Hollaback! Boston and Mass. NOW ads featured in MBTA Red Line Trains

Boston– Appearing in MBTA buses and Red Line trains today, a series of ads is highlighting the issue of street harassment in Boston. The ads are the work of Hollaback! Boston and Mass. NOW, funded through a Mass. NOW Feminism in Action Grant awarded to former Hollaback! Boston intern Kayla Hogan, and a Pollination Project Seed The Change grant.“This anti-street harassment ad campaign is a collective labor of love between Mass. NOW, Hollaback! Boston and myself. We chose to display the ads on MBTA busses and trains because we believe that public transportation, and all public space, should be safe for everyone. Busses and trains are often sites of harassment, but we can change that,” said Kayla Hogan. “My hope is that these ads instill a sense of community and support in Bostonians, dismantling the mindsets of harassers and transforming passengers into active bystanders. The messages in the ads are both informational and motivational, hopefully helping to shift our culture from one that asks, "Can we stop street harassment?" to one that asks, "How can we stop street harassment?" It's certainly something worth thinking about during our daily commutes.”“We’re excited to bring Hollaback! Philly’s transit ad model to the Boston area through this partnership with Mass. NOW, and are so grateful for Kayla’s hard work over the past year to make the ads a reality,” said Kate Ziegler, Co-Director of Hollaback! Boston.Hollaback! Boston works to combat street harassment in Boston through workshops, support groups, advocacy and education, as well as collecting and mapping individual stories of street harassment on their site.“One in five stories submitted through Hollaback! Boston’s site or mobile app are experiences of harassment on the T, or while waiting for the T; we look to our story submissions to identify hot spots of harassment and focus our work, and it has been very clear that transit harassment, and an ad campaign highlighting the behavior, were priorities for us. When we conducted our State of the Streets report last fall, we found that 63% of respondents that had been harassed had experienced harassment on the MBTA,” Ziegler said. “Many people still don’t know that there is a term for this behavior, or that it makes people feel vulnerable and unsafe and is a problem. We hope that the transit ads will help change that.”Ads will run on MBTA buses and on Red Line trains, and highlight common harassment faced by both women and LGBTQ riders. They are also a call to action for potential bystanders; many victims of street harassment on transit express embarrassment and frustration when witnesses say nothing during or after the incident, despite their proximity.“Even simply asking a victim if they’re okay can be a huge relief, an acknowledgment that the harassment wasn’t imagined and that the community has their back,” Ziegler said, but notes that safety should be the top priority when facing harassers."Mass. NOW is so proud of Kayla's vision and hard work that made this project a reality. The purpose of the Feminism in Action Grant is to empower young feminists to educate the public on one of our six issue areas. We believe this project will be immensely powerful in bringing awareness to the violence and harassment women face every day in public spaces,” said Katie Hayden, Policy and Operations Manager of Mass. NOW. “We are so grateful to have had the opportunity to collaborate with Hollaback! Boston to bring awareness to the issue of Street Harassment and are eager to continue the legacy of young activism by awarding this year's grant on September 20."

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