However, about two years ago things started to change for Tilchen.

“During the pandemic a lot of Jewish people started to feel a surge in antisemitism. It was a mix of things, partially because it felt like the world was crumbling and [partially because] people needed a scapegoat and Jews have historically been used as the world’s scapegoat,” she said.

Active on Instagram and Twitter it was a slow process realizing that there was, as she says, “a dire need for activism in these spaces.” While previously she had been focused on posting what she deems “normal, day to day content,” she pivoted her content to educate people about antisemitism where she has quickly become one of the new and emerging prominent voices in this space.

Her content took off quickly.

“I have a solid understanding antisemitism and how it functions. I felt a responsibility to use my voice to show that antisemitism exists everywhere,” she said.

A Long Island native, Tilchen has visited Israel, and although she doesn’t have immediate family there, she feels a strong connection to the country and has many friends living there.

 “I started to see how antisemitism exists across the political spectrum and how the libel claims against Israel have really affected Jews , not just in Israel but in the Diaspora,” she said.

The content on her feed is a particularly enticing mix, including regularly trolling antisemites with viral memes, poking fun at Israel’s ban on foreign tourists but also more serious content that calls out antisemitic behavior and providing education to people who may not know too much about Israel or Jewish people.

While Tilchen finds a lot of meaning in the work she is doing, being a public advocate against antisemitism can at times be a difficult gig.

“I get a ton of abuse in my DMs with conspiracy theories. You have to develop a thick skin. You have to be strong in your Jewish identity and know who you are,” she reflected.

Her social media presence has a track record of resonating with young people around the world, but despite her success, she is just one person. Tilchen thinks that larger better resourced Jewish organizations could do a better job at being active on social media platforms where young people are congregating.

“I’ve called out the legacy Jewish organizations on Twitter. I think they don’t properly understand how to reach young people. I think Jewish organizations should be doing everything they can to help young people understand their Jewish identities before the non-Jewish world tells them who they are,” she said.

“If you don’t have a basis of knowledge, it’s easy to absorb non-Jewish ideas of who Jews are. That’s dangerous. If you start believing the conspiracy theories, it gets messy. We are so outnumbered. You don’t want to be a Jewish person who has internalized non-Jewish identity.”

Tilchen is sometimes surprised at the level engagement that her account has with people who don’t know much about Jewish or have never met Jews. “When I started my advocacy work, it felt like I was trying to change the minds of antisemites, absolutely toxic antisemites, in the comments sections. It really burnt me out. I like talking to people who have nothing against Jewish people but are curious,” she said.

Echoing this thought is Rabbi Shlomo Litvin, the Chabad rabbi of Lexington Kentucky.

He was one of the first Jewish leaders to join the audio-only app Clubhouse in 2021. Like Tilchen, he fell into antisemitism activism accidentally.

“Immediately after I joined Clubhouse, students started pulling me into [private chat] rooms [on the app], asking for advice on how to respond to Clubhouse antisemitism,” he reflected.

“I am a Yad Vashem trained Holocaust educator and up until that point I had mainly used social media to just share positive events.”

However, seeing the need for advocacy in this space, Litvin stepped up to the challenge. His regular use on ClubHouse drew him to Twitter as well.

“There is something extraordinary about Twitter that allows people to have conversations,” he said, recalling an incident where he was able to deliver Hannukah candles to someone who he didn’t know personally, but had connected with him via Twitter.

“She was sick with COVID, located across the country. I got her address, and I contacted the Chabad Rabbi at UC Irvine who delivered her menorah and candles and sufganiyot,” he said.

However, with his new public role on social media fighting against antisemitism, Rabbi Litvin has experienced some scary incidents.

“I was listening to a conversation in the Israel-Palestine room on Clubhouse, and someone spoke up and said that no one knows how to respond to the points I was bringing up about Israel, and then another person piped up and read out my address and said that someone should do something about me,” he recalls. He has also received some nasty letters to his home.

Like Tilchen, Litvin thinks that legacy Jewish organizations could be doing more to use their resources to fight back against antisemitic hate on social media.

