It’s worth the risk for bystanders to intervene
Bystander intervention is always on our minds, and even more so after the horrific violence in Portland over Memorial Day weekend. (Two men were stabbed to death and one injured last month on a light-rail train after they tried to intervene when another passenger began shouting anti-Muslim hate speech at two young women.)
While we don’t know all the details of this tragic incident, here’s what we do know:
Violence is a tool of social control. When people are made to fear being their authentic selves or be out in public (as a woman, as an “out” LGBTQ person, wearing a hijab, etc.), their lives become smaller. The impact they make on the world around them is diminished for fear of too much negative attention.
The change they can uniquely affect because of who they are is shuttered. The constant threat of violence naturally has that effect on those who are targeted for violence and hate crimes, which is the intention — conscious or not.
When people act as bystanders, or allies, they agree to share that risk. It hardly ever means shouldering the burden in place of the person affected, but hopefully means diminishing the impact for the target through an act of solidarity. Young people know this when talking about helping someone who is being bullied. Fear that the person will turn on them next is always in the forefront of their minds. As it should be.
Most opportunities for bystander intervention and acts of allyship expose us to less harm than witnessed recently in Portland — but all do involve taking on some level of risk. And when we navigate our own levels of risk tolerance, what we’re really exploring is “How much am I willing to let this affect how I navigate the world?
How much am I willing to consider worrying about speaking, worry about taking public transportation and having to choose between guilt and danger? How much am I willing to let this affect my life in order to help this person live more freely?”
If violence is a tool of social control, we must acknowledge that it wants us to stay silent, even as bystanders. It’s designed to divide us, to make us not ride public transportation, to avoid eye contact when someone is being harassed, to change the topic when someone makes a hurtful comment or “joke.”
Liberation demands that we resist — that we find ways to persist and act in an unsafe world, to connect and speak up when someone is being hurt — whether they are present or not.