Greg Dunlap  0:17  
Our guest today is Shawna Potter. Shawna is the lead singer for the band War On Women and the author of the book Making Spaces Safer: A Guide To Giving Harassment The Boot Wherever You Work, Play and Gather. Welcome to the podcast today Shawna. 

Shawna Potter  0:28  
Thanks you for having me, Greg.

Greg Dunlap  0:31  
Sure. So you're you're involved in a punk rock band War On Women? How did you first get into the punk rock scene?

Shawna Potter  0:40  
I'm "involved". <laughs> I'm entangled.

Greg Dunlap  0:43  
You are the lead singer for this band War On Women, that's right. The relationship is complicated.

Shawna Potter  0:48  
Fair. Um, how did I get into punk? Is that the question? I think my first exposure to Punk would be Riot Grrrl. Kind of learning about these women that lived in a different part of the country from me, I was in Texas or Nashville at the time, and just hearing people yell about things that matter to them. And I admit when I first heard it, I was not ready for it. It was too much for me. But eventually, you know as a fan of music in general even even not being into like cool underground stuff yet because I'm in elementary school or whatever. You know, eventually you learn about, you know, historical important punk bands like Sex Pistols or something, and it just kind of opened up from there. The idea of punk was definitely sort of a genre, but it was more than that. And I think as time went on, obviously, being a strict genre certainly went out the window. You can say that almost anything is punk now as long as it's like, you know, brash and and true and passionate and angry. At least that's my kind of punk. I guess I'm not super into like, you know, So Cal major chord thing personally, not that there's anything wrong with it.

Greg Dunlap  2:27  
What was it that like drew you into that? Because there's kind of a transition I see with people getting into punk rock between when they first get involved with the music and when they first discovered that there's a greater scene or community around it. And you know, there's a great distance obviously between Texas and Olympia, Washington when you first got into Riot Grrrl. So what was that? What that transition or journey look like for you?

Shawna Potter  2:54  
Well, I started playing guitar when I was 12 years old. As soon as I realized that women could play guitar, which I didn't always know, it kind of took seeing someone on TV to know that I could do it too. But as soon as I started playing, I was like, oh, there's more than just Janet Jackson out there, right? Like, there's like bands. Well, I should be in a band because I want to play guitar. And I moved right before High School. And so I was like, 14 or so. And so my mission was to, well, now I live in Nashville. I'm in high school, I'm going to find a band. I'm going to find people to play with and that's kind of all I cared about extra-curricular-wise. And eventually that happens. And well, now that you're in a band, you need a place to play. Because that's the point. So if I didn't want to play one of my other band members family's church, which I did not. Then we had to find some other space. And so I think the first real gathering space where you know, misfits and outcasts and punks and people that weren't jocks or nerds, you know, super smart or band geeks or whatever. I was none of those things. I was kind of a theater nerd, I guess. But because I cared so much about music, I wasn't really doing much  theater. And so I had to seek out this other place, and it was at first just the mall right?Just walking around the mall with your friends for hours until dinnertime. And then that sort of overlapped with kind of a cross between the mall and a space called Rocketown, which is just this big all-ages