Bystander Intervention Quotes

Don’t be a witness. Be an activist.

Be an active bystander because sooner or later you or someone you love could be a victim too.

The days are long, the weeks are long, the months are long, but the years are short—one day you look up and realize you’re on the precipice of the final year of a presidential term. You see the world in a different way, as if you could open a window and catch a glimpse of anything that is touched by the reach of the United States government. You can be a part of actions that shape these events—your voice in a meeting, your intervention on a budget line item, your role in crafting the words that a president speaks. You are also a bystander to crises that elude intervention, buffeted by the constant and contradictory demands made on an American president—by other American politicians; by the media; by advocacy organizations; by people around the world. You never know what is the one meeting, the one decision, the one word or phrase that will matter.

To listen to children dissect one another in public and respond with weak words is not helpful. Wait for an opportunity, catch the malefactors in the act, and then label their behavior for what it is: “That’s cruel.” If it continues, you may have to stop the car and declare, “I have to ask you to stop talking about Isabel that way. It is unbearably cruel and I cannot tolerate it.” Your child and your child’s classmates should know that you do not condone their horrible treatment of one another and will not collude silently with it.

The mythic elements of the Genovese case prompt the quasi myth that in an emergency requiring brave intervention, the more people present, the less likely anyone is to help—“There’s lots of people here; someone else will step forward.” The bystander effect does occur in nondangerous situations, where the price of stepping forward is inconvenience. However, in dangerous situations, the more people present, the more likely individuals are to step forward.

Similarly, there is a limit to how far you can go in anti-violence work without rejecting the principal institutions of masculine domination. In reaction to spates of accusations from enlisted women of sexual assault and harassment perpetrated by their male peers and officers, the US military has engaged trainers, including Katz, to conduct gender violence prevention and bystander intervention. Like the prevention of child abuse through the promotion of authoritarian fatherhood, anti-violence training with men whose job is to kill people - the epitome of toxic masculinity - is any oxymoron. These military projects also carry a strong whiff of Othering: soldiers should be respectful of "our" women, and even refrain from raping "enemy" women and girls, but it's okay to kill their fathers, brothers, or husbands and, if necessary, to blow up their homes and cities. These efforts are not working. Biannual Pentagon surveys show a stead increase in sexual assaults and harassment in military academies. "This isn't a blip, a #MeToo bump, or some accident," averred California Democrat Jackie Spier at a February 2019 House subcommittee hearing. "It's a clear illustration of a destructive trend and systemic problem.