How would you define bullying?
Broadly, I think bullying is any time a person or group uses their power or privilege to harass, threaten, demean, humiliate or assault someone.

Can you explain why the issue of bullying is important to you?
I experienced it a great deal growing up. I was a gay, black kid growing up in the South in the ’80s and ’90s in a fairly religious family. Kids called me names. Wrote “Faggot” on my locker and schoolbooks. Yelled “Sissy” at me as the school bus drove off each afternoon.

I haven’t been a kid or teenager in decades, but I still remember quite clearly how isolated, unwanted, and wrong that treatment made me feel. I don’t think I ever believed the kids who bullied me were mean or evil. My takeaway was that there was something fundamentally wrong with me that I couldn’t change no matter how hard I tried or prayed.

And at one point, when I was 15, I tried to kill myself. Not because I wanted to die but because I just could not stand that isolation. Now, as an adult, I see that bullying is embedded in our culture, particularly youth culture. With social media and technology, kids today experience bullying on a level that I never did and don’t think I could have handled as a teen.

I very much allowed that anger and hurt from being bullied to make me a bit of a bully later in high school. That’s why this issue is important to me. I don’t think most bullies—at any age—recognize the impact of their behavior. That’s the problem.

As an adult, have you ever personally experienced being bullied or felt like you were in a hostile space directed at you?
As much as I was bullied in school as a youth, I never feared for my safety. Not really. But as an adult living in supposedly progressive New York City, I have many, many times been made to feel afraid by bullies. I have been called “Faggot” while walking in the West Village, sitting on the subway, by a security guard while going into the District Attorney’s office as part of my job, and countless times in court. I have been threatened with sexual violence by complete strangers who told me that if I wanted to ‘act like a b****,’ they should treat me like one and sexually assault me. The list of these experiences I have had as an adult go on and on. It is what prompted me to start training in mixed martial arts so I could defend myself. Perhaps not coincidentally, I don’t get harassed in public since I started training.

How does your writing allow you to process this hostility from others?
I think the thing that writing does for me—that I didn’t have as a kid—is the opportunity to ‘get it out.’ It allows me to voice the experience and not keep all that hate inside me. This is really what the bully wants—to diminish you, destroy you, make you believe you are less valuable than he or she is. When I write, I get to tell the story and take that power back and share with the world what ugly thing happened to me.

Are there writers you might suggest for someone looking to experience more voices of African-American LGBT people in America?
James Baldwin, particularly for his novels like Just Above My Head. He was writing about gay, black men in such a normative way in like the ’60s with such passion and clarity. Joseph Beam and Essex Hemphill are also two writers whose work I found utterly humanizing when it found me.

Staceyann Chin. I always loved her as a poet, but someone gifted me with her memoir recently. It is a necessary read. Audre Lorde, of course. Janet Mock. J Mase is stunning!!! G Winston James. Marvin K. White. Aziza Barnes is like…all the poet you will ever need, I think.

Many discuss the need for LGBTQ community members to create a more inclusive experience for individuals of color and other communities who often feel excluded from the history of gay liberation. Do you agree with this?
I think the work is definitely to create a space that recognizes the role that people of color have already and always played. We really are not going to achieve liberation without each other.

How can LGBTQ people work to improve safe space in the community for people of all races, religions, etc.?
I think LGBT people can do the work of making their own spaces safe and more inclusive.

But if this is a question about safe spaces more broadly, I am not sure that is our work. We didn’t make them unsafe. We, as LGBTQ people, can certainly continue demanding our inclusion, pointing out how, why, and where we are unsafe and what our safety would look like. Much of that work of creating safe space is the work of people who make us unsafe. That is their job. You know what I mean?

Men have to fix misogyny. White folks have to fix racism. Cisgender folks have to fix their transphobia. And so on. We have to recognize and call out our own biases as individuals and communities, understand the cost of that prejudice and fix it. We must be willing to listen.

In your role as a Public Defender for youth, do you see bullying come up as a factor in a young person’s decisions?
I have worked with kids who have bullied and who have been bullied. What strikes me is how normal kids who bully think bullying is; how they never ever see themselves as bullies. So much of mistreating another person among young people is based on impressing peers.

Can you share how bullying (or reactions to bullying) are influencing the behavior of youth you represent?
Being bulled can cause acting out, bullying in retaliation, self-harming, truancy, all kinds of anti-social and harmful behavior. I have seen it cause kids to engage in behavior they otherwise would not have just to be liked—participating in crimes, sexual activity, running away, acting out in school, etc.

