ABOUT
MISSION OF THE STOP BULLYING COALITION
Transforming housing into safe, peaceful, respectful, supportive, healthy, and joyful communities for the poor, the elderly, and the disabled.
We are the Stop Bullying Coalition
The Stop Bullying Coalition is a peer driven grassroots network of tenants and concerned citizens that advocates for the rights of all tenants, including elderly and disabled, who reside in public and subsidized housing within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
We shall not tolerate that being poor, elderly, or disabled deprives us of our right to safety, respect, peace, social and mental health, and joy in our homes.
We fight for our rights by actively engaging in advocacy for legislative and policy remedies; exposing injustices and sharing our success by telling our stories; partnering with coalitions and agencies based on shared interests and locality; empowering individuals to lead in all aspects of our work including education and training opportunities; and offering continuous support and belonging for those we serve.
We believe that advocacy is the art of creating possibility and that no one is safe and at peace unless we are all safe and at peace. We honor the value of each individual’s lived experiences by giving a voice to those whose rights have been violated and those who have overcome adversity.
We advocate for legislation, including to establish an office of the tenant advocate for oversight and accountability over housing providers, and thus to eliminate bullying, mobbing, and hostile environment harassment. Once these aggressive behaviors are eliminated, it will be possible to liberate people from fear and to build a healthy community life.
We have for over a decade reported on the destructive impacts of bullying, mobbing, and harassment on individuals as well as on community life in The Newsletter of the Stop Bullying Coalition and online. We have mobilized tenants and our coalition partners to testify before hearings of the General Court of the Commonwealth. We have partnered with legislators to advance bills we wrote. We have made our case clearly with testimony that sometimes evoked tears, yet after years of advocacy, we are still waiting for relief. Very few elderly or disabled people who have been bullied, mobbed, or harassed get relief. We have decided that if no one is coming to help us, we must do more to help ourselves.
The harm of bullying, mobbing, and harassment is serious.
"[Mobbing] affects our sense of belonging, our self-esteem or sense of self worth, our sense of control over our lives, and our sense of having a meaningful existence."—Janice Harper, PhD, Bullying and Mobbing in Group Settings; a statement presented to the Massachusetts Commission on Bullying, 7 August 2017.
Two experts on mobbing say that
“Mobbing is a much more sophisticated way of doing someone in than murder....”—Maureen Duffy and Len Sperry
Special thanks to all who helped to develop the new "About" and the new "Action Plan." A shout-out to Heidi Sousse whose editing helped to clarify the "About" statement.