“If they haven’t woken up to Twitter yet, then they haven’t woken up to the internet,” he said. “The President of the US has a Twitter account. The excuse that it’s “new” has gotten “old.”

The beauty of the internet is that it requires no geographic boundaries for people to become connected.

In Melbourne, Australia, 22-year-old Josh Feldman is a new and emerging voice on social media that has written op-eds for major Australian and international newspapers about Israel. He is also active on Twitter where part of his bio describes himself as a “Falafel enthusiast.”

While he is still growing his following, he knows that doing so may come at a personal cost.

“I’m not yet a public figure. The Blake Flaytons and Eve Barlows, people know who they are, and they cop a lot more abuse. If I become a bigger figure, I am sure I will get more abuse, and then it becomes a question of how to manage it,” he said.

While he receives occasional insults for his work educating people about Israel (some nasty DMs and emails), overall, he believes in the pieces he is writing and enjoys the unexpected benefit of his advocacy on social media.

 “Occasionally you will write a piece, and someone will reach out to say something nice and that starts a relationship which is a cool part of it that I wasn’t expecting.”

When asked whether she will continue with her public advocacy, despite some of the hardships, Tilchen is steadfast in the belief of what she is doing.

“It’s kind of crazy to think that I have so many more friends now than before COVID. With the friends I have made [from Twitter and Instagram] we have lit Hannukah candles over zoom. We have gotten together over shabbat. I have friends across the world and in Israel,” she said.

Tilchen reflected on a particularly meaningful experience she had a few months ago when many of the advocates who like her, post content fighting back against antisemitism, decided to all go out for brunch in New York City.

“We posted the picture. There was horrible abuse for 2 or 3 days straight online. Abuse about what we looked like. Abuse about how much we tip. Abuse about our noses. However, despite all the abuse, no one could take away the joy that we had meeting each other, because we know who we are. That’s a beautiful thing. We are just people on Instagram and Twitter that use their voices for good” she said. 

The post Jewish Activists Can Take the Heat appeared first on Jewcy.

Jewish-leftist activism didn’t go into a coma following early labor struggles and wake up in the era of Trump. Each stage of fights for American social justice has had explicitly Jewish flanks. In the era of Martin Luther King Jr., for example, there were the likes of Jews for Urban Justice.

The JUJ was based out of Washington D.C. in the 1960s and ‘70s— the first leftist Jewish group of its kind in that era. Anti-racist, anti-war, often anti-Jewish establishment, the group ruffled feathers straddling the worlds of radical activism and Jewish community.

Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

The post In Decades-Old Jewish Social Justice Manifesto, Lessons for Today’s Activists appeared first on Jewcy.

As you might have heard, the Zionist Organization of America invited recent Trump hire (and all-around hateful shmuck) Steve Bannon to speak at their gala last night in Manhattan. In response, hundreds of Jews and allies (including Muslims) protested the event, launching what they called the “New Jewish Resistance.” (It trended on Twitter, so it’s catching.) Bannon was a no-show, though whether or not that was related to the protest was unclear.

But was remarkable wasn’t just how many people showed up, it’s who they were. The Left, Jewish and otherwise, loves to talk about unity when lots of us can’t stand each other for one reason or another. But last night, people who normally avoid being in the same room joined together to march. Honestly, it felt a bit like a pre-Chanukah miracle.

There were four main organizers of the event, and they fell across the spectrum of leftist Jewish activism. T’ruah, for example, is opposed to BDS, and Jewish Voice for Peace supports it. Jews for Racial and Economic Justice remains neutral, saying the issue falls outside their “focus area.” But perhaps the most interesting group was the youngest of the four major organizers: If Not Now.

If Not Now exists to organize all Jews against the Israeli Occupation of Palestinian territories to move existing American Jewish organizations to condemn the Occupation, as well as to stand against anti-Semitism. Sounds simple enough, right?

