Volunteers Audit Safety of D.C. Streets

To mark the first International Anti-Street Harassment Day, my partner and I took part in the Washington, D.C., Community Safety Audit. The audit was one of the first to be conducted in D.C., the city where I live and work. My friend and colleague Holly Kearl organized the event through her fab Stop Street Harassment website with help from Shannon Lynberg and Chai Shenoy from Holla Back DC!, an anti-street harassment organization and AAUW Community Action Grantee.

The audit was designed to assess the safety of our city’s public spaces for everyone, because street harassment limits the access of women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people to public spaces. Volunteers for the day consisted of teams of people who live or work in D.C. The teams spread out in the city’s eight wards, paying attention to the groups and individuals hanging out in public spaces. Were they mostly men? Mostly women? A mix? Families? Younger people? Older people? We also noted any unsafe or inaccessible spaces as well as our general feelings about the safety of our surroundings. We looked for anything from harassing behavior toward women and LGBT folks to the accessibility of public spaces and transit for people with disabilities.

My team swept parts of Ward 3 — specifically, the Cleveland Park, Woodley Park, and Adams Morgan neighborhoods (if you’re unfamiliar with D.C. geography, you can check out a map here). We even swept through a Metro (the subway in D.C.) station. While we did not see any harassing behavior, we did note that the station was not accessible to everyone. Not very surprising for D.C., three of the escalators were out of service. However, on a good note, the station had four station managers, so it would be possible to find someone if you needed help.

Overall, the group consensus was that it was a pretty safe environment — we didn’t witness any harassing behavior, and due to our proximity to the National Zoo, there were lots of families around. We did note a couple places along the route that would have felt a bit unsafe at night or if we were there alone, but we thought that on a Sunday afternoon, the area was amenable to most people to be out and about. That being said, I recognize this may not have been the experience of other audit teams. I’m also pretty sure there will be different feedback when another audit is conducted at night (currently scheduled for the first week of May).

It was a really cool experience to be part of something historic — one of the first community safety audits in Washington, D.C. I look forward to hearing about the experiences of the other teams, seeing what comes from the nighttime safety audit in May, and learning what recommendations the teams will be making to improve safety and accessibility so that all individuals feel welcome to D.C.’s public spaces.

This post was originally published at Gender across Borders.