Abolitionist Bystander Intervention & De-escalation
A Pocket Zine For Youth
Written by JJ Skolnik
Bystander intervention and de-escalation can be an abolitionist practice for dealing with harm or potential harm in your community without involving the police. Have you ever been on the train when someone starts yelling and intimidating the other riders? Have you been at a party and observed someone trying to take advantage of someone who’s intoxicated? Have you seen cops harassing someone living on the street? These are just a few of the situations in which you might want to intervene to prevent further harm from being caused.
It may seem scary at first, but with a few different strategies in your pocket, you might feel more equipped to approach a variety of situations. The more you practice, the easier it will become. How can we interrupt something happening in front of us? We need SKILLS and PRACTICE.
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JJ Skolnik is an activist, musician, and writer who lives primarily in Chicago, but was raised in and around Washington, DC by two hippie parents and the local punk scene. Skolnik advocates for the working class, LGBTQ+ movements, and sexual assault survivors, and against state violence and prisons. They’ve written for zines, broadsheets, and alt-weeklies throughout their career, as well as for large outlets like Pitchfork, Buzzfeed, and the New York Times
HOW CAN BYSTANDER INTERVENTION BE AN ABOLITIONIST TOOL?
Our primary goal is to keep everyone as physically safe as possible.
We can help resolve problems in our communities without involving the police.
We can possibly prevent police violence by observing and filming them.
Policing depends on a world in which people are too afraid to interact with one another and are isolated from one another. Intervening to help out people in our communities helps build the relationships we want to see in an abolitionist vision of the world—ones where we help take care of one another, and where nobody is left alone to fend for themselves.
BASIC STRATEGIES
Every situation is different, and no one strategy will work in all of them. Right to Be and Green Dot have come up with a list of basic, well-tested strategies for intervening and de-escalating violent or potentially violent situations.
Meet the Five Ds
DISTRACT: Good for situations in which someone is being harassed, this means approaching the person being harassed but ignoring the harasser. If you know the person, you can approach them in a regular friendly manner (“Hey, what’s up?”) If you don’t know the person, you can approach them and say something like “Excuse me, do you know what time it is?” or “Do you know where the bathrooms are?” You could also “accidentally” spill or drop something, or get in the way. This will move the focus off of the harasser and help defuse the situation. If it seems like the person might escalate the situation if spoken to directly, this is a great tactic.
DELEGATE: Approach another person, explain the situation, and ask if they can help. This is a good tactic if there’s someone in a position of authority around: at school, it could be a teacher or a counselor, for example. In a store, it could be the manager or another employee.
DOCUMENT: Stand at a safe distance away and film the interaction on your phone. This is particularly helpful in police harassment situations; it is completely legal to film the police in a public area. DO NOT POST any video without the complete consent of the person who is being harassed; this could make things worse for them in a number of ways. But sometimes, simply having an observer there will help defuse a situation.
DELAY: Even if there’s nothing you can do to intervene in the situation directly—sometimes things happen really fast, or it may be definitely not safe to use any of the other strategies—you can still check on the person who’s been harmed after the fact. Approach them and ask if they are okay and if there’s anything you can do to support them. You can offer to accompany them, or just sit with them for a bit. If you’ve documented the situation, ask if they’d like the documentation and what they’d like you to do with it.
DIRECT: This is the big one—intervening directly by confronting the person causing the problem. Ask yourself:
Are you physically safe? Is the person being harassed physically safe?
Are there people you can call on around you for help?
Does it seem unlikely that the situation will escalate beyond what’s already happening?
Does it seem like the person being harassed wants someone to speak up?
If you do choose to act directly, keep it as succinct as possible, and avoid getting drawn into an argument with the person who is acting aggressively. Some examples:
“Leave them alone.”
“Stop right now.”
“That’s racist/homophobic/transphobic.”
“They don’t want to leave with you.”
“They said stop. I’m here to support them.”
Assessing Body Language
Carefully observing body language can help you identify potential situations as well as how to navigate them. If a person looks frightened and is leaning away from the person they’re interacting with, or that person is incapacitated in some way, or the aggressor is moving to block them or grabbing at them, that could signal that something is very wrong.
Try to avoid aggressive body language yourself—it’s great to be assertive, but you don’t want to go into a situation looking like you’re going to start a fight. Avoid clenched fists, yelling, making loud noises, or too much direct eye contact—some direct eye contact is good, but don’t stare someone down. Stand at an angle to the person so that they don’t feel cornered, and try to remain as calm as possible. Listen closely to what the people involved are saying, and try to avoid extremely reactive responses. You can always take a grounding breath or two before you speak. Make sure to give everyone appropriate personal space, and know your exits if the situation escalates.