Well, in theory. Even a friend of mine who attended an If Not Now training expressed skepticism— one umbrella for all anti-Occupation Jews is a mighty big umbrella, spanning from pro-BDS anti-Zionists to liberal Zionists critical of specific Israeli policies and politicians, and an ensuing difference in philosophy on every facet of identity, from religiosity to secular politics.

For the brief period the protest was stationed in front of the hotel hosting the ZOA gala (the police threatened the assemblies with arrest if they didn’t keep moving after only a few minutes), the group sang “Hinei Ma Tov,” a song that celebrates Jewish unity. For a moment, that struck me as ironic— we were inherently divided, since one gathering of Jews had come to protest the actions of another. And then, during that song, of all times, a man who had been holding a JVP banner approached a man who was waving a small Israeli flag.

“Do you know what that flag represents?” He asked.

“That I support a Jewish state,” replied the other.

The anti-Zionist insisted that carrying the Israeli flag represents Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Zionist insisted that he dislikes the current administration. The first man said that carrying the Israeli flag would offend half the protestors. The second man tried to brush him off.

This argument, ensuing during a song about Jewish unity, should have reinforced that there’s a problem here. But the anecdote sticks out because it was the only one I witnessed. Protestors holding Zionist signs marched alongside people wearing BDS pins. Literally every person there had people there with whom they strongly disagree. But finally, after all that big talk, the idea that anti-Semitism, racism, and bigotry are monsters worth fighting before getting to other issues was at the fore.

Despite how scary the current national political climate is, the protest was a reminder that it’s also kind of exciting to see what’s next. And it’s not that the issues of Israeli policy and its relationship with the United States aren’t important and complicated, but the ability to acknowledge that while still fighting a common enemy felt, finally, like more than a line.

How the argument between the two protestors end, as hundreds sang in Hebrew, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity?”

“In four years,” said one of the men, “We can go back to arguing with one another.”

Photos by Dan Rosen via Flickr

The post Could 2016 Unite the Jewish Left? appeared first on Jewcy.

Well, the worst has happened. Now what?
Now, we live.

That’s easier said than done. We had high hopes, and they were dashed. We thought we were safe, and we weren’t. The unthinkable happened, except it wasn’t really unthinkable at all. And something many of us thought beautiful has been broken.

Stand Up, Fight Back

We have two months to prepare for a real-life authoritarian con-artist taking the helm of the most powerful country in the world. There isn’t a damn thing we can do about that but plan for it. This article is not an exhaustive list of what that future may look like or what those plans could be, but it should give you ideas of how we can support each other. I especially recommend you take a look at this, which lays out some pretty excellent tips and tactics.

There are storm clouds on the horizon, but we aren’t helpless. It is true that the Democratic minority in the House and Senate will fight to stop these rollbacks, but as the minority in the House and Senate, they are likely to fail. The next significant election is the 2018 midterms. It is absolutely imperative that everyone vote in this election. It won’t be soon enough to stop the damage, but it might be soon enough to make a difference. Two years is a long time— but it’s not that long.

In that time, we need to mobilize and organize. Hitting the streets is not enough. It just isn’t. Marches may feel great, but they aren’t enough in of themselves to create the change we need. We need to work on getting out the millennial vote now. Old people vote as a block, and that’s part of the GOPs strength. Millennials outnumber them, but consistently, our cohorts don’t show up at the polls, especially for midterm elections. That needs to change. Millennial block voting needs to be all out—ridiculous levels of all out—and it needs to outnumber the GOP, which if things go as they normally do, will solidify an even greater majority in the House and Senate. Let’s get started on that.

Beyond voting and protesting, we need to get involved in government, no matter how much some of us might disdain the institution. Write to your local officials— even if you didn’t vote for them. Write to your Senators and your Representatives. Volunteer for local initiatives. If you have the time, go to local government and Town Hall meetings. Show up, and show up consistently, and make sure your government officials know to expect you.

