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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The U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv is showing its support for Israel’s Gay Pride Week by flying the rainbow pride flag along with the American flag.

Ambassador Dan Shapiro posted an image of the flags to his Facebook page on June 10, along with the following message in both Hebrew and English:

“For the first time in history, the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv has raised the Pride flag together with our American flag. We are proud to join with the municipality of Tel Aviv-Yafo and its residents in celebrating LGBT Pride Week.”

The media response has been overwhelmingly positive, but some commenters were not so pleased. Mary Moskowitz wrote: “Mr. Shapiro, I would like to know what gives you the right to speak for all Americans and hoist a “gay pride” flag along with the American flag? This is a blatant violation of your position as Ambassador to Israel. I am not proud of this and I am sure there are many in the United States and Israel who feel as I do.”

Others commenters weighed in with approval and encouragement. Jeremiah Sammons wrote: “Makes me proud to be an American each time we slowly make our way towards equality and justice for all!” And this, from M.V. Atinous: “This is what core American values are – freedom, liberty, equality…and support for *everyone*. It’s great to see America taking a stand in the world for those who are (or may be) marginalized not only by their fellow countrymen, but also their government.”

The image has received over 1,000 shares and 2,000 likes so far. I think the ayes have it.

Update, June 13: The British Embassy in Tel Aviv is also flying the pride flag.

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Today is May Day, a celebration of summer and flowers and maypoles… and workers’ rights, natch. Confused? Let’s back up a little: the origins of May Day—like those of all good holidays—are Pagan. Traditionally in Europe, May 1 has marked the beginning of summer, and for a very long time people have celebrated the day with all sorts of nature-oriented festivities—picnics, romping in the fields, dancing around maypoles, donning flowers, crowning a May Queen, etc.

As Europe became Christianized, so did the holiday, but the date took a revolutionary turn in 1886, following the American general strike in support of the eight-hour work day, and the subsequent Haymarket Massacre in Chicago. Writes Judith Rosenbaum at the Jewish Women’s Archive:

Workers across the country rallied on May 1, and in several cities with active labor organizations protesting continued into the following days. In Chicago, a city with a large immigrant and anarchist population, violence erupted on May 3rd, when police opened gunfire on the striking workers. The following day, as laborers gathered in Haymarket Square to protest the police shootings, a bomb was thrown into the meeting and the ensuing gunfire killed seven police officers and at least four workers. With no conclusive evidence of who threw the bomb, anarchists were blamed; a show trial jury found eight guilty and sentenced seven to death.

The Haymarket massacre, as it came to be known, not only sparked the new commemoration of May Day as International Workers’ Day; it also awoke many people to the injustices around them. Emma Goldman attributed her own political awakening to the Haymarket affair, calling it in her autobiography “the most decisive influence” on her life.

So, May Day and the Jews and the labor movement: what’s the deal?

Well, here’s a ridiculously brief summary of an illustrious history: between 1880 and 1924 two million Jews emigrated to the U.S., and many of them became factory workers. They formed some of the largest unions and produced some of the labor movement’s most influential leaders, including Samuel Gompers, Bessie Abramowitz and Sidney Hillman (who announced their engagement on May Day; the proposal story to end all proposal stories!), Rose Schneiderman (who was instrumental in helping to institute reforms following the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in 1911), and Morris Hillquit. Oh, and that career Betty Friedan abandoned, which led to her disillusionment with domestic life, which led to the writing of The Feminine Mystique, which led to second wave feminism? She worked as a journalist for left-wing/labor publications, including the United Electrical Workers Union.

But wait, there’s more! Fifty years ago today, a rally in New York City launched the American movement to free Soviet Jewry, and the choice of May Day was no coincidence. Writes Rafael Medoff for JNS.org:

In April 1964, after reading reports in the press about the mistreatment of Soviet Jews—including the Kremlin’s refusal to allow Jews to obtain matzahs for that year’s Passover holiday—[Jacob] Birnbaum and [Morris] Brafman decided to call a meeting on the campus of Columbia University to brainstorm about the situation. Glenn Richter, a Queens College sophomore, was one of those who attended.

Richter told JNS.org that about 150 students attended that meeting—a surprisingly large number, considering the Soviet Jewry issue was almost completely unknown at that point. “It was an amazing scene, kind of electrifying,” he recalled. “We had the indignation of college students, we were outraged over an injustice and anxious to do something.” One of the students suggested they hold a rally outside the Soviet Mission to the United Nations, on Manhattan’s 67th street, on May 1—just four days away… Birnbaum was instantly attracted to the rally proposal because of the symbolism of holding it on May Day—the international holiday of the Communist movement. Rebuking the Soviets on their own holiday was exactly the kind of irony that he believed would attract public and media attention. And he was right.

More than a thousand people attended the protest, which was covered in the New York Times and marked the beginning of the public movement for Soviet Jewry.

So happy May Day, everybody. Here’s to justice, equality, and fair working conditions for all.

(Image via Library of Congress: Two girls wearing banners with slogan “ABOLISH CH[ILD] SLAVERY!!” in English and Yiddish. Probably taken during May 1, 1909 labor parade in New York City.)

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Date: Monday, October 17

Time: 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Place: Brooklyn Heights Synagogue (sukkah!)

Address: 131 Remsen Street, Brooklyn

RSVP: Click below by October 12

For more information: Contact the City Team at nycityteam@pursueaction.org

What’s the City Team?: A group of people who are dedicated to strengthening the Pursue network and whose bios you can read here.

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The shofar is sounded each day in the month of Elul. Each day when we hear its cry we are urged to wake up, take notice, and take inventory of our lives. With Rosh Hashanah behind us and Yom Kippur ahead, I’ve been thinking of what the sound of the shofar is calling me to do in this year, how I can heed its call to make changes in the lives of others.

JTA seems to have read my mind: Make the shofar blast a call to serve and Prayer and Justice Work-Perfect Complements are two articles that focus on how we can use this season as the catalyst for action. Jon Rosenberg writes, “The questions become ever more timely as we welcome the year 5772. Hunger, poverty and unemployment pervade our communities. Cities and towns across America face severe budget cuts that threaten the viability of crucial social service programs. Individuals and families are struggling.”  The words are powerful, even overwhelming–it seems like too much. How can I, one person, impact these problems? How can I make these changes?

Continue reading this article on Pursue’s website.

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