I have worked with kids who simply stopped going to school because of the incessant bullying or who had to transfer schools because of it only to have it follow them because of social media. I think how kids experience themselves as regarded by their peers has a huge influence in their decisions.

Young LGBT are disproportionately bullied, and many of us are familiar with the high rates of homelessness for LGBT youth. Why should all communities be working to provide positive spaces for LGBT youth?
Because LGBT youth come from and belong to all communities. Being LGBT isn’t an island. These youth are as vital, essential, vulnerable, and worthy as any other kid out there. Kids are our responsibility. Period.

What resources do you think a person should have available to respond to bullying?
Therapy. Mediation. Peer mediation. And I think bullies should really be informed about the impact of their behavior.

What are three things you think a person could do today to express kindness in their community?
Volunteer on a regular and consistent basis.

I am a huge fan of anonymous in-kind donations. I promise there are things around your house in great condition that you don’t use that someone needs and would love.

Any thing that gets art and art supplies and creative space to youth.

Travis Montez is a Tennessee-born Brooklynite, writer, and attorney for children. I love all things pop culture, but especially comic books. I fall in love a lot. Follow on Facebook and Twitter.

The Tyler Clementi Foundation is placing a full-page advertisement in the inauguration week issue of the Washington Examiner. The ad will call on future first lady Melania Trump to meet with Foundation co-founder Jane Clementi to discuss ways to end cyberbullying. Clementi wants to share the lessons she learned following the death of her son to suicide after experiencing cyberbullying.

In November, shortly after the election, Jane Clementi offered to work with Ms. Trump on her effort to end online bullying of children and teenagers. Clementi welcomed Ms. Trump’s pre-election announcement that as first lady she would work to stop this abusive behavior. Clementi wants to meet with Trump to discuss how she and the foundation could work with her. But she also called on her to recognize the Trump campaign’s bullying of many marginalized people and groups. “It is only by acknowledging and apologizing for this past poor behavior in the cyberworld that our new first lady will be able to move forward and have a truly impactful future, creating a safe and respectful online experience for our youth,” Clementi said.

Join us in inviting Melania to the conversation

The Washington Examiner is a weekly magazine and website based in Washington, D.C. that covers politics and the federal government.

As a nation, the time is now to stand up for bullying prevention in our schools and our communities. Jane Clementi, mother of Tyler Clementi, has responded to First Lady elect Melania Trump’s call to end online bullying by inviting her to a discussion. She is also inviting mothers throughout the nation to join her in this invitation in hopes that raising our voices in unison creates a safe space to talk about real solutions that support youth of all races, religious affiliations, sexual identities, gender identities, and abilities.

Please read the letter below and add your support:

Betsy DeVos has a long history of working to dismantle public education in favor of charter and voucher schools.

These institutions may offer less protections legally than traditional public schools, when it comes to civil rights and bullying protections. Putting someone in charge of the very agency they have worked to undermine raises serious questions about whether our youth will be safe under her tenure. Ask your senator to ask Betsy DeVos tough questions about her commitment to protecting minority youth, including LGBT youth and her commitment to dedicating resources to bullying prevention and remediation.

Read Jane Clementi's statement about the nomination of Betsy DeVos.

We are calling on you to reach out to your Senators and ask them to demand DeVos confirm a commitment to all youth or fail appointment to the President’s Cabinet:

I guess I was pretty lucky growing up. I was a Midwestern white person in a sea of other Midwestern white people. My family was pretty straight-up middle class, so we didn’t really stand out one way or another. I made friends. I blended in. I think the “blending in” part is key—because if you can be just enough like everyone else, maybe nothing bad will happen and no one will make fun of you. I remember being hyper-aware of this by 7th grade. I was in junior high and the cliques were forming. I was watching what the “cool kids” were wearing, making mental notes of brands and colors. I was listening to what they were talking about and the words they were using. I just wanted to be like them. I wanted to be above the fray. I didn’t want to end up like Ben, the kid who was stuffed in a locker on almost a daily basis. I didn’t really know him and I don’t think I ever spoke more than two words to him. No one did. He was just too weird. And no one wanted to be thought of as weird. I was already very involved in music and I was in the “gifted” program, so things could go either way for me on the social ladder of junior high. I was smart, so I could be perceived as a dork. I also played music, which would either make me a Super Dork or it could give me a pass. I studied classical music, but I also made sure I knew some Billy Joel songs. That helped. 🙂 When I got into high school, the arts were clearly what I was all about. I was involved in everything—choir, band, theatre. Those programs loomed large at my school, so everything was copacetic. I got into community theatre, which was big as well. We were a bunch of white people doing shows like The King and I, but whatever! I was totally fitting in! YAY!