What we need to do is form an anti-Trump pact that will burst into mass action every time he makes a move on our civil liberties and human rights. Is he about to fuck up the environment or push forward the Dakota Access Pipeline? Blow the lids of the phone lines and send as letters as you can write. Is he making a move on abortion? Make sure he, and all your elected officials (regardless of party affiliation) know how not cool that is, and that you’re watching them. Tweet everything, every single time, especially if they’re aware of you and know who you are. Phone calls work better than letters, letters work better than emails, and showing up physically to Town Halls and meetings works even better than that. Even if these officials are in a party different from yours, this is a pressure they can’t ignore. So find out who your local representatives are, and contact them.

You can do all this a private citizen and it will work. But it will work even better if you are a public official yourself. No one ignores a government official, even if it’s just at the county level, showing up in front of someone’s office. How do you get in there? You can work in someone’s office, but honestly, just run for office yourself! If you’re over 25, you’re old enough to be in Congress! (Of course, without experience, a constituency, and a fund-raising machine, that is a tall order.) More local positions won’t necessarily have the same age limits, and at age 18, you can run for many city and state positions, which in turn will give you the background needed to make you a viable candidate for something bigger later on, in addition to allowing you to make real change for your community by having a place in the halls of power. You can start in your county’s Democratic party, and work your way up from there. The barriers to entry on that level are usually very low, because most people don’t pay attention to them. Use that to your advantage.

Another top issue is redistricting and gerrymandering. It is the number one item that causes Republican votes to have more relative weight than Democratic ones, and correcting this issue is the one way to prevent being totally hammered (again) in the House and the Senate. Gerrymandering means that the Republicans essentially steal elections by cleverly redrawing district lines so that a Democratic populace is forcibly broken up and counts for less— a process the Republicans have been hammering on since they lost the Presidential election to Obama back in 2008. In order to put an end to that nonsense, Democrats need to control at least one branch of the state government.

That is a good reason to get involved in local and state government if you’re a millennial. Pick issues, and push for them. Know your community, and fight for them. Get a mentor, and learn from them. Get involved with your local institutions, and badger the hell out of your elected officials. Remind the public officials: you are the public. They work for you. Hold them accountable. And if they don’t do their jobs, kick ‘em out.

Pussy Grabs Back

Community building is hard work, but it is absolutely essential for our survival and success. The Left in this country was gutted long before we were born, so it’d be absurd to expect us to be perfect activists from the get-go. We all have a lot of learning to do (and I do include myself in this. Oh boy, do I ever.) And frankly, the Left eats its children. The spectrum anywhere beyond the (so broad it’s useless) umbrella of “liberal” is so fractured, chaotic, and full of in-fighting, you’d think you were at a particularly loquacious, especially obnoxious middle school lunchroom food-fight. It’s easy to call for unity, but a lot harder to actually build bridges, especially since so many of these groups hate each other. (Some with good reason.)

But we still have to do that work. A lot of institutional support is going to be eliminated. Programs that help the middle class and poor are going to be gutted, leaving more people in desperate poverty, hungry, and unable to get out of debt. A lot of people will be vulnerable. The way to counter that is by creating our own support networks. Already I see people crowdfunding for paying for medical care, relocation, support for women fleeing abuse, you name it. That’s good. We are going to be doing that a lot more pretty soon, and we are going to have to rely on each other, and be there for each other in tangible, even financial ways. And you can’t do that without a lot of planning or cooperation.

Mobilizing and organizing can look like a lot of things. It can mean community meetings. It can mean volunteering at your Planned Parenthood, and donating. Their funding might be cut drastically, no matter what President Obama tries. We have to be prepared to scrimp and scrounge— because the people they serve are the people who don’t have insurance, or can’t get any, or don’t have money, or don’t have access to healthcare options, or can’t physically get to the ones that exist. This is especially true if they are trans or gender minorities, or people of color. Consider making real efforts to protect and uphold reproductive and gender rights, which will be under serious attack with Mike Pence as VP. Remember, this is the man who caused an HIV outbreak in Indiana by slashing health spending. Late-term abortions are especially hard to get in this country, even under an Obama Presidency. Not only are there only four doctors who do the procedure, the cost is astronomically high. That is entirely to pay their insurance— the constant violence and threats of violence from anti-choice White Christians makes their jobs dangerous. If you’re in medicine, consider going into reproductive health. Consider stocking up on birth control and emergency contraception. If you’re in Law however, check out the National Lawyer’s Guild. These are without a doubt the good guys. Help them. Talk to them. Join them.

