Bystander Intervention Training

I attended a Bystander Intervention Training this evening put on by Asian Americans Advancing Justice | Chicago.

With the increased harassment and violence against the AAPI community, this was an amazing resource. I’ve studied bystander invention resources before and of course the principles are the same to intervene for any act of harassment against any marginalized community. I think the biggest barrier stopping most people from doing something when they see acts of harassment is not knowing what to do.

I encourage you to look into Bystander Training and resources yourself, but here’s a quick summary of what you can do – and only one of them involves directly confronting the person who is harassing. 1) you want to prioritize your own safety and 2) you want to center the victim of the harassment in everything you do.

The 5 D’s of Bystander Intervention – you can use one or a combination of these:

Distract: Spill your water bottle. Push your grocery cart in the middle of the act. Sit next to the victim and start up a conversation about something else. Start singing. Interrupt the incident by causing a distraction.

Delegate: Ask someone nearby for help. “This person is being harassed, would you be comfortable speaking up/doing something?”. Note: pause before calling the police and ask the person who’s being harassed if they want you to call the police first. Instead, you can sometimes find other people in a position of authority ex: the bus driver or employee of the store.

Document: This is how we usually find out about these incident these days . . . record it on your phone. Definitely make sure someone is helping the victim of harassment before you start recording, this should be secondary. Or ask someone else to document while you take another intervention. Then, give the documentation to the victim. This is not yours to share – it’s theirs.

Delay: After the incident, check in with the person who was being harassed and ask if they were okay. See what you can do for them – walk them to their next location, wait with them while they call someone, etc. Give them the documentation if you recorded anything.

Direct: This is the only one that’s directly confronting the person who’s harassing someone. “Hey, that’s not okay. Leave them alone.” Or some variation. Again, prioritize your safety and don’t get into a big back and forth. The priority is taking care of the person who was being harassed and centering the intervention around them.

Here’s another good resource on the 5 D’s of Bystander Intervention from one of the partners from the training I attended today.

With Love,

Natalie