This weekend people in the metro will join CAIR Oklahoma, the local chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Reactions, to participate in Bystander Intervention Training.
“Everybody has a part to play when we’re trying to make the community safer, trying to decrease the number of bias incidents overall,” Veronica Laizure said.
The training event will happen at the Mercy Mission Building on Saturday, September 23 from 5:00 to 8:00 pm.
Laizure is the chapter’s civil rights director. She said people who participate will learn how to step in and help a victim experiencing things like racial slurs, vandalism and physical attacks.
“While we are focusing on Islamophobia because that’s the nature of our organization, hopefully the tools people will get from this training can help in a variety of situations and a variety of different contexts,” she said.
She said some scenarios will encompass domestic and sexual abuse.
CAIR Oklahoma decided to host a training because there’s been growing concern from people who want to be able to help, Laizure said. The concern has come from a growing number of attacks.
The Southern Poverty Law Center documented more than 1,300 bias incidents across the US in the three months after the presidential election. In Oklahoma, CAIR saw a large increase in reports in the election year compared with 2015. The biggest increase in reports coming from hate crimes, vandalism and FBI-related complaints. CAIR and other organizations attribute it to violent election rhetoric from both parties.
“The effects of that on the ground is that people feel more empowered to approach a stranger in the parking lot, for example, and say ‘go back to Syria.’ That’s a report that came in through our office and the woman who was the victim of this harassment was like ‘I’m from Nichols Hills. I’ve never been to Syria’,” Laizure said.
At Bystander Intervention Training, people will learn how to step in and help in cases like that without escalating the situation.
CAIR said the response has been so large, the organization plans to hold another training in Oklahoma City and one in Tulsa. It will also take requests from churches and community organizations to hold training for their groups.