For the record, even though Obamacare might be cut, altered, or repealed, or its mandate rolled back until it might as well have axed altogether, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t sign up or renew. The marketplace is open now. Even if you only have insurance for two months, those are two months of coverage. And it is unlikely that repealing will include plans that are already enrolled for the year— it’d be too complicated, and Trump is too lazy. Far easier to let the clock run down on us instead— but that buys us some time nonetheless.

Communities should strive to some form of self-sufficiency. I do not mean “be an island and cut yourself off from the whole world,” though honestly that sounds pretty tempting right now. I mean rather that the community provides for itself as much as it can, including cultural events, local co-ops, even starting some city farming. Seek to build and support each other. See what skills and trades can be swapped. There a million ways to build stronger communities, and every one of those will be important, also particularly when it comes to conflict resolution. But especially, work towards community self-policing, and keeping cops away rather than inviting them in.

If you’ve been not under a rock, you probably understand that the rate of violence by law enforcement towards people of color, particularly Black Americans, is ridiculous. Do not contribute to that if you can avoid it. If it’s a noise complaint, don’t call the cops for that. Don’t contribute to the criminalization of non-violent behaviour. Don’t contribute to Broken Windows style policing. Build bridges with your community instead! And remember, with Giuliani as likely Attorney General, police are going to get an even bigger pass on oppressive measures, and carte blanche to enact violence as they see fit. Don’t give them that opportunity.

You probably know people who voted Trump. Maybe some of them are your family members, friends, or classmates. And while over 70% of the Jewish-American community showed up for Hillary, nearly 30% did not— many of those, but not all, being Orthodox. I don’t know how to talk to these people to get them to listen. Right now, I don’t even want to try— but we might have to. And some of these former supporters might balk once authoritarian measures start to hit home on them too, or when promised prosperity doesn’t materialize, or if and when anti-Semitism reaches a fevered pitch.

Without a doubt, Jews are a target in Trump’s America. We know this, we see it, and already we are seeing it get worse. And anti-Semitism was already virulent on both the Left and Right before this election. It’s a scary time to be a member of the Tribe. And yet, many of us benefit from whiteness in varying degrees (some more than others). Many of us benefit from varying levels of class privilege (again, some more than others). Some of us fly under the radar completely. For those to whom this applies, and that is not all of us all the time, recognize how that provides “outs” that aren’t always available to all of our fellows. Be mindful of this, and be kind. Someone looking “Stereotypically Jewish” is more likely to be targeted by anti-Semites because they fit the image they have in their heads of what they think a Jew is. A Jew of color is going to get slammed with both anti-Semitism and other forms of racism. Jewish women suffer from a uniquely awful brand of misogyny coupled with anti-Jewish bigotry. Visibly LGBT+ Jews are gonna get it from nearly everyone, as if they haven’t been already. And so on, for all the various combinations and permutations of these and any other sub-types as well.

And of course, this also goes for all our fellow non-Jews who are suffering in Trump’s new world. And that’s a lot of us. Muslims, Arabs, Asians, Latinos, Black Americans, anyone who has a uterus, anyone not cis-gender or heterosexual, etc. Even being a cis-white-man won’t completely inoculate you: activists are targets, too. This is the time to build bridges. This is the time for solidarity. This is the time to have each other’s backs.

Respect Existence, or Expect Resistance

For some less heartwarming advice: consider learning some basics of self defense. Trump’s America does not love you. It does not welcome you. And it’s energized a lot of people who would be happy to hurt you. Don’t give them the chance. Ask around for free or cheap lessons to learn the basics, or maybe start a class in your neck of the woods. This is an opportunity to both do something affirming with your community, strengthen bonds with each other, and protect each other.

Be secure on the web. Learn about security culture. Practice it.

