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Now There's A Way To Volunteer To Escort LGBTQ, POC And Muslims Who Feel Unsafe On Their Commutes
By
David Colon
Published Nov 12, 2016
Modified Nov 12, 2016
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Scott Lynch / Gothamist
By
David Colon
Published Nov 12, 2016
Modified Nov 12, 2016
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While there are policy debacles yet to come under a Trump presidency, those are still somewhat in the future. An immediate consequence of Trump's election has been an emboldening of America's more hateful citizens, who are making themselves heard around the country, including in New York. Now though, the Arab Association of New York's Kayla Santosuosso is trying to help push back against that wave of hate, with an effort that will allow people to volunteer to escort "people of color, LGBTQ folks, and Muslims" on their subway commutes in order to keep them safe from harassment.
Santosuosso's Google Form asks for your name, the best time you can help someone with their commute, where your commute takes you to and from and a little information about yourself. She told Gothamist that the initial idea for the form came after she got a Facebook message from a friend of a friend. That person had reached out to Santosuosso to see if she could help find someone who would ride downtown with a Muslim woman in Harlem who had been harassed on the subway two days in a row following the election. Santosuosso managed to connect the woman with someone who drives in from White Plains to Chelsea and volunteered to pick her up every day, but in the mean time, her Facebook post asking for help had been shared a number of times even outside of her normal friend network.
Seeing the response, Santosuosso said she created the Google Form at 12:30 in the morning yesterday. "In the back of my head, I thought I'd make this Google Form and at the very least we’ll have this list of 50 people that I can connect in my own time," Santosuosso said. She had 50 people when she woke up, but then after spending a few hours in meetings yesterday, Santosuosso said the number of responses had shot up to 2,232, and were still coming in "every five to ten seconds."
"Clearly there are signs of hope coming out of this," Santosuosso said. "This is showing that there’s a ton of energy and a ton of drive for folks to show up in the wake of this election and support their neighbors, especially those that are more vulnerable. People have asked what they do now, how to make themselves useful, and this is resonating because it’s one simple act that lets them help someone and get them home safely."
Santosuosso also said that as the sign up sheet got more attention, she heard from people in other cities and states, places as far away as California, New Orleans and Boston. With the attention from those other cities in mind, and knowing that there are people who want to help in some small way but don't commute on the subway, Santosuosso said that she's currently talking with other organizing groups on how to best put people's energy to work. "Clearly there’s 2200 people willing to put their bodies on the line, so how do we harness it effectively?" she said.
"We’re in the first couple days, but we’ve got 4 to 8 years ahead of us," she said. "So I'm trying to figure out how to keep the response from dying out." And even after Trump, America will still be dealing with this new reality. "The danger isn’t just Trump, it’s Trumpism, and the people who’ve been emboldened by him," Santosuosso said.
The plan going forward is to put together and then send what Santosuosso called a toolkit to people that will show them organizations that need donations, volunteers and supplies, and try to connect people's skills with groups that need their specific help.
Santosuosso said that because of the huge amount of people who signed up, she's not going to immediately start matching people up for escorts. Not until she's "come up with an effective way to provide training." She said that she's been talking with national anti-racist and de-escalation organizers, and that "knowing the urgency going forward we’ll harness people's energy quickly."
In the mean time, if you do see someone being harassed on the subway, Santosuosso said that there are small steps you can take to help someone. "If you see someone you think is being harassed, go over,ask them if they’re okay and need help. If they’re non-responsive, just walk away but keep an eye on the situation. If you see they need help, talk to the person doing the harassment, ask them a bunch of questions, like what their name is and where they're from. Tear the focus away from the harassed person, and disrupt and deescalate the situation." She also suggested taking a deescalation class from a group like Showing Up For Racial Justice.
Tagged
anti-racism
volunteering
David Colon
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