Discussion about entry: Hollaback!

Hey guys! I wanted to give you a little more information on our project. Let us know what you think!

Comments like ”Hey Baby, mmmm…," and unwanted attention like groping, public lewdness, and assault are a demeaning and demoralizing everyday part of life for women and LGBT individuals around the world. When sexual harassment occurs, women must choose between ignoring it (and feeling victimized) or fighting it (and risking personal safety). On the New York City subways (2007 study), 63% of riders are harassed and 10% are assaulted. With 5 million people riding the subway every weekday, it is fair to say that these crimes are at epidemic proportions. And yet 97% of these crimes go unreported. Those that attempt to report it to the police are frequently told there is nothing they can do; adding insult to injury, authorities regularly fail to report these crimes to the public, making them virtually invisible.

Hollaback! targets harassment at its source, not with brawn but with brains: mobile technology will help women and LGBT individuals safely report harassment and assault from their phones within minutes of the occurrence. Experiences and photos will be submitted by the victim through the Hollaback! iPhone and mobile phone application when they are able to safely do so. Harassment and assault data will be mapped, made publicly available, and analyzed in an annual "State of Our Streets" report. Hollaback! will track 2,000 stories of harassment and assault within the first year, providing city governments with strong evidence for the local advocacy, education, and awareness campaigns that will help end harassment worldwide. After a New York City pilot, Hollaback! will make this open-source technology available to other communities with anti-harassment efforts in India, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa.

Hollaback! combines community-based activism with technology to create a safe, immediate, and empowering response to street harassment. In 2005 we launched HollabackNYC.com to wide acclaim. The site integrated two relatively new forms of technology, the blog and the cell phone camera, to create a platform where users can “hollaback” by submitting pictures and stories of street harassment to a public forum. The organization quickly expanded to have 20 chapters worldwide. Five years later, we have new forms of technology available to us; smartphone applications, GPS mapping, and SMS texting have changed the way people communicate with each other and with their governments. According to a Marist Institute for Public Opinion (www.marist.edu) study in 2009, 87% of all Americans—and 94% of Americans under the age of 45—own a cellphone. The cell phone has democratized technology, allowing us to pursue a new goal: documenting where and when street harassment occurs.

When it comes to activist work, creating open source technology is not enough—we need to create open-source leaders as well. This project merges the idea of open-source technology with open-source leadership to develop a brand new model of activism. Hollaback! allows women and the LGBT community to participate in activism in a safe and meaningful way. For every one HollabackNYC story, we know approximately 1,000 people read it. This means that women are learning they are not alone and men are also learning the real impact of street harassment. The ability to influence the thinking of 1,000 people from one shared experience is something that most projects rarely accomplish. Hollaback! provides a platform, but it is the participants’ shared experiences and subsequent action that will catalyze the movement to end sexual harassment and assault.

Hollaback! provides the opportunity to directly impact people’s understanding of and action around this insidious issue through the simple push of a button. Hollaback! will revolutionize women and LGBT individuals ability to report the crimes they experience, and their activism will be directed toward eradicating these crimes in the coming decade. Although we are implementing this model to combat street harassment, the model can be used for a number of important causes including: minorities being passed up by cab drivers, non-disabled drivers parking in handicap spaces, or cars in bike lanes. To facilitate broader use, Hollaback! will open-source the website, SMS text, and Iphone app code so it can be easily and cheaply manipulated to create social change across a variety of fields. The Hollaback! platform harnesses the strength of individuals to shape their own future, using their authentic voices and stories. The result is a template for systemic change.