If you are going to be protesting regularly, understand the kind of weapons that police will sometimes use on protesters, no matter how law abiding or peaceful. Learn how to counteract tear gas and pepper spray. (Always carry water, even just plain cold water often helps. Do not use vinegar, despite its popularity, as vinegar is a weak acid, and will not counteract the capsaicin used in pepper spray and tear gas.) Learn what kind of supplies it’s good to have on a long march or outdoor action. Are you willing to get arrested? Getting peaceably arrested is a protest tactic, but sometimes the police won’t be so peaceful. And criminalizing peaceful, lawful protests is the #1 play of authoritarian regimes.

Consider learning how to be a street medic. Classes are usually only a few sessions, which usually last all day. Street medics and marshals at rallies and protests are always in short supply— and very much needed in the case of injury, tear gas, or unforeseen circumstances. In general, having some practical emergency medical knowledge on hand is a solid idea, even if protesting is not your thing.

“Should I make Aaliyah?”
That is entirely up to you. Jokes about moving to Canada aside, there are real reasons why getting the heck out of dodge is a completely reasonable choice of actions. If you decide that leaving is the best choice for you, then it is. Israel was in part set up as a haven for Jews to run to in times of unrest and oppression. If you can prove that you have at least one Jewish grandparent, you are eligible for citizenship. If you decide that’s what you want to do, check out the Jewish Agency and Nefesh B’Nefesh.

That being said, remember that Israel has its own problems. It is locked in a seemingly endless conflict with the Palestinians, ISIS is on the border, and there are many internal fractures along ethnic and religious lines. It is no paradise.

There are good reasons to stay and fight, beyond the principle of the thing. While people have been making comparisons to the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazi Germany (some apt, some less so), the fact remains that this isn’t Nazi Germany, and Trump isn’t Hitler. That doesn’t mean he isn’t dangerous. He is. But it means we shouldn’t panic, we shouldn’t make big decisions while panicking, and that all hope is not lost. A genocide is probably not in our future here, though hardship undoubtedly is. And we stand a decent chance of success on multiple levels, even through these hard times, if we play our cards right. Trump won’t be around forever, eight years max, barring a complete dissolution of many of our key governing institutions. And that scenario is extremely unlikely.

¡Sí se puede!

None of us wanted this, but here we are. We will stand together. We will fight. We will not just survive, we will thrive. We will overcome.

Hate might have taken this country for a ride. It might even do it irreparable damage. But in the end, it will fall, and fade. This will then be but a passing shadow, and the sun will shine all the clearer.

In the meantime, if you are around the New York area, check out some of these Jewish organizations you can organize with or donate money to: Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, NYC Muslim-Jewish Solidarity Committee, the Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council, Bend the Arc, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Hazon (a Jewish social justice group that focuses on food, agriculture, and sustainability), If Not Now (an anti-Occupation Jewish movement), the American Jewish World Service, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Avodah: the Jewish Service Corps, Manhattan Together (an interfaith initiative), and finally, Common Decency.

Common Decency deserves a special mention, as it is a new group dedicated specifically dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism and Jewish intersectional alliance work. There’s no public site yet, but keep your ears open; for the past month, it has been quietly working on a specific campaign, and plans to go live to the public at a community meeting December 1.

You can join with groups and individuals on social media using the hashtag #JewishResistance.

All of these groups do different things, most locally, some nationally, and some internationally. All do good work. And all of them need you.

Ḥazak v’ematz.

Images via Wikimedia, and William Murphy and Fibonacci Blue via Flickr.

The post Gam Zeh Ya’Avor: What We Do Next appeared first on Jewcy.

If you’re a woman who frequents parties, parks, bars, libraries, college campuses, grocery stores—anywhere, really—chances are you’ve been asked by a creepy guy for your phone number at some point. What do you do when he asks aggressively, or keeps harassing you after you’ve declined? Maybe you give out a fake number, or apologize and say you have a boyfriend (which may or may not be the truth, but anyway, you shouldn’t have to say it). It’s a scary situation to be in, and one that women all over the world are confronted with every day.

