Mary Mitchell recounts in the
Chicago Sun-Times an experience on the Brown Line of aggressive behavior towards her and her having to resort to using the Red Call Button to summon the operator. (
http://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/7/71/399641/shook-cta-brown-line)
I agree with Mary Mitchell. It is extremely important that CTA users
stand up for each other. When a wolf enters your train car you can act
like a sheep or you can act like a cat. But the last thing you want to
act like is a mouse.
One should immediately take notice of loud
aggressive behavior. I'm not suggesting that you jump up and become a
hero, but you need to be ready to back up any hero that does emerge.
Mary was a hero here and did exactly the right thing. Hitting the call
button can take courage. No one wants to be the cause of everyone else
being delayed. But aggressive disturbance needs to be nipped in the bud
or like graffiti it grows like cancer.
I'm a 68 yo man. At ten pm
one night two weeks ago on the red line between Fullerton and my exit at
Granville I had the opportunity to face three aggressive young women.
They had hounded an older man and forced him to seek respite by going to
the next car through the connecting doors. He was too incapable to
succeed. So he found himself cowered across from me as they hounded him.
When
I suggested that the young women back off they screamed at me to mind
my own business. I told them that whenever someone on a train was making
others uncomfortable that it became everyone's business. They screamed
at me to shut up. They called me names. Very intense and unpleasant.
But
this was not a dangerous situation. They were young women, tough yes,
and with gang-like (I hesitate to use that proto-racist phrase)
association amongst them. But they were not physically assaulting the
old-man and their aggression toward me was only verbal. The fact that it
did go on so long was an indication of its lack of real danger.
However
it is clear that several other people were paying attention. Everyone
else stayed out of it, yes. But I suspect that my stepping into it would
have garnered me some back-up if it had escalated.
But here's
where it actually gets more interesting. A young women sitting near me
with her head buried in her headphones turned out to actually be paying
attention. At some point she removed her head phones and asked if I had
ever been groped.
See, the reason they were hounding the old man was because they were accusing him of improper sexually motivated behavior.
Truth
presented in an Instant court-room drama is impossible to discern. But I
am willing to hope that the hounding punishment meted out by the young
women was commensurate with the severity of his alleged groping.
