The past couple of years have been marked by periods of urgency and awe for social justice minded folks in the US. We were spurred into action with the rise in hate crimes documented by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in 2016 and filled with hope and joy as #metoo went viral in 2017. In late 2016, People’s Justice League (PJL) hosted a handful of community workshops on bystander intervention using some of the incidents documented by SPLC as brain fodder to help us get ready for what might be coming our way as our 45th President began chipping away at the culture of equality and respect that we had been working so hard to promote. Workshop participants were interested in creating a local database for hate incidents happening in Southeast Ohio. PJL had been collecting incidents of street harassment through the anonymous Incident Reporter on our website since 2013, and we wanted to make it clear that we are here to work to promote safe streets and gathering places for everyone and to eradicate harassment targeting any part of person’s perceived identity. With the help of funding from the eco-friendly cosmetics retailer, Lush Cosmetics, as well as the help of the tech savvy smarts of local developer, Rakefire, LLC, we are pleased to announce that our Incident Reporter is now available as a free App through on Google Play and through the App Store!
In 2017, our Incident Reporter documented some of the movements of Alt-Right students in and around Ohio University’s Athens Campus as well as incidents of sexual harassment and assault in the region. SPLC recently released their 2017 Intelligence Report, showing strong evidence that Trump continued to “buoy” white-supremacists throughout 2017. Although we don’t hope that these sort of incidents continue into 2018, the evidence so far suggests that they will. We hope that with the addition of the mobile app, PJL will be able to collect even more stories like these in 2018. Creating a public database of such incidents will help keep community members informed and better prepared to address potential threats in our community. We also hope that area residents will continue to stand up as active bystanders and support targeted individuals in the region.
Through our new app, you can anonymously report hate incidents whether you were a target or a bystander. Our Incident Reporter has already documented stories in which area residents stood up as Active Bystanders. We hope this trend will continue. Stories of bystander intervention work to educate and inspire other community members to stand up and speak out when they witness similar incidents in the future. When submitting incidents as the bystander, we suggest that you seek the input of targeted individuals before submitting whenever possible. We understand that posting incidents publicly isn’t always safe, and that even though submissions are anonymous, perpetrators of violence can often recognize their own behavior in the reports.
We are in awe of the many women who have come forward with their stories of sexual harassment and assault over the past few months through the #metoo hashtag, and we are aware that not everyone has the position of fame and power that has afforded some amount of safety to many of these women. We hope that through providing this anonymous platform, our organization can act as a shield for everyday individuals wanting to come forward and that more people will be able to join the movement started by Civil Rights Activist, Tarana Burke, in 2006 and propelled into the forefront of all of our minds by the women of the entertainment and sports industries in October of 2017.
Through our new app, you can read incidents, show your support by clicking the “I Got Your Back” counter, navigate incident locations on our interactive map, anonymously submit new incidents, and find Active Bystander Coalition member businesses.