Enter the Feminist Phone Intervention. Conceived by two Jewish feminists, it’s a real phone number you can give to potential “suitors”—but one that delivers automated quotes from the feminist writer/activist/theorist bell hooks. (i.e.: “If any female feels she needs anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency.” WORD.) It went totally viral this past weekend, but in the midst of all the buzz one of the co-creators, an anonymous Latina from the Bronx, took some time out to explain the genesis of the project to Jewcy.

How did you come up with the idea for the Feminist Phone Intervention?

In the last couple of months, we’ve been shaken by the Boko Haram kidnappings, the mass disappearances of Canadian First Nations women, the murder of Islan Nettles and other transwomen, and the Elliot Rodgers killings in California. Each of these tragedies was an act of misogynistic violence on a mass scale, and in the cases of Rodgers and Boko Haram, female students were specifically targeted.

Compounding the horror of the Rodgers shooting was its media coverage: for example, the New York Post printed bikini photos of a woman who had “spurned” Rodgers under the headline “Killer Crush.” This is one example of how the press sometimes sympathizes with misogyny, by exposing an innocent woman and portraying the murderer’s experience of “romantic rejection” (the woman was 10-years-old when they met).

In addition, a number of close friends have experienced stalking and harassment in their daily lives and in the workplace.

In the wake of these issues, I wanted to design a project that would usefully and creatively talk back to sexism in daily life.

How does it work, technically? What are the costs involved in running such a service?

Twilio, the service we chose, charges one cent per call—so for a $1 donation, you just blocked 100 creeps and/or helped spread some feminist inspiration! I think that’s a pretty good turn-around.

We are paying the phone bill ourselves, and since we had no idea that it would receive this much attention, we would very much appreciate any donations to keep it running. Money donated beyond the cost of the phone bill will be donated to the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health.

The main creative issue for me was balancing its practical usability with its larger artistic/protest concept. For example, it would be safer to design a code to delay text message auto-reply, so that a person has time to leave the scene after giving out the number. But how long do we wait? Is twenty minutes enough? If we set it up to reply four or six hours later, well, you just got someone a booty call from “bell hooks.” So in order to mitigate the safety issue, we removed the text service, since it was the most provocative aspect of the project. As a result, phone calls have spiked.

This choice changes the experience for people who want to interact with the bot themselves and easily receive bell hooks messages for their own inspiration. But we had to prioritize the safety function over the artistic possibilities. Eliminating the text service also saved money, so we can buy more phone lines in other area codes and countries.

Are you surprised by how popular the concept is? (This post on The Hairpin post has over 45,000 shares already!) How did you get the word out?

So far, we’ve been contacted about 100,000 times! I am absolutely surprised by how quickly it spread and how powerfully people responded to it. I sent a note about my project to the feminist website The Hairpin because I always liked their work, and then it spread from there.

I am proud that it was able to travel so quickly, requiring very little explanation. I think it’s important to engage intellectually and theorize about gender, power, and society—but keeping specialized vocabulary out of the messages allowed it to work for a much wider group of people.

You don’t need to identify as a radical feminist to want to enjoy your life and move more freely in the world. We had to ask ourselves: are we interested in contributing to a better feminist movement, or a better world? If it’s the second, then feminist tactics need to be able to move out of academic and activist spaces with limited readerships.

Why have you chosen to remain anonymous?

The Feminist Phone Intervention is meant as a reminder that we don’t owe strangers our time, our names, our bodies, or our contact info, so the choice of anonymity fits with that.

In a larger, tactical sense, choosing anonymity also makes room for more collective action. We are setting up open-source versions, to make it easier for people to adapt our project to their own needs or regions. Not having a “face” associated with it will hopefully empower more people to make their own versions.

In U.S. history, fame is often used as a destructive force against activist communities, a way of singling out one person and making her a spokeswoman, which erases collective efforts. Well-known examples include Kathleen Hanna and Gloria Steinem, both of whom were selected by the outside media to represent a much more complex feminist community.

