.

For most people who took the survey, street harassment began before age 17. This is not okay.

Addressing street harassment matters because it makes people feel unsafe, objectified, and uncomfortable in public spaces. It can limit people’s lives in significant ways, including where they go, when, with whom and what they do.

For this reason, a growing number of governments as well as the United Nations view street harassment as a human rights violation and something that prevents full equality.

I am grateful that Washington, DC leaders are acknowledging this too, most notably, on the transit system. Nearly four years ago, I testified about harassment before the city council during WMATA’s performance oversight hearing. I am glad that WMATA quickly agreed to begin tracking incidents, train their staff, and create PSAs. I can’t help but smile each time I see a poster on the system.

We join other capital cities who have recently launched transit campaigns in London, Paris, Tokyo, Delhi, Cairo and Bogota and in American cities like Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, and NYC.

WMATA has committed to another PSA campaign next year, for which I’m grateful. We’ve discussed having its message focus on encouraging bystanders to speak up. For a first recommendation today, I want to emphasize the importance of bystanders being the focus.

Bystander intervention is important for many reasons and one is that it can help a harassed person get through a terrible situation more easily. I have heard over and over from women who say that an experience was so much worse because there were people all around when the harassment happened but no one said or did anything. If they are taught what to do, bystanders may be able to interrupt or stop the harassment, or at the very least, check in with the harassed person to see if they are okay and thus help them recover more quickly from what happened.

Harassment of course, is not limited to the transit system. It also happens on the streets, in parks, in bars and clubs, and in stores and restaurants. For that reason, my second recommendation is that the city council work with local groups like CASS and SSH on collecting data so we can better understand the problem and work to end it, using community-based, non-criminal solutions.

And last, because many people feel alcohol or the relaxed atmosphere of a bar or club makes inappropriate behavior okay, I would also suggest a special focus on addressing harassment there. A few cities have campaigns to train bar and club staff about harassment, including Boston and Iowa City and the whole state of Arizona. In the UK, the Good Night Out campaign works nationally with more than 100 night life venues.

Locally, CASS and Defend Yourself have a Safe Bars program and I hope the city council can help give local establishments incentives to work with them.

I am proud to live in an area where street harassment is taken seriously and I look forward to collaborating and working with the city council in the future. Thank you.

Historic DC City Council Hearing

December 4, 2015 By HKearl

The fourth ever hearing on street harassment was held in Washington, DC, on December 3, 2015. The first was held in 2010 in New York City, the second in Philadelphia in 2013 and the third in Kansas City in 2014.

The hearing was requested by Ward 1 D.C. Councilmember Brianne K. Nadeau and co-convened by the Committee on the Judiciary and Committee on Housing and Community Development. Our ally organization Collective Action for Safe Spaces was instrumental in helping the hearing happen, organizing witnesses, and crafting talking points and assisting people with their testimonies.

This is from Councilmember Nadeau’s website:

“Unfortunately, many residents in the District have experienced some form of street harassment, which can include vulgar remarks, heckling, insults, innuendo, stalking, leering, fondling, indecent exposure, and other forms of public humiliation, often focused on the individual’s perceived gender, gender identity, race or ethnicity, or disability. Street harassment impairs the ability of District residents to move freely and safely and contributes to a broader culture of violence. The roundtable will provide an opportunity for stakeholders to identify additional steps that could be taken to better understand and address the issue.”

The hearing lasted for four hours and 15 minutes. During the public portion, there were people representing various organizations, including CASS, SSH, Defend Yourself, Muslim American Women’s Policy Forum, Casa Ruby DC, and the Washington Area Bicyclist Association. There were individuals who shared heartbreaking and moving stories, including a mother and her teenage daughter, three transwomen of color, women of all races, and four male allies, including three men of color. CASS did a commendable job ensuring that a range of voices and viewpoints were represented in the panel.

Government officials also testified at the end, including the chief of police for the transit system and a representative from the mayor’s office in the department of human rights.

I was proud to join SSH board member Layla in testifying. You can read or watch her testimony here and read my full testimony here.

It was exciting to have SSH’s national study cited numerous times by the council members and people testifying. Many of us who testified advocated for the city council to collect DC-specific data so we can better understand the problem and work on non-criminal, community solutions. There was a special focus on asking for help working with bars — common sites of harassment — for CASS and Defend Yourself’s Safe Bars program.

Many people live tweeted throughout the event using #RaiseTheBar. A Storify will be available soon.

Photos:

(Click on the photo to see a larger version.)

DC councilmembers Anita Bond and Brianne Nadeau with their staff	First panel of speakers (L to R): Paris Sashay, Nelle R Pierson, Holly Kearl, Jessica Raven
Second panel of speakers (L to R): Schyla Pondexter-Moore and her daughter Carol Pondexter, Krystal Leaphart, and Lauren Taylor	Third panel of speakers (L to R): Melissa Yeo, Darakshana Raja, Robyn Swirling and Layla Moughari
Fourth panel of speakers (L to R): Star Silva, Dave Chandrasekaran, Ramin Katirai, and Julia Strange	Fifth panel of speakers (L to R): Tanisha Phllips, Ruby Corado, Lissa Alfaro, and Marty Langelan
Sixth panel of speakers (L to R): Mindi Westhoff, Rudhdi Karink, Shannon Kreider, and Jazmin Gargoum	Seventh panel of speakers (L to R): Carshena Chambers, Melissa Kleder, Valenteen Love, and Ben Merrion

Testimonies:

You can watch the entire hearing via the DC Council’s website. Closed Caption is available. I also recorded videos of several people who testified and those are available in this playlist on the SSH YouTube Channel. These are two of my favorite testimonies.

