Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

The Black Girl Movement: A National Conference

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BlackGirlMovementVia Girls for Gender Equity:

“In 2014 Girls for Gender Equity joined a planning committee of activists, scholars, and artists to plan “Black Girl Movement: A National Conference” a free, three-day public gathering at Columbia University in New York City that will focus on Black girls, cis, queer, and trans girls in the United States. Bringing together artists, activists, educators, policymakers, and black girls who are leaders themselves, this first national conference on Black girls seeks to address the disadvantages that Black girls in the United States face, while creating the political will to publicly acknowledge their achievements, contributions, and leadership.

‘The Black Girl Movement is more than a conference,’ says Girls for Gender Equity founder Joanne N. Smith. ‘It is an uprising, a declaration, a demand, and an affirmation. Black girls and women have been leading racial and gender justice movements for centuries, so our conference is a space for us to connect our multiple movement building goals and strategies as we continue to lead the way.'”

Joanne will moderate two panels on Friday, April 8th, Best Practices, Policy and Philanthropy and Sisters in Strength youth organizers will lead a School Pushout workshop and curate strategies for a Black Girls Bill of Rights. Registration is full so if you haven’t registered, you can watch April 8th via Livestream  https://livestream.com/accounts/557662   

Join GGE for the opening reception on April 7th! It begins with PICTURING BLACK GIRLHOOD EXHIBIT –At 5:00pm – The EXHIBIT is FREE, open to ALL and will display until Saturday.  Check out the event page.“

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CGES Street Harassment Youth Summit was a Success!

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This is belatedly cross-posted from the Girls for Gender Equity newsletter, with permission.

The Coalition for Gender Equity in Schools (CGES) held a Youth Summit on Street Harassment on March 25, 2013 at the Urban Assembly Institute that exceeded our highest expectations!

We planned for 50 middle and high school students to attend this youth led event, but to our surprise 100 students showed up and convened in downtown Brooklyn for the CGES summit. These remarkable students and youth leaders chose to spend the first day of their spring break with us in a variety of workshops that examined street harassment.

In spite of the rain, students began arriving in droves at 10:00 am to register, eat breakfast and mingle. By the beginning of the program, the meeting room was filled beyond capacity and an overflow room had to be set up to accommodate participants.

Throughout the summit, youth leaders from Girls for Gender Equity, Center for Anti-Violence Education (CAE), Right Rides, Sadie Nash Leadership Project and Girls Inc. emceed, facilitated, and supported their peers in an action packed, thought-provoking day of activities, dialogues and workshops.

The day opened with an enthusiastic welcome by GGE’s Youth Organizer, Nathania Fields and CAE’s Peer Educator, Mercy Carpenter, the emcees for the event. Nathania and Mercy set the tone of the day, encouraging participants to share their thoughts and listen to one other. They then introduced the Host Committee and organizational staff, who discussed the goals and purpose of the event.

The first activity, ‘The Roots of Street Harassment Tree,’ set the stage for in-depth conversations about why street harassment occurs at every level. Participants were divided up into groups of ten and given a large drawn tree. They were asked to fill out the roots of the tree with the roots of Street Harassment and the trunks of the tree with what supports street harassment aka customs, beliefs, attitudes and institutions.

The Roots of Street Harassment Tree

Towards the day’s end, the young people at the youth summit chose to write love letters to the 16-year-old high school rape survivor in Steubenville, Ohio. Unfortunately after the trial against two teen boys that were found guilty in this case, she had been bullied and blamed for their actions. The youth had a deep empathy for what she has been through and wanted her to know how brave an courageous she is.

    
The last activity of the day invited the young people to sign up for different events presented at a row of ‘Action Booths’ that lined the hallway outside the meeting room. All of these events prepared us for April Sexual Assault Awareness Month and and the Anti-Street Harassment Rally on Saturday, April 13.

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Happy 40th Birthday, Title IX!

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Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 turns 40 years old today. It is a 37-word law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in educational institutions (k-12 and college) in the USA. Because of the negative impact sexual harassment has on students and the way it limits their ability to fully access an education, sexual harassment is prohibited by Title IX and that law is enforced by the Office for Civil Rights. (Here’s a “Know Your Rights” document from the ACLU on this topic.)

Last fall in my day job, I co-authored a research report on sexual harassment in grades 7-12 in the USA. Nearly one in two students had been harassed during the previous school year, more girls than boys and more girls experienced physical forms of it.

Unfortunately, the way the case law has gone, unless schools know that sexual harassment is occurring, they are not liable for taking care of it and so we see A LOT of schools blatantly ignore it so that they don’t have to do anything. Schools are supposed to have Title IX Coordinators to talk to students about their rights and handle complaints, but most schools neglect to do this too, or only have the Coordinators handle sports-related discrimination.

So most schools need to do a LOT better at doing prevention and enforcement work to keep their schools harassment-free.

