Jorge Arteaga - Ive Got Your Back

We want to dedicate this book to the
thousands of people who have trusted us
with their stories over the past fifteen years.
Your bravery made this book possible.

INTRODUCTION

For most of us, the desire to intervene in moments of harassment starts with a story.

It might be our own story, when someone treated us as less than just for being ourselves. It might have been a slur, an unwanted touch, or that slow-but-steady feeling of social exclusion.

It might be someone elses story. Someone we cared about. Someone whose sense of possibility and belonging was slowly chipped away by the world around them. Someone we didnt know how to help.

Or, we may have unintentionally done some of these things to othersnot knowing, or understanding, how it made the other person feel.

Most likely youve experienced all three. And as challenging, confusing, and even traumatic as these experiences may be, they got you to exactly where you need to be. Right here. Welcome.

By picking up this book, youre setting an intention for a different type of world. A world where, yes, harassment may still happen. But when it happens, there will be someone who stands up against it.

It is our deepest hope and desire that person will be you.

If I was to have a medical emergency, youd know what to do. If I dropped my hat on the street, youd know what to do. But when people experience and witness harassment, they freeze.

Bystander intervention is simply overcoming that freezing instinct so we can return to, and act on, that very human desire to take care of one another. Its not about being the hero, strapping on superhero spandex and saving the day. And it certainly isnt about sacrificing your own safety.

There is nothing new or innovative about people taking care of people. And yet it is an exciting reversal in a culture that normalizes violence and isolation.

Ive Got Your Back is a culmination of the 500,000+ people weve trained in bystander intervention since 2012 at our organization, Right To Be. Our training and methodology has grown and adapted over time, and in the past few years, weve seen a dramatic surge of interest in bystander intervention. In 2020, we trained six times more people than we did in 2019, and the demand has only grown since then. At the time of this writing, were training hundreds of people each day in bystander intervention.

Bystander intervention is an idea as old as time. Its the idea that as a community, weve got us.

This book will teach you how to intervene using Right To Bes methodology, the 5Ds of bystander intervention: Distract, Delegate, Document, Delay, and Direct. Each of these approaches is designed to prioritize the needs of the person being harassed while mitigating risk to yourself.

1. DISTRACT

Creating a distraction to de-escalate the situation.

Distraction draws attention away from the intensity of the harassment and ultimately de-escalates the situation. For example, you could drop your coffee, and people would scramble to help you clean it up or avoid the mess. You could also start a conversation with the person experiencing the harassment. Here, the idea is to build a safe space with the person being harassed while denying the person doing the harassing from getting the attention they are seeking.

2. DELEGATE

Finding someone else to help.

Our favorite potential delegate is the person right next to us. Like us, they could share the very human desire to take care of other people. Unlike us, they probably havent written this book. Asking them to document a situation, intervene directly, or go and grab the manager while you monitor a situation are simple ways to create support for yourself when intervening, as well as for the person being harassed. You can also reach out to your HR department if youre at work and/or the social media companies where the harassment is occurringbut its best to check in with the person being harassed first.

3. DOCUMENT

Creating documentation and giving it to the person who was harassed.

Whether youre using your cell phone camera, pen and paper, or saving screenshots and hyperlinks, documentation is powerful. It offers power back to the person being harassed and gives them the reassurance that what happened was wrongwhile simultaneously giving them the concrete evidence they will need if they decide to report it.

4. DELAY

Checking in on the person who experienced the harassment.

Sometimes the harassment occurs too quickly for any intervention during the moment, so your intervention happens after the fact, and hence, is delayed. When this happens, a quick check-in can remind the person that what happened wasnt okay and that anyone would be upset by it. When you delay, youre showing them that youve got their back regardless of what they choose to do about it (even if they choose to do nothing).

5. DIRECT

Setting a boundary with the person doing the harassing, and then turning your attention to the person being harassed.

This is the most misunderstood of the 5Ds. Its easy to assume that its about telling off the person doing the harassing, or at the very least, educating them. But its not really about them at allor even about you, for that matter. Like all of the 5Ds, its about prioritizing the person being harassed. Start by setting a boundary: Say, Hey, what did you mean by that? or, Thats so disrespectful; give them some space. Then turn your energy away from the person doing the harassing toward the person being harassed. As tempting as it may be, dont get into a back and forth. People actively harassing others arent in a mindset to learn at that exact moment anyway.

Like all good ideas, Right To Bes 5Ds werent developed in isolation. Inspired by the stories submitted to Right To Be, Emily reached out to an organization named Alteristic (then Green Dot). They had an approach to bystander intervention that was gaining popularity at campuses across the country: the 3Ds. The 3Ds included Direct, Delegate, and Distract.

Emily approached them with the idea of expanding the 3Ds to apply to street harassment. The founder and president, Dorothy J. Edwards, PhD, and her colleague at the time, Jennifer Messina, readily agreed. In 2012, Right To Be launched the Ive Got Your Back campaign and started training people to intervene. As people began intervening, Right To Be mapped their positive actions on our app with green dots, in a map filled with pink dots indicating harassment.

The work grew from there. Slowly but surely, interest in bystander intervention and demand for our training grew. Along with it, we heard thousands of stories from folks about what worked and what didnt. We iterated our approach as we listened and learned. In 2015, we added Delay to expand the 3Ds to 4Ds and in 2017, we added Document to complete the 5Ds of bystander intervention, at the recommendation of our partners at WITNESS, an international nonprofit organization that helps people use video and technology to protect and defend human rights. We then expanded the curriculum to address harassment online in 2016, at work in 2018, and then built upon our online harassment work even further in partnership with Viktorya Vilk at PEN America in 2020.