florida Archives | Stop Street Harassment

Harasser Shoots Man for Telling Him to Stop Disrespecting His Wife

July 25, 2016 By HKearl

“Shortly before midnight on Sunday, officers say Bradley Mills was outside his home on Mason Avenue [in Florida] with his wife. Mills says he saw and heard two men two houses down staring and whistling at his wife, and told them to stop disrespecting her.

According to the police report, Mills’ wife went inside, and when Mills followed, he heard one of the men shout after him. He allegedly ignored him and kept walking, but turned when the man called out again and saw the man holding a gun, which he shot towards the ground. Then, Mills says the man shot several times at him while following him towards his house. Two of the bullets hit Mills, and he told his wife to call 911.

Authorities say they tracked down the shooter and identified him as Rolando Fernandez Rodriquez. He was arrested at his home on Pine Avenue in Haines City.

Mills was treated for two gunshot wounds at the Heart of Florida Hospital. He is expected to be okay. Rodriquez was transported to the Polk County Jail and charged with Attempted Murder in the 2nd Degree.”

Bradley Mills did everything right as a witness to street harassment. The scary reality is, you never know which harasser will escalate — some will escalate if you ignore, if you speak back assertively (as he did), or if you lash out. All we can do is make the best decision we can in the moment and try to stay safe.

I am grateful he told the harassers they were disrespectful and I’m relieved he will recover from his injuries.

USA: Florida Chalking Awareness Day

December 28, 2015 By Contributor

This post is from our Safe Public Spaces Team in Florida, USA. The SPSM projects are supported by SSH donors. If you would like to donate to support the 2016 mentees, we would greatly appreciate it!

By Tena Gordon

In addition to our library event in October educating teens about street harassment, on December 6, 2015, Me=You: Sexual Violence Awareness (MYSVA for short) held our first Chalk Day! We set up on the sidewalk along Degroodt Road, outside our local library. Jineth (the member of MYSVA pictured to the left) held a sign to attract the drivers in passing vehicles to participate. Unfortunately, this was not a successful strategy. Next time, we are going to host Chalk Day at a place with less vehicle traffic and more foot traffic.

Anyway, people on foot and bike stopped and wrote messages against street harassment or just signed their name. We offered them a free informational, promotional package and free water. The most touching part of the day was when Rachael (the jogger pictured to the right) came back and brought her daughter of high-school age to sign her name, too.

Also, to our surprise, Sergio (the student journalist pictured below) from our school came and participated. He took pictures of us chalking, and he did a story on our event that aired on the school news.

In total, about 10-15 people participated. They were mostly of middle-age, not our targeted demographic, so next time we will have it in a place where teens hang out more frequently. Overall, Chalk Day raised awareness about street harassment, our main goal.

Tena Gordon is the MYSVA Coordinator and a high school student in Florida.

USA: Teens Educating Teens

October 29, 2015 By Contributor

Our four Safe Public Spaces Mentees are half-way through their projects. This week we are featuring their blog posts about how the projects are going so far. This post is from our team in the USA. Their projects are supported by SSH donors. If you would like to donate to support the 2016 mentees, we would greatly appreciate it!

Hey, I’m Tena, the founder of Me=You: Sexual Violence Awareness (MYSVA for short). My friends Jineth and Ash and I make-up MYSVA. We are a teen activism group that aims to get fellow teenagers talking about and preventing gender- and sexual orientation-based violence.

For the past few months, we have been working on the administration and promotion of MYSVA (setting up social media accounts, partaking in the SPSM program, setting up a bank account, and more). Just this month, I finally secured approval from the Palm Bay (Florida) City Manager to host MYSVA Chalk Day on Sunday, December 6; a day we, our friends, and passersby will write testimonies and anti-street harassment messages in chalk along the sidewalk outside the local library, Degroodt.

A few weeks ago, on October 13, MYSVA presented about violence issues to an audience of 15 teenagers at the Degroodt Library Teen Advisory Group Meeting.

First, via power point slides, we covered different types of sexual violence (street harassment, teen dating violence, domestic violence, etc.) and how to recognized them. Then, we role-played street harassment scenarios, with me as the bystander, Ash as the street harassment sufferer, and Danny (a person from the audience) playing the harasser. The bystander just watched and made excuses for the harasser, like “maybe he is just being nice” or “maybe he knows her”, as the victim was followed and catcalled.

The audience laughed when Danny’s character exclaimed, “Are you a beaver, ‘cuz DAMN!” but we made sure to emphasize how uncomfortable this is for a stranger to hear this from a random being off the street. We brainstormed different ways a bystander can intervene.

Also, we collected surveys on the teen audience’s experiences of harassment (to be analyzed in the near future). All in all, our audience was really receptive and we got positive feedback from them.

Plus, on October 6, I interviewed Ms. Sue Kiley, a licensed counselor and the director of program’s at the Brevard Women’s Center in Melbourne, Florida. I learned lots of new informatiom on the motivations behind harassment, especially stalking, and support available for those who have experienced it. I hope to share my new-found knowledge when we launch our website (coming soon!)

Tena Gordon is a high school student in Florida and the founder of MYSVA.