• About Us
    • What Is Street Harassment?
    • Why Stopping Street Harassment Matters
    • Meet the Team
      • Board of Directors
      • Past Board Members
    • In The Media
  • Our Work
    • National Street Harassment Hotline
    • International Anti-Street Harassment Week
    • Blog Correspondents
      • Past SSH Correspondents
    • Safe Public Spaces Mentoring Program
    • Publications
    • National Studies
    • Campaigns against Companies
    • Washington, D.C. Activism
  • Our Books
  • Donate
  • Store

Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Home
  • Blog
    • Harassment Stories
    • Blog Correspondents
    • Street Respect Stories
  • Help & Advice
    • National Street Harassment Hotline
    • Dealing With Harassers
      • Assertive Responses
      • Reporting Harassers
      • Bystander Responses
      • Creative Responses
    • What to Do Before or After Harassment
    • Street Harassment and the Law
  • Resources
    • Definitions
    • Statistics
    • Articles & Books
    • Anti-Harassment Groups & Campaigns
    • Male Allies
      • Educating Boys & Men
      • How to Talk to Women
      • Bystander Tips
    • Video Clips
    • Images & Flyers
  • Take Community Action
  • Contact

It’s time to audit your city, Washington, DC!

February 22, 2011 By HKearl

On Sunday, I declared March 20, the First Day of Spring, to be Anti-Street Harassment Day. Already more than 120 people have RSVPed to participate via Facebook, plus many more via Twitter. I hope you will, too. I’m excited to reveal what I’ll be doing on March 20 and I invite everyone who lives or works in Washington, DC, to participate, too!

What’s happening?

HollaBack DC! and I are organizing the FIRST Community Safety Audit to be conducted in Washington, DC, and the first to be conducted in the US in the past 15 years. This means we are organizing groups of people, training group leaders, and giving everyone a checklist of items to look for as they walk a few blocks in DC. Participants will be looking for specific items that will help indicate if the area is safe and inclusive for everyone.

In order to conduct audits in all 8 Wards, we need at least 80 volunteers. The time commitment is about two hours on March 20 and two hours on March 23.  Please sign up and ask your friends, neighbors, family, and co-workers who work or live in Washington, DC, to sign up too.

Where did this idea come from?

Women in Tanzania who conducted a community safety audit

When I attended an international conference on safe cities for women held in India last November, I learned about the community safety audits and immediately wanted to bring the initiative to the USA. People have conducted Community Safety Audits since 1989, when the Metropolitan Action Committee on Violence against Women & Children (METRAC) developed it in Toronto. Since then, they’ve been conducted in cities across Canada and internationally in cities in Russia, the UK, India, South Africa, and Tanzania. Our audit is adapted from METRAC’s.

This is your chance to be part of history!

Please sign up to volunteer for this important initiative in March. We want volunteers from all demographics and we will work to ensure that individuals with special mobility needs and/or childcare needs can participate.

The outcomes of the audit will be used to make recommendations to the DC City Council and other local decision-makers.  In April (date TBD) we will announce those asks at an anti-street harassment rally, which we hope will lead to the first ever DC City Council hearing on street harassment, following in the footsteps of New York City. So participating in the community safety audit is an opportunity to be part of history and to help establish a model for other cities to use.

Let’s all work together to take a good look at our city and see what we’d like to fix!

Share

Filed Under: street harassment Tagged With: community safety audit, hollaback dc, METRAC, safe cities, street harassment, UNIFEM, women's safety

Let Egypt inspire you! Take action online

February 11, 2011 By HKearl

In a few short weeks, the efforts of the people of Egypt, done largely through online organizing, led to unprecedented political change. Egypt is just the latest (and one of the most impressive) examples of how the Internet gives ordinary people a place to have a voice, share ideas, and create change.

Here are three opportunities for people in the U.S. to participate in small online actions that can, and surely will, lead to larger change.

If you are anyone, anywhere:

The National Museum of Crime and Punishment thinks that intimate partner violence should be described as “crimes of passion” during their Valentine’s Day events this weekend. No – such violence is motivated by issues of power/control, not passion. Support Hollaback DC and sign the petition demanding that the National Crime and Punishment Museum take intimate partner violence seriously.

Washington, DC- area residents or visitors who’ve experienced or witnessed street harassment:

Please help HollaBack DC! better understand public sexual harassment and assault in the DC Metro area by taking their 10-15 minute survey! Your answers will help them identify community needs and directly affect the workshops, programs, and materials that they offer. The data from this survey will also go into a report about the status of the issue in the DC metro area.

Queer women of color in New York City:

Kimberlynn Acevedo is writing about queer women of color* and their experiences in public spaces of New York City, including but not limited to the subway system and the streets, as well as semi-public spaces like restaurants and other businesses. Her goal is to give a voice to women who are, more often than not, underrepresented in the growing discussion around gender-based harassment, violence, and discrimination. If you are a queer woman of color in NYC, please take her survey and share your voices and views.

*queer is open ended and women is also open to self-identification

Thank you! Your five minutes of action is time well spent.