I went to the University of Michigan to study piano performance. U of M is a highly diversified community. For the first time in my life, I was surrounded by lots of people who were NOT Midwestern white people. I was amazed. There were black people. And Indian people. And Jews from New York. And gay people who were actually “out.” THAT was new, for sure. Back in high school, my friend Chris asked our group of friends if we thought he was gay. I think our response was something like “Well, yeah. DUH.” I mean, there was NO WAY he liked girls, so we were just being honest in our idiotic, blunt, teenager-y way… But he seemed pretty upset about it at the time. He didn’t know what to do about the fact that at this point in his life, people could actually TELL he was different. Clearly, no one could know. That would be against all Blending Rules. But in college, people didn’t really seem to care. There were SO many different kinds of people, and that’s what the whole experience was about: diversity. When I went home for the summer after my freshman year, for the first time I became aware of the lack of diversity in my hometown. EVERYONE was white. EVERYONE had the same hair. EVERYONE wore Abercrombie & Fitch. If you were truly included, you were all of these things. I was shocked that I hadn’t ever realized it before.

Fast forward to now. I have lived and worked in the New York theatre community for twenty years. Diversity is what we do. It’s who we are. If you are nutty enough to be in this business, you probably made lots of left turns when everyone else was turning right. You have probably left the Blending Rules far behind. But getting to that place of feeling free to be who you are can be a major struggle.

In 2012, I was lucky enough to write some new songs for bare: The Musical. bare is a story about two teenage boys in a Catholic boarding school who fall in love. In their environment, those who do not follow the Blending Rules are bullied and tortured. In the eyes of our leads, Peter and Jason, being outed as gay would be the worst thing that could happen. And for one of them, the struggle is just too much to survive. For the creative team of bare, it became our mission to try to help people who felt trapped like Peter and Jason did. If we could help even ONE person to realize that things WILL get better, then all of our work would be worthwhile. During the run of the show, our producers hosted post-show anti-bullying forums with their non-profit partners and I was lucky enough to get to know the Tyler Clementi Foundation. Tyler’s story closely mirrored ours, so the connection between us was very natural. We held post-show talkbacks where we heard from so many young people who were struggling with their sexuality. Really, really struggling. They talked about how they weren’t sure they wanted to go on with their lives when they came in the door that day. Then they saw the show, and they felt a glimmer of hope. That’s all you really need sometimes. You just need one glimmer of hope.

I think now about Ben from junior high. If I knew then what I know now, maybe things would have been different for him. Maybe all he needed was for someone to ask him how his day was going. Or just say hi. It would have been so simple to show him a moment of kindness. But in the social war of teenager-dom, I chose not to.

I spent 2016 working on my double album, Bare Naked. The album includes the songs lyricist Jon Hartmere and I wrote for bare as well as a dozen of my most recent songs. Bare Naked is about me seeing you and you seeing me just as we are. No filters, no games, no apologies. Here we all are, with our arms wide open saying, “This is me. This is who I am.”

In honor of bare and Tyler’s story, I am giving 50% of album proceeds to the Tyler Clementi Foundation. In this era where it feels like the Blending Rules are trying to make a vicious comeback, nothing could be more important than continuing TCF’s mission. I hope you’ll take a listen.

Bare Naked will be released on Jan. 24. The album is now available for pre-order on iTunes, Amazon and at yellowsoundlabel.com.

Learn more about the Tyler Clementi Foundation.

Photo courtesy The Carolina Peacemaker

What are common misconceptions you often hear about Muslim-Americans?
Muslims are anti-American. Muslims are anti-modernity. Muslims are terrorists. Muslims women are oppressed by their male counterparts. Muslims are in opposition to, or hate people of other religious faiths including Jews and Christians.

Has there been a time when you have felt bullied or harassed due to your faith? Could you tell us a bit about it?
I personally have not been bullied in my recent life based upon my faith. Although, I have heard many such complaints from people who are easily visually identified as Muslims. This group comprises mainly of women around the city of Greensboro as well as students that either visually or by action are as identified as Muslims.

