by Ann Marie Morrow, AWC Finland
What would you do if you witnessed anti-Asian harassment? Most witnesses to harassment don’t do anything, because they feel they don’t know what to do or are worried they might make the situation worse. But there are things we can learn to do, both indirect and direct actions, that can help the situation. Your safety is the most important, so don’t ever take any actions if your safety is at risk.
There has been aggressive scaling up of locally-led bystander hate incident intervention training for community members due to the rise in harassment and the awareness of it. Several organizations have training programs and have even teamed up to roll out training more widely across the US and even world-wide.
You can attend an online session for free to help you feel more empowered. I know I have been in several situations in my life where I intervened when I witnessed harassment and was happy with the result. And then again, there are too many instances where I wish I had done or said more. These are all quite stressful situations, but taking the time to “rehearse” and think about different scenarios is immensely helpful.
This training is an opportunity to look at what you CAN do in a new light. Even an understanding glance is powerful and lets the person know they are not alone.
The one-hour virtual training session that I attended with my daughters was very interactive with polls, quizzes and lots happening in the chat. We attended “Bystander Intervention to stop anti-Asian/American and xenophobic harassment.” It was led by a trainer from Advancing Justice | Chicago in cooperation with Hollaback. We really recommend you try to sign up for a session and encourage your friends too. This session focused on anti-Asian/American harassment, but the actions a bystander can take are applicable to any harassment situation.
Our family discussions after the workshop included the rise in hateful rhetoric across the board, but also a willingness to call it out. We talked about racial harassment, but also harassment of women at school and university and how the techniques in the seminar could help when someone we know is in a threatening situation. To learn more about the techniques and to sign up for a training session, check out the resources below. Mary Dobrian also attended the training session and has more to share in this article.
Learn more about Hollaback!’s 5D’s: Distract, Delegate, Document, Delay, and Direct
https://www.ihollaback.org/bystander-resources/
https://www.ihollaback.org/resources/
Sign up for one of these upcoming training sessions:
https://www.advancingjustice-chicago.org/what-we-do/bystander-intervention-trainings/
https://www.ihollaback.org/bystanderintervention/#bystander-conflict