That said, the fact that there is a federal law that should help students is much better than if there were no law…and it sets an example for what we want to see happen in the streets. We want sexual harassment to be prohibited everywhere because, just as it has negative impacts on students, it has negative impacts on the people who experience it in public places.

Girls for Gender Equity in NYC just celebrated their 10-year anniversary as an organization and I highly recommend checking out their work because they have programs and efforts in place to address BOTH the sexual harassment that happens in schools and in the streets. Their book Hey Shorty! A Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment and Violence in Schools and on the Streets is a very useful read.

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How to Be a Good Guy on the Sidewalk

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“A number of men have asked us the same question recently: if you’re walking on a dark street near a lady, how can you let her know you’re not a threat? So this week, we offer some tips for dudes who’d like to help women feel more comfortable in public spaces,” writes Anna North on Jezebel.

In her article, you can find suggestions for how men can be non-threatening to women. The advice is given by Neal Irvin, executive director of Men Can Stop Rape, Joanne Smith, executive director of Girls for Gender Equity, Emily May, executive director of Hollaback!, and me, founder of Stop Street Harassment.

Here’s one example of the advice:

“Make a call.

Irvin described a time when he was walking behind a woman who was becoming visibly agitated by his presence. One trick he tried to set her at ease was calling his fiancee on his cell phone. Obviously just making a phone call doesn’t mean you’re not a threat — but it could be a way of showing a woman that you’re not focused on her. Depending on the situation, this could be enough to make her feel better.”

Read the rest at Jezebel and share the article widely with all the good guys out there!

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“Anita Hill stood up in 1991 and we can all stand up in 2011.”

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Charles Ogletree, a professor at Harvard Law School and the lead counsel for Anita Hill in 1991 spoke those words yesterday at the moving conference Sex, Power and Speaking Truth: Anita Hill 20 Years Later at Hunter College in New York City.

I agree. We all can stand up today as she did then. But, as I discuss in the latter part of the post, the knowing how to stand up in a way that will be effective and have a lasting-impact is often challenging.

The Conference

Throughout the conference, renowned lawyers, academics, and activists offered history lessons focused on what happened 20 years ago, commentary about the impact it had on current events and organizing efforts, and ideas for addressing sexual harassment in the future (though I thought the latter was a bit light on realistic ideas.)

We watched a compelling clip from Sex & Justice showing what happened 20 years ago and participated in lunchtime discussions on sexual harassment sub-topics.

If you missed it, you can watch most the conference online at C-Span.org.

To give you a taste of the day, here are some of my notes from two of the three panels and from Hill’s keynote address:

1. Charles Ogletree, Harvard Law School spoke first. He represented Anita Hill in 1991.

“What she stood for in 1991 still resonates with us…she’s in a class with Susan B. Anthony, Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt, Fanny Lou Hamer…”

Despite all of the backlash he and Hill faced, his then 12-year-old daughter told him on the phone, “I believe Anita.”

2. Lani Guinier, Harvard Law School

She talked about how Anita Hill made people “deal with the ambivalence and ignorance of the question: ‘Are you black or are you a woman?'”

“Many of us realized that not all women are white, not all blacks are men, and some of us, like Anita Hill, are very brave.”

3. Judith Resnik, Yale Law School

She examined the context of the hearing…how the male Senators on the hearing committee didn’t want to let Hill speak and then cut her defense short. While Thomas should have been on trial, they made it so Hill was.

It’s with the work of Hill and others who stood up for her and spoke out against sexual harassment that “things that are seen as ‘the way things are’ become intolerable”

4. Catharine A. MacKinnon, University of Michigan Law School

She’d been speaking out against sexual harassment since the 1970s and wrote the first book on it in 1979. During the hearing, she gave commentary on NBC.

The hearing was a “massive consciousness raising session” on an issue she’d been trying to raise awareness about for years..the hearing “made sexual harassment real to people” in a way her 1979 book did not, the EEOC guidelines did not, etc…only Anita Hill did.

“Women identified with Anita Hill…they believed her with ferocity and more said so as time and heat passed. They realized what happened to them was often as bad as what happened to her and if she could do it, they could do it too.”

“Sometimes it’s important to stand up and do the right thing, even if you lose,” she said about the DSK-Diallo sexual assault case.

5. Jamia Wilson, Women’s Media Center

“I am not Anita Hill but I could have been and that scares the crap out of me.”

Thelma & Louise + Anita Hill introduced her to victim-blaming and rape shaming. She witnessed the hearings become “a modern day witch hunt rather than the high tech lynching, as Thomas said.”

She feared she could be marked a traitor [against her race] for one day speaking out. The hearing was “intersectionality 101” for her.

6. The keynote address was a conversation between Patricia J. Williams and Hill. Here are a few notes from it:

Anita Hill spoke about the death threats, bomb threats, sh*t people mailed her and how she had to go to the grocery store knowing 7 in 10 people thought she had perjured herself…and how her family and friends helped her through it.

