Receive a cordial greeting from the Afro-Caribbean project of Taller Salud.

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PS 326 is a project presented by senators Ana Irma Rivera Lassén and Rafael Bernabe Riefkohl, which is  currently before the Puerto Rico Senate for consideration. This legislative measure mainly seeks to add Article 135(a), in Law No. 146-2012, as amended, known as the "Puerto Rico Penal Code", in order to include the crime of street harassment as a modality of the crime of sexual harassment, including aggravating circumstances and penalties. 

 

Street harassment by use and custom in our country is not recognized as violence, however, it is a manifestation of sexual violence when a series of behaviors occur that put the safety of women and feminized people at risk in use. of the public space. It may involve damage or suffering, threats, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty.

 

Among the conversations that we have had with young Afro-descendants on the subject of street harassment from their experiences and environments, we want to rescue several points: 

 

• The streets should be a safe place for everyone, security is up to the State to provide. If it's not safe for women, it's not safe for everyone.  

• Street harassment is not perceived in the same way in black bodies; comments and actions are much more hypersexed, for example, comments like "you with such a curve and me without brakes", thoughts like "black women are hot". 

• In Puerto Rico, the collection of information and data collection on street harassment is nil. The lack of statistics on this phenomenon and its effects, particularly on women and feminized bodies, represents a barrier in the formulation and implementation of concrete measures to eradicate the violence that concerns us. 

• We take extraordinary measures that men like :  do not take like this, limit ourselves to going out after a certain hour,  do not walk in specific places, always look_cc781905-5cde-3194- bb3b-136bad5cf58d_ safe places, go out to places accompanied, always tell someone where we are.

• The discomfort that women feel when being alert to our safety all the time is not taken into account, harassment is dismissed as an exaggeration and its effect on day-to-day life is minimized.

• Street harassment is more than an individual experience. Women and young people have seen it systemically reinforced through an indifferent society and the disinterest of the State in this problem.

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This is why Afro-Caribbean women, young women and Afro-descendants, who accompany each other, organize and educate, support Senate Bill 326 as a legislative measure that favors gender equality in Puerto Rico. Therefore, we favor its approval and urge you to endorse our petition so that this bill becomes law. 

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