After the District of Columbia (D.C.) city council hearing on street harassment in December, Councilmember Brianne Nadeau introduced legislation this week to form a D.C. Task Force on Street Harassment – and five council members have already signed on! This means D.C. is poised to be the first city in the USA to have such a taskforce.
Kudos to our partners Collective Action for Safe Spaces for working hard to make this possible. And we’re excited that when/if the taskforce is formed, Stop Street Harassment will be part of it!
“The bill states the task force would be spearheaded by the D.C. Office on Human Rights and made up of representatives from several other city agencies as well as from community-based organizations. These members would prepare a report within a year on the possible collection of data on the prevalence of street harassment, strategies to address it in “high-risk areas,” bystander intervention training, and potential statutory changes. Still, Nadeau said the goal of the report is not to lock harassers up.“We need to create this change while being sensitive to the fact that young people, members of the LGBTQ community, people from communities of color, and people from low-income communities experience more frequent and severe harassment,” she said in a statement. “Any solution to the problem shouldn’t be an excuse to disproportionately target those same communities through criminalization.”