How can non-Muslims best support their Muslim brothers and sisters?
Two ways: Educating Muslims on the rights they possess as US citizens and supporting programs that help bring basic information/recognition around Islam/Muslims (as understood by Muslims) to academic, work place and faith-based settings.

What’s the most effective way to address a bullying situation involving a Muslim-American victim?
First, report the incident and document it and provide trauma support to the victim and extended families. Second, Bring awareness to the problem. Lastly, build an anti-bullying network and hold anti-bullying programs via a regular cadence.

How can a classroom make safe space for young Muslim-Americans?
Bring awareness of bullying faced by Muslim-American youth, provide education around Islam and Muslims helping fight the misconceptions I mentioned above, and open dialogue between students to understand dynamics causing issues in the classroom.

What do you believe people across communities can do to end the harassment and violence towards people of the Muslim faith?
Three things: Inward facing education around Islam and Muslims, hopefully with Muslim involvement; participate in outward facing community events and programs with Muslim counterparts; and reach out to people that are not part of the “choir”.

If you could say one thing to someone who feels negatively about Muslim-Americans, what would it be?

Meet a Muslim locally and learn through the relationship, what Islam means to the person on the ground.

Do you feel there are particular differences to how American women of Muslim faith are perceived by society compares to the men of Muslim faith?

There is a stark difference, as Muslim women are viewed with an eye of judgement and cynicism, particularly those that wear a Hijab and are easily identified as Muslims. Harassment, marginalization and even emotional pity is given to the misconceived condition of the Muslim woman and the position is found hastily generalized.

How do you see rhetoric from politicians and public figures regarding Muslim faith affect treatment of Muslim-Americans? Do you feel it contributes to increased harassment of Muslim-Americans?

This harassment ebbs and flows over time and in earnest started after 9/11. There have been many incidents of increasing hate crimes around the US based upon recent election rhetoric. Specifically, the Islamic Center of Greensboro has received a few threats, including letters asking for Muslims to disappear from the Greensboro area. The response to this threat was the formalization of a yearly Peace Festival, started in 2015 and the inter-faith and community engagement event has been successfully organized for two years running.

Wasif Qureshi is President Emeritus for the Islamic Center of Greensboro and father of two beautiful children. He is hopeful and committed to the cause of peace, justice and equality with a focus on the immediate sphere of influence.

Photo courtesy The Carolina Peacemaker

My name is Joe Mannetti. I am an anti-bullying blogger for the We Are 1 Voice group based in Florida. I became involved in this journey as a result of what I witnessed and experienced myself. I have not shared my personal bullying ordeal in this forum until now. This is my story.

I moved to Connecticut after the cost of living in Los Angeles became too much to handle any longer for me. I selected Connecticut because it was where my mother and father resided. I was broke, and I did not know where else to go. My family and I had been mostly estranged with minimal contact for over two decades while I resided in Southern California. I thought that re-connecting with them along with the relatives I had been separated from might offer some support during this transitional period of my life. 

I was in a new environment. Things were different. I expected them to be that way. But, nothing could have prepared me for what happened within almost a year of moving to what I hoped would become my new home. My father had been complaining of trouble breathing. He was scheduled for a doctor’s check-up, and I was going to drive him there and discuss the results afterwards with him. We were both concerned. My father never made his appointment. I found him dead in his house on the floor clutching his heart and reaching for the phone. I was devastated. But, the nightmare had only just begun.

My father’s relatives had always displayed a propitiatory stance with my father. While my father’s body was being dragged out in a body bag, these same relatives entered his house, broke out beer that they took from the basement, and began giving directions about how my father’s funeral would be coordinated as an event to promote their restaurant – the restaurant he had left a month before dying. I was shocked. The police were shocked. They asked them to leave the premises. They refused. Later, the funeral director informed me that he had been screamed at over the phone by one of those same relatives to take orders from her based on her business schedule regarding the funeral. The bullying had begun. When I saw a public post on social media promoting an event after the funeral at the restaurant those relatives managed, I called it out along with their behavior. That was the beginning of cyber harassment directed against me that went on for close to six years. Sixteen fake profiles popped up on social media, usually impersonating people of color or LGBT people. These profiles networked with all of the people in my social media network. The comments these profiles made attacked me by making insulting remarks about my physical appearance, denounced me as a liar or someone who was mentally ill and not to be listened to, and more.

