Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

“Not Your Baby” App

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If you’re like me and tend to freeze up or draw a blank when you experience harassment, here’s a great resource to help you out, from our partner in Canada, METRAC. (They’re also the organization that also founded community safety audits).

Via their press release:

“On September 10, 2012, METRAC released a free iPhone app, “Not Your Baby”, to help users deal with sexual harassment. Once installed, the app will allow users to input where they are – such as work, school or on the street – and who’s harassing them – such as a boss, coworker or fellow student. A response will be generated “in the moment”, based on the input of 238 people who shared what they’ve done to deal with similar instances of harassment. “Not Your Baby” also includes their stories and tips and allows users to submit their own….

“Not Your Baby” stands as an example of the power of technology to help people take action, including women, young women, LGBTTIQQ2S and other groups most at risk of sexual and gender-based harassment. It is available on iTunes and by visiting METRAC’s website, www.metrac.org.”

What a great idea!

The Torontoist has more:

“METRAC communications director Andrea Gunraj described the app as “another tool that people can use to feel empowered,” rather than a cure-all for sexual harassment. She pointed to work by groups including the White Ribbon Campaign, for encouraging men, who are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of sexual harassment, to talk about the behaviour and its impact. She sees a need for more resources for men, including those “who want to diffuse harassment, who want to say something and don’t know how.”

According to Gunraj, it’s up to communities to initiate the uncomfortable social conversations that can lead to reflection and change. She noted that “the biggest barrier is speaking about it and seeing it as a problem. Too often we accept harassment as a fact of life.””

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New York City Safety Audit a Success

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Cross-posted with permission from New York City Council Member Julissa Ferreras’ Facebook page:

“Council Member Julissa Ferreras and the nonprofit organization Hollaback! led an historic community safety audit on Saturday, May 5th in Queens from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Community members met at The Transfiguration Of Christ Greek Orthodox Church, 3805 98th Street, Corona, New York for training. Afterwards they surveyed blocks in their neighborhood where residents expressed safety concerns and developed a concrete plan to address those concerns.

“This audit focused on women’s safety is a key step in the crime prevention effort in my district. We hope to develop a better understanding of the community’s needs and concerns to help reduce the risk of crime against women in the future and I am proud to collaborate with Hollaback! in this effort,” stated Council Member Julissa Ferreras.

The audit gathered important information from the community including the ratio of men to women, how public space is being utilized and details on how well roads, parks and public transit stops are lit at nighttime. In addition, audit participants answered questions on how safe they feel when occupying public spaces.

“It takes a community to make communities safer. Block by block, we’re going to work together with community members, organizations, and government to develop concrete improvements for how we can make Queens safer,” says Hollaback! Executive Director Emily May.

Community safety audits are a UN-identified best practice to address street harassment in communities across the world….

Following an assessment of the audit data, recommendations to create safer spaces for women in Queens will be submitted to the city agencies. Council Member Ferreras and Hollaback! have already discussed plans to paint over graffiti, increase street lighting, create harassment-free zones around public schools and install an anti-harassment PSA campaign in public spaces such as parks and bus stops.

Audit participants received lunch a free T-shirt. Representatives from NYC agencies attended including NYPD, NYC Department of Transportation, and the Mayor’s Community Affairs Unit. Collaborating community organizations include Elmcor Senior Services, Dominican American Society (DAS), Ecuadorian Civic Committee, Make the Road New York, and Community Board 3 members This event was generously supported by: Health First, Dominicana Radio Dispatcher, Mama’s Leo’s Latticini, Transfiguration of Christ Greek Orthodox Church, and SD Printing.”

Congratulations to the organizations in NYC that made this possible and I look forward to reading/reporting on updates on what else they do.

METRAC based in Toronto, Canada, launched the safety audit model in the 1980s and have led audits throughout Canada since then. The United Nations uses the audit system to evaluate communities worldwide. It’s a great model to use to get a sense for how safe people feel in their communities.

In Washington, DC, where I’m based, Holla Back DC/Collective Action for Safe Spaces and I led 50 people in 10 teams across the city to do safety audits. A daytime audit took place on March 20, 2011, and an evening one on May 5, 2011. Our efforts were covered by the Washington Post.

All of us who led the audits have full time jobs and volunteered our time to organize it. We were not able to organize it as thoroughly and get the kind of diversity of participants as we wanted. And perhaps we were too ambitious to audit the whole city instead of just one or two neighborhoods. For these reasons, we have not yet used our results to advocate for specific changes the way the audit leaders in NYC will. I love the nonprofit + government partnership NYC followed and I hope that the next time we do audits in DC, we will be able to have that kind of partnership.

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Washington Post covers anti-street harassment efforts

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I’m happy to share another “the tide is turning” moment in our work to raise awareness about street harassment.

On Sunday, the Washington Post Magazine is running a major article on anti-street harassment efforts in Washington, DC. The important work of Holla Back DC! and anti-harassment guru Marty Langelan (author of Back Off! How to Confront and Stop Sexual Harassment and Harassers) is featured.

The article went online today.

It’s huge that such a major publication would dedicate so much space (five pages!) to anti-street harassment work. More and more people and institutions are recognizing that street harassment is a serious problem, worthy of their attention, and they’re recognizing that we’re not stopping or shutting up. We’re speaking out, taking action, and making sure this issue is acknowledged and then addressed/prevented all over the world.

Let’s keep it up!

I also want to note that the DC community safety audits I helped organize with Holla Back DC! (Langelan was one of the audit team leaders) is featured throughout the article, which is very exciting! For the audits, around 50 volunteers helped us observe more than 10 neighborhoods around DC to look for potentially unsafe areas and to observe any areas with harassers. We went out into neighborhoods for International Anti-Street Harassment Day on March 20 and in the evening of May 5.

A big thanks to METRAC in Toronto for their pioneering work in designing the community safety audit and for their support as we implemented our adapted version in DC, and thanks to the 50 volunteers who gave us their time and passion.

You can catch Holla Back DC! co-founders Chai Shenoy and Shannon Lynberg on the Washington Post’s livechat tomorrow at 1 p.m. EST, discussing their anti-street harassment work further.

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

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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!

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