Several journalists who contacted me about this project were primarily interested in discovering and disclosing my own identity, rather than engaging with questions of sexism and activist tactics. For a project concerned with protecting women’s privacy, the irony is striking!

You’re currently studying the Yiddish radical press. What influence has that had on this project, and your political activism generally?

I am a researcher and historian of the Yiddish radical press in the United States, and so I think a lot about the role of media in social movements. I am interested in the social life of newspapers and how the press of a minority language group can create community.

One aim and practice of Yiddish anarchist culture of the early 1900s was the cultivation of comradeship in everyday life, not just within the movement but in all human interactions. We can see this expressed in letters to the editor and in the extent of their social practices, such as setting up schools and mutual aid societies. A very popular book at the turn of the last century was Alexander Harkavy’s American Letter Writer and Speller, which taught immigrants how to write letters in Yiddish and English. The letter templates are not neutral documents, but shape the readers’ responses: for example, a woman is advised to marry a worker for love, not to break the engagement for lack of money.

Harkavy was a linguist and author of a trilingual English-Yiddish-Hebrew dictionary, and he also contributed to the anarchist press though his translations and editorials. I was always struck by their efforts to teach comradeship through the press and the books of letter templates, usually without the explicit vocabulary of anarchism or socialism. It shows a real attention to the particularities of life before abstract ideology, and it rejects the view of human nature as inevitably selfish. I think there’s also some quality of mussar practice there, in terms of the intense focus on individual ethical behavior.

So I would say that this project has in some sense been inspired by the media of the Yiddish anarchists of the past century, who labored to develop a method of mutual aid that would transcend their own social groups. I think we could learn a lot from their investment in cultivating a radical etiquette, and especially in using language that speaks to people outside of gender studies or a small group of activists.

What would your response be to men who respond to the Feminist Phone Intervention with confusion, even dismay? (Like, “I’m not a creep! Most men can handle rejection! Just say no!”)

I haven’t seen men responding that way, but I have seen quite a few comments from women saying, “Be mature and just say no!” I am very glad that they have not received the kind of harassment we are addressing. However, there are many occasions where a person must exercise judgment and may choose to share a fake number. It’s for those situations that we hope to provide another option.

The primary weight of scrutiny should be on disrespect towards women, not on the tactics women use to respond. So we should try to be generous when considering the strategies women use to make ourselves safer in public.

People who have been assaulted, harassed or hounded in public often become hyper-vigilant in their daily lives, or develop other strategies for maintaining their personal safety. It’s a natural protective response, but often the heightened awareness of threats which develops after trauma can constrain our freedom of movement, narrowing the fullness of our lives and interactions. There’s a great quote about the difference between getting by and getting free by Mia McKenzie: “Because the things we learn to do to survive at all costs are not the things that will help us get FREE. Getting free is a whole different journey altogether.”

What do you hope to achieve with the project? What do you hope other people get out of it?

I hope that it will contribute to the expansion of our political imaginations. Just because something happens all the time, doesn’t mean it’s inevitable or that we have no choice in how to respond. Just knowing that our feminist phone line has been contacted 100,000 times makes me realize the mass scope of both harassment and potential everyday resistance. I am moved to know we are confronting the same struggles; that cyber-comradeship is heartening to me.

Right now we are working on adding more languages and quotations from feminists specific to the region where the area code is located. We recognize the ways in which racialized violence combines with misogyny to target women of color. It’s a small gesture, but we are working to get the Feminist Phone Intervention messages to also be read in a native language for our Canadian numbers. In Canada, indigenous women (Inuit, First Nations, and Metis) are five to seven times more likely than white women to die from violence.

For those who want to set up their own similar feminist intervention phone lines outside the reach of our servers, we are developing open-source programming, which will allow people to create their own versions and address sexism in more local ways. [Ed. note: lines have been set up in Mexico, Canada, the UK, and Israel.]

I think this project has really touched a nerve. Hopefully it will make people examine whether their everyday behavior is threatening or aggressive, and for others, to remember that they need not feel alone when facing harassment.

Image: Shutterstock

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