The cyber harassment was instigated and created mostly by my father’s relatives. But, it was supported by other people in the community. I was blind-sided each time that I witnessed one of them give a thumbs up to these posts attacking me as well as my mother. The sense of betrayal also added to the feelings of isolation and loss I was experiencing after finding my father dead. I attempted to move away from the area several times. I blocked each and every profile, along with profiles that gave such posts a thumbs up. I never responded or engaged with the relatives or others who supported the harassment. When they could not get to me via social media, a note with my image and vicious comments in red ink written across it was left on the windshield of my car for me to find after coming home from a Gay Pride Parade. My mother also received threatening and bullying notes in the mail. Finally, the relative who had been the chief instigator of the bullying, confronted me in a parking lot. She followed me to my car, blocked my way, and hurled insults at me insulting my masculinity while daring me to put my hands on her the entire time. 

I did go to the police. I did file reports. I did seek support. But, I was in an environment where no real effective support was offered or made available. I was also in a much more provincial environment with no comparable semblance of an LGBT community like the one I had enjoyed being connected to in Los Angeles. I had lost my support system.

In looking back, I have recognized a few truths.

1. I have learned that bullies consistently pick vulnerable targets. I sensed, from the beginning, that I was an outsider when I moved to Connecticut from Los Angeles. I perceived this even before the cyber attacks took place.

2. The ability to attack was made more readily available when I was more vulnerable after the death of my father. All of us, no matter how strong, have moments in our lives when we are in a more fragile state than others. Experiencing the death of a loved one is always a difficult time. It was immediately following my father’s death that the viciousness of the bullying and cyber bullying intensified. I was an easier target to those who were predisposed to bullying me from the beginning. They simply waited for the most opportune moment to launch in with their attacks.

3. There was not much effective support offered to me while I was being cyber bullied, and nobody in any position of authority or leadership stepped up to confront the bullying. In fact, a great many influential people in the local communities where I was living at that time actually supported and encouraged it. This allowed it to continue and escalate.

4. Bullies rarely continue to be bullies without support. What allowed the cyber bullying that targeted me to go on for years was the support the bullying received from so many people. They supported the bullying with silence or refusing to call it out, pretending that they did not know about it, or actually joining in with the attacks themselves. None of the bullying was ever effectively confronted, and none of the people involved with it have ever taken responsibility or apologized for it. Not one person from any local LGBT organizations that I had supported in the area stepped up or took a stand against the bullying that had attacked me as well as others in LGBT communities along with the people of color who had been mocked all over social media with the fake profiles.

WHAT I LEARNED

LGBT people need safe spaces. This is especially so in environments where there is an overwhelming lack of diversity or LGBT communities. I was made a target for a variety of reasons. But, one of the chief variables was the overwhelming lack of a supportive and diverse LGBT environment that I experienced when I moved from one location to another. 
Individuals, particularly LGBT individuals, need to have a readily available and effective support service that they can contact if they are being attacked or cyber bullied.

Excluding people or dismissing their pain as “whining” when they reach out for support can often make them internalize a sense of shame over the entire situation. I experienced this profoundly while I was being harassed. If a supportive environment is perceived in which the individual feels he or she can be heard as well as be themselves, it can save a life.

Nobody knows how to deal with all of this when it happens to them or someone they love. It’s learning process. I am still learning. The Tyler Clementi Foundation is helping all of us learn together. We have only just begun to take cyber bullying seriously.

Joe Mannetti is an anti-bullying blogger, public speaker, and multi-award winning LGBT activist. He has a Master’s degree in counseling, and he currently resides in Florida.

The following statement may be attributed to Jane Clementi, mother of Tyler Clementi and Co-Founder of the Tyler Clementi Foundation, which works to end online and offline bullying in schools, workplaces and faith communities.

“The nomination of Betsy DeVos to run the US Department of Education is very distressing. DeVos is ideologically driven and has dedicated much of her life to dismantling public education. Putting her in charge of the very institution she derides should worry all Americans. We need more protections for students – not less, and if DeVos hopes to shift America away from public schools and toward for-profit and charter schools, I worry that the hard won state and federal protections against bullying and civil rights violations will be shredded.

Our Foundation is calling on Betsy DeVos to commit on the record to strengthening anti-bullying protections and laws. And we are calling for the US Senate to get her on the record in regards to these issues. We cannot entrust the USDOE to someone who isn’t committed to the principles of safe, free, equal education for all young people. If DeVos does not commit to doing all she can to protect all youth from the harms of bullying, bias, harassment and humiliation we will oppose her confirmation.”