She talked about wanting to get her life back and resented that things didn’t go back to normal after the hearing ended. She said once she let go of that (about 6 months later) and realized she had a different life and she had to decide what shape that life would take, then she was able to move forward and also recognize that while it was an important event that shaped her life, it was just an event.

In her new book Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race, and Finding Home she writes about home and also the housing crisis in the USA.

Some of the last things she said related to her work on sexual harassment as she “helps people find their voice, talk about the issues that keep people from living full lives of equality…we should imagine a future where sexual harassment no longer exists”

7. Kimberlé Crenshaw, The African American Policy Network (You can read her speech in the current issue of The Nation).

She spoke a lot to the issue of intersectionality of race and gender.  She said the message still is “just get over it” re: sexual harassment, but “until we say it’s over, it’s not over.”

8. Virginia Valian, Hunter College

She shared stats on sexual harassment in the workplace…they’re the same today as they were 20 years ago.

She said there are several calls to action, including: 1) be smarter about how we influence people in power and how we get them into power. educate judiciary, lawyers, lawmakers, and be more systematic in our efforts 2) Form rapid response teams so we can influence the media and get the correct facts out. Giving good info to the people in power immediately.

9. Gloria Steinem

She talked about the DSK case and how the work of Hill and others allowed Nafissatou Diallo to come forward to report him. Both lost in the courts but they won in public opinion…Most importantly, this is the legacy of Anita Hill: “Thomas is on the Supreme Court but DSK will never be president of France!”

“We have the strength to go forward”

10. Devon Carbado, UCLA School of Law

“What have we learned from the Thomas-Hill hearings? That our anti-racism needs to be tied to a robust feminism and our feminist interventions must be infused with anti-racism.”

11. Julie Zeilinger, FBomb

“Gender conditioning and gender stereotyping allow sexual harassment to continue.”

“Our work isn’t yet done, plenty of us are willing to continue the fight and take Anita Hill’s legacy and run with it.”

It was a day I will never forget. Especially after I had the huge honor of meeting both Steinem and Hill at an evening reception. I got to meet Hill with Joanne Smith, founder and ED of Girls for Gender Equity and one of her organizers Jodyann. Jodyann was determined to get to meet Hill and was overcome with emotion when she did. It was moving.

I’m still feeling the adrenaline and awe f meeting two feminist icons in one evening on top of meeting and reconnecting with amazing current activist/future feminist icons.

L to R: Holly Kearl, Jodyann of Girls for Gender Equity (GGE), Anita Hill, Joanne Smith the ED of GGE

What to Take Away

The conference is over. What now?

Let’s look back to Ogletree’s quote. “Anita Hill stood up in 1991 and we can all stand up in 2011.”

If you’re reading this blog, you probably want to (and do) stand up against sexual harassment—especially the kind that happens in public places—and ideally, you’d like to do so to the same extent that Anita Hill stood up against workplace sexual harassment.

But, if you’re like me, you may find that figuring out what actions will work, what efforts will be effective, and what kind of collective organizing will create long-term change is challenging. It’s especially challenging since “street harassment” is not a universal term and it’s not seen as a legitimate problem by most people. We’re still at the consciousness-raising and education stage.

To help with that stage, sites like HarassMap, Hollaback and mine collect individuals’ stories of resistance to street harassment, people write articles, tweet, and post stories on Tumblr, and numerous groups and people organize community anti-street harassment efforts. But I just don’t think they are enough to really turn street harassment into an immediately-recognized issue that is treated as seriously as workplace sexual harassment, or at least not any time soon.  There must be more we can collectively do about street harassment that is inclusive, appropriate, and effective; or one major action we can rally behind to raise awareness as people rallied behind Anita Hill. But what  is it?

Something I’m taking away from the conference is a better understanding of the workplace anti-sexual harassment movement and I hope that as I reflect on all that I’ve learned, I may come across ideas for effective, inclusive ways we can stand up against street harassment.

A related conference take away for me is a desire to learn even more about the general anti-sexual harassment movement and see what messaging, campaigns, and laws work. I know a lot of people still treat sexual harassment as a joke and it’s still a big problem at work and schools, but at least you don’t get blank stares from decision makers, academics and regular people when you bring it up (as happens with street harassment).

While learning about the anti-sexual harassment movement is not new to me, I’ve never delved very far into it. As my first step, I’m half-way through Carrie Baker’s fascinating and well-documented book, The Women’s Movement Against Sexual Harassment. Attending the Anita Hill conference was another step and now, for my next step, I plan to connect with scholars and activists I heard and met there.

Questions for You

If you attended the conference, what are your takeaways?

And, a question for anyone, do you have thoughts about what we in the anti-street harassment “movement” can learn from Anita Hill and related efforts to end workplace sexual harassment?

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