An amazing mother-daughter duo talk about how this issue unique affects teenage girls.

A passionate plea from a survivor of sexual abuse.

Media Coverage:

NPR interviewed councilmember Nadeau and CASS’s interim director Jessica Raven for a morning segment before the hearing (I was thrilled to hear on my drive to the hearing!).

In the evening, there were segments on NBC4, Fox5, and WUSA9.

The Washington Post, Washington Blade, The DCist and the Washington City Paper covered it too.

#16Days of Activism: Patrolling (Day 8)

December 2, 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).

At various times and places, a spate of well-publicized attacks on women in public spaces has inspired people to set up patrols or volunteer escort services. In recent years, this happened in Norway, the United States, and Egypt.

In 2011, after reading about men raping several young women who were walking home at night in Oslo, Norway, four young women in their early 20s formed Action Against Rape (AAR) and decided they would patrol the city after dark to help make the environment safer. The first weekend they went out, around 200 people joined them. During the next year, AAR organized patrol groups of 4–6 people every Friday and Saturday night from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. Wearing yellow vests, they fanned out across the city. They rarely encountered harassers, but AAR co-founder Lisa Arntzen felt their very presence deterred harassment and violence. “I was 21 and didn’t have the power to make the big changes, so this was something easy I could do,” Arntzen told me. “That’s why so many people joined us. They realized they could contribute and it wasn’t hard at all.”

Similarly, in response to numerous sexual assaults of women in Brooklyn, New York, American bike messenger Jay Ruiz reacted by starting the Brooklyn Bike Patrol in 2011. He recruited 10 volunteers, and they began escorting women home from five neighborhood subway stops from 8 p.m. until midnight most nights. People could simply call them to request an escort. Within weeks, they expanded their volunteer base and service area. Wearing florescent-yellow T-shirts, the volunteers continue to receive up to a dozen calls each night.

Because many men in Egypt take advantage of crowds at protests and holidays to harass, grope, and commit gang assaults against women, activism groups set up patrols during these times in 2012. Wearing bright-yellow vests, they look for harassment situations and break them up. They also publicize a phone number people can call if they need help. For example, in 2012 during Eid-ul-Fitr, the holiday at the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, volunteers with Bassma (Imprint) interrupted many instances of harassment and helped police arrest several harassers each day. Founder Nihal Zaghloul wrote for the SSH blog, “It is OUR RIGHT as women to walk in the streets safely, and [since] NO ONE will give us this right, we must take it ourselves.”

Similarly, during political protests, as many as 300 volunteers with groups like Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment wear shirts proclaiming Tahrir Square a “safe square for all” while standing at every checkpoint, atop watchtowers, and throughout the crowd. They pass out hotline numbers and instructions on handling rape trauma victims. After one of their patrols in December 2012, Yasmine Abdelhamid said it was the first time since the uprising that she felt it was safe for her to protest in Tahrir Square.

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“Keep standing up for your rights, friends”

November 30, 2015 By Contributor

I had just pulled up to a red light at an intersection, alone in my car, with one couple in their car behind me. A car pulled up to my left, waiting to turn left. I saw from the corner of my eye that a young-ish white man with dark hair and facial hair was gesturing at me and saying things through the window of the car he was a passenger in. He kept doing this for over a minute, and I completely ignored him, looking at the lights and waiting for them to change to green.

I saw out of the corner of my eye that he seemed to be giving up, and he seemed to turn away for a moment to say something to the driver of the car he was in. At that moment, the lights started changing and I slowly pulled forward to go straight, as they pulled forward to turn left; at that moment, I flicked the middle finger at this person and looked over to make sure the disgusting individual saw this; he did, and he seemed very happy with this sudden attention being payed to his pathetic and disrespectful behaviour.

This individual’s behavior made me disappointed, and made me feel insulted; it is unfortunate that this person chose to try to foist an uninvited interaction upon another, and also that this person did not demonstrate respect. I find that although this individual is obviously a symptom of a larger societal problem with treating women properly, the individual themselves is also entirely responsible for their pathetic and unbecoming actions.

I think my response was great, because I 1) ignored the fool for the entire minute because that behaviour is pathetic and useless, and 2) responded with a calm, cool, collected, strong, brief, and self-confident rejection of the person, while remaining in my car. I kept driving straight and that car turned left, driving off.

I do hope I do not see that person again, as my mother upon hearing this story, got very worried that it could escalate into a fight or something. (I also considered photographing the individual, but did not try because I don’t have room on my phone for pics at the moment.)

Guess what? That kid is lucky I had somewhere to be and couldn’t spend more time than I did; otherwise I would have been tempted to turn my car off, get out, and knock on that car’s window to ask what was the matter, and if nothing was wrong then to encourage him to cease the disrespectful gesturing.

As a side note, I have been taught (mostly by my mother) that women cannot defend themselves. I have seen, however, thankfully that this is not true; women are oppressed, of course, but we can stand up for ourselves and every instance in which our allies do the same, I do think will bring us all closer to a world we can be proud of, and a society we don’t have to be embarrassed to bequeath to our children. Keep standing up for your rights, friends.

Optional: What’s one way you think we can make public places safer for everyone?

This is a very good question, how we can make public places safe– I do not know how we can make intersections at night safe for everyone. It really would be great to figure out a way; I think there’s even a traffic video-camera mounted on one of the traffic lights, but I’m not sure it would catch this. In any event, video can only deter so much, and then all it becomes is evidence once the harm is done; so that’s not really ideal. I’ll keep thinking; anyone reading this, please keep brainstorming, as well!

– Anonymous

Location: Illinois, street intersection while in my car.

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See the book 50 Stories about Stopping Street Harassers for more idea.

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