Sometimes walking down the STREET
Feels like an OBSTACLE COURSE.
We are constantly trying to avoid DANGER.
It’s like Lil’ Red Riding Hood
Who was sent into the WOODS
To take food to her sick old grandma and
Was attacked instead by the BIG BAD WOLF.
For us,
the STREETS sometimes seem filled with
BIG BAD WOLVES.

by Rogers Park Young Women’s Action Team in Shout Out: Women of color respond to violence (2007)

I’ve spent many years working with young women of color. One of the most formative experiences I’ve had were the nine years that I spent supporting an incredible group of girls & young women who called themselves the Rogers Park Young Women’s Action Team (YWAT). I have written about YWAT sporadically over the years on this blog. I haven’t however written about my experiences in any depth. I have also never before shared my very personal and specific reasons for engaging in anti-violence work with girls & young women in my community. For me, it began with street harassment and over the next few weeks, I will share some reflections about addressing this issue with young women of color. Finally, I hope to explore how my years with YWAT shaped my anti-criminalization ideas for addressing social problems.

To begin, it’s important to settle on a definition of street or public harassment. For this, I rely on Carol Gardner (1995) who defines public harassment as including “pinching, slapping, hitting, shouted remarks, vulgarity, insults, sly innuendo, ogling, and stalking (p.4).” She adds that “public harassment is on a continuum of possible events, beginning when customary civility among strangers is abrogated and ending with the transition to violent crime: assault, rape, or murder (p.4).”

There is probably no woman in the world who hasn’t experienced street/public harassment in her lifetime. My interest in this issue is longstanding and personal. I was raised in New York City – the daughter of West African return migrants. I grew up in the “city that never sleeps” and learned from an early age that there were dangers “lurking” around most corners. I don’t remember my parents ever telling me to be afraid. I don’t remember being sat down and told that I should be careful. However, I did have a curfew and I noticed that my father never seemed to be asleep when I would get home from being out at night. He never admitted that he was waiting up for me.

I was never mugged while walking the streets of New York. The violence that I experienced was the sort of “everyday public violence” that comes from being born a girl-child in America. I have kept a journal since I was 12 years old. I have dozens upon dozens of notebooks and hundreds of loose sheets of paper with my scribbles on them. I am able to revisit key parts of my life this way. My journals are replete with references to the “everyday” public harassment and violence that I was subjected to as a young woman. One entry written when I was 22 years old recounts an experience of being sexually assaulted on the subway during rush hour. I stepped on to a crowded car and was quickly followed in by a man who was pressed very close to my back.

We were all standing there in the subway car, squished and pressed together like sardines. I felt a hand brush past my butt. I was not going to overreact. After all, I was so close to the man ahead of me that I was afraid to breathe. I felt a “leg” on my ass. I couldn’t be unreasonable. The train was so crowded nobody had to hold on to the handrails because we held each other up.

The man behind me started breathing. He was breathing down my neck. I heard a strange clicking sound. It sounded like metal. Maybe I’m imagining things. The breathing is getting more halted. I move in place. I try to displace his “leg” from my ass. This is supposed to be an express train. I’m only supposed to be on this train for one stop. It seems like 10. Finally the doors open, I burst out. I’m not sure what happened.

While I was quickly walking away, a man who has been standing in front of me on the train ran to catch up. “Do you know that that man undid his pants and was rubbing his dick on you?” he asked. My journal entry conveys my state of mind at the time:

My mind snaps. Oh my God, what should I do? In a split second decision, I decided to keep walking. He yells over to me “Miss, stop, do you want me to find an attendant. You could talk to the police.” I ignore him. I shut down my brain. I just want to escape from this dreaded place. I should have stopped. I should not have run. I should have fought. I should have pressed charges. I should have… I could have… I didn’t. . (August 29, 1994).

This incident was only the latest in a long line of verbal and physical assaults that I had to endure as a young woman. I have so many “stories” of street/sexual/public harassment. I remember having a bottle thrown at me because I wouldn’t stop to talk to a grown man who asked for my number when I was only 13 years old. I didn’t notice the bottle until it fell right in front of me as I was hurriedly making my way home from school. I believe that all of these experiences had a profound effect on me in that they shaped my self-esteem, my body image, and my gender and racial identities.

Having experienced street harassment since my teens, I am still trying to process the meaning of this type of insidious “everyday” violence that women and girls (in particular) are exposed to in my neighborhood of Rogers Park and beyond. I am in the process of writing a long essay about my work with YWAT so I plan to use this space on the blog over the next few weeks to work through some of my experiences and the lessons that I learned. Next Monday, I will write more specifically about my struggles to process street harassment with girls of color.