WE ALL COME FROM DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES & POSITIONS
Your own history with conflict and violence will shape the ways you respond in these high-intensity situations, and that’s true for everyone else as well. It’s worth thinking about what you’ve been through, how you might respond reactively, and ways you might avoid unhelpful patterns from the past—freezing up, going into fight mode, or running away. Remember that in every situation people will be bringing in their own histories, and be respectful of the fact that we’re all coming from different places and may not respond in the same ways or want the same resolutions. Always center the person who is being harmed and respect their agency—they may not have the same needs or wishes as you might have if you were in their situation.
AYO! NYC suggests the following easy-to-remember formula, BAPP:
Breathe
Be Aware of Your Triggers
Position Yourself For Safety and Project Calm
Positionality (essentially, that we are all coming from different places. How do our different identities and backgrounds inform how we communicate and what our needs might be? How do they inform how others perceive us?)
PRACTICE NONVIOLENT COMMUNICATION
Nonviolent communication is a way of dealing with conflict that stresses empathy and being sensitive to other people’s perspectives—avoiding blame and criticism while still maintaining strong boundaries. It can be used to express your feelings and needs as well as to receive someone else’s feelings and needs.
The four basics of nonviolent communication are:
OBSERVATIONS: What do you see, hear, etc. that does not contribute to your well-being? What does the other person see, hear, etc. that does not contribute to their well-being? Example: “When I hear you start to yell, I pull away and shut down.”
FEELINGS: How do you feel in relation to what you observe? How does the other person feel in relation to what they observe? Example: “I feel frightened when you yell.”
NEEDS/VALUES: What do you or the other person need or value, as opposed to emotional reactions? Example: “I need to feel safe to state my perspective.”
REQUESTS: The concrete actions you or the other person would like taken. Example: “Would you be willing to speak to me without yelling?”
DE-ESCALATION STRATEGIES
OBJECTIVES OF DE-ESCALATION
Ensure everyone’s safety
Help person or people manage distress and get control of their behavior
Avoid coercive interventions that may make the situation worse
Make sure that everyone in the situation has agency
If you confront someone directly, you’ll likely want to get them to calm down and/or disengage so that the person being harmed can get to safety. There are a few tactics you can use to do this. AYO! NYC uses the mnemonic GAMBLIN so that you can easily remember those strategies. They are:
Get to We: Fostering a sense of community by using “we” statements rather than accusatory “you” statements. Examples: “We just wanted to make sure everything was okay,” “How can we resolve this together,” “We’re all just trying to get home safely,” “Why don’t we take a few steps back?”
Offer Alternatives: Instead of ordering the person to do something, ask, so that they feel that they also have choice and agency. Examples: “Why don’t we all step over here instead?,” “Could we use quieter voices?”
Match and Lead: We mirror one another when we speak, so if someone is yelling, try approaching them at a louder volume but speaking calmly. Then, slowly get quieter as the conversation proceeds. They will generally mirror you as you do this! This will help get back to regular speaking voices, which will help defuse the situation.
Broken Record: If two people are arguing and it’s hard to get a word in, just repeating your interjection over and over can be useful—they could be so wound up that they don’t hear you, or they don’t really process what you’re saying the first few times.
Lose to Win: Pick your battles. If your goal is safety, you might have to change your plans for the day in order to, say, get someone who’s being harassed off the train at the next stop and help them figure out an alternate route to get where they’re going.
“I” Statements: Again, instead of accusatory “you” statements, reframe the situation using “I” statements. Examples: “I’m feeling worried, I just want everyone to be okay here,” “I want to help, how can I help?”
Name The Behavior: Clearly and succinctly name what the problem is, without placing blame. Example: “That’s not an okay thing to say,” versus “What did you just say?” or “You’re being rude.”
AFTERCARE
Since all of this is highly stressful, both you and the person who experienced harm will need continuing care! Help the other person out by connecting them with further resources if necessary, like therapists or counselors or hotlines, and strategizing ways that they can feel supported after you leave the situation (for instance, getting someone they know and trust to come to their place later).
Since it’s easy to just fall into regular coping tactics like trying to brush off what just happened or dissociating, make sure to take the time and space for yourself to process what happened and connect with your own care networks. Allow whatever you need to arise without burying it or shying away from it. Take time off work if you can! Ground yourself in your breath whenever you feel things getting away from you, and channel your new experiences into community organizing. For instance: maybe one or more of the people in the situation you just experienced were dealing with untreated mental health issues. What could you do to change people’s access to mental health resources in your community? Guaranteed that there are already people out there doing that work, so you might want to plug in with them.
Channeling your energy into productive organizing both helps continue to build that abolitionist vision of an interdependent world and can help people heal their individual wounds through coming together to make change.
MORE RESOURCES
"Skill UP!" For example, does your community offer First Aid classes? Sign up for them. It's good to learn how you can be helpful to your community in multiple ways.
We used these resources to build this zine, and think you’ll get a lot out of them if you want to learn more!