Share

Filed Under: hollaback, Resources Tagged With: crimes of passion, hollaback dc, Kimberlynn Acevedo, National Museum of Crime and Punishment, street harassment, valentine's day

Online radio show TONIGHT about street harassment

June 10, 2010 By HKearl

Need ideas for dealing with street harassers? Listen to a Crime Prevention 101 online radio show tonight at 8 p.m. EDT focused on the topic.

Hosted by Susan Bartelstone, Crime Prevention Specialist

To Listen: http://www.voiceamerica.com/voiceamerica/vshow.aspx?sid=1306

Missed the live show? Available as a podcast and on iTunes: http://tinyurl.com/CP101itunes

It doesn’t just occur when women pass by a construction site or a group of men hanging out in front of a store.  Simply by being in ANY public place, women can be subjected to behavior that ranges from the merely annoying (catcalls, whistles, references to body parts) to the downright terrifying (public exposure, public masturbation, threats of rape).  It’s called street harassment and it happens pretty much all over the world.

This week, I’m interviewing national street harassment expert Holly Kearl, author of the upcoming book Stop Street Harassment:  Making Public Places Safe and Welcoming for Women for a definitive look at this problem.  She runs the website Stop Street Harassment and the companion blog where people from around the world submit their street harassment stories and where she discusses street harassment incidents that make the news.

Then I speak with Chai Shenoy and Shannon Lynberg, co-founders of Holla Back DC which is part of a worldwide grassroots organization that aims to empower people to build a community free from public sexual harassment and assault.  Trust me; they offer a very unique way to effectively “holla back” at your harassers.

You’ll also learn some awareness and prevention skills and simple verbal responses to street harassment that’ll increase your chances of staying safe in these situations, when I speak with self defense instructor Lauren Taylor, from Defend Yourself, who’s also based in Washington, DC.

IT’D BE A CRIME NOT TO LISTEN!

Share

Filed Under: Events, street harassment Tagged With: Crime Prevention 101, defend yourself, hollaback dc, radio show, stop street harassment, street harassment, Susan Bartelstone

Help Bring RightRides to Washington DC!

October 23, 2009 By HKearl

(Cross-posted from HollaBack DC)

How much would you love to see safe, free rides for women and LGBTQ  individuals on weekends through a partnership with Holla Back DC! and Zipcar?  Wouldn’t that be cool?  Well, we want to bring a  RightRides chapter to the DC metro area.

To make this a reality, Holla Back DC! is asking you to vote for this idea through Ideablob.  If we win, half of that $10K would be used to bring RightRides to DC.  But we need YOU to make it happen! We urge you to take one minute to register through Ideablob and vote for HBDC!  A vote for us is a vote for a safer DC for all.  And hey, good ideas spread, so get your friends and family in other places to vote to make our nation’s capital a safe place!

Read about our plans, register, vote, and spread the word.

As always, a heartfelt thank you for your votes and continued support.  Holla Back DC! is a community initiative that would not be possible without the loving support from people like you and the DC metro community.

Alright, off our PBS soap box. :)

– Holla Back DC

Share

Filed Under: hollaback Tagged With: DC, hollaback dc, LGBQT, rightrides, safe rides home, sexual harassment, street harassment, Washington

Street Harassment Round Up – April 26

April 26, 2009 By HKearl

Stories:

A contributor on Holla Back DC wrote about getting harassed by a UPS employee. She reported him and received support from the person she spoke to at UPS.

HollaBack Toronto reported that two men abducted and sexually assaulted a young woman in the Younge St-Davisville Road area earlier in the week. Visit their site to learn more — anyone with information can call Crime Stoppers at 416-222-8477.

Reports:

MBTA released information about their sexual harassment campaign on their subway system (the T) in Boston. They feel it’s been successful in raising awareness about how to deal with the problem as groping complaints went up 74 perecent from the previous year and police arrested 24 people for indecent assault and battery (up 85 percent from the year before).

Upcoming Events:

April 29: Holla Back DC‘s Official Blog Launch Party, 6 – 8 p.m. at Cafe Citron

May 2: Girls for Gender Equity’s “Hey…Shorty!” documentary will be featured at the 8th Annual Women of African Descent Film Festival at 11 a.m., in the Spike Lee Screening Room of Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus in New York. Cost: free

Share

Filed Under: Stories Tagged With: 8th Annual Women of African Descent Film Festival, brooklyn, catcalling, girls for gender equity, Hey...Shorty, hollaback dc, hollaback toronto, MBTA, sexual harassment, street harassment, UPS

Share Your Story

Share your street harassment story for the blog. Donate Now

From the Blog

  • #MeToo 2024 Study Released Today
  • Join International Anti-Street Harassment Week 2022
  • Giving Tuesday – Fund the Hotline
  • Thank You – International Anti-Street Harassment Week 2021
  • Share Your Story – Safecity and Catcalls Collaboration

Buy the Book

  • Contact
  • Events
  • Join Us
  • Donate
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Copyright © 2025 Stop Street Harassment · Website Design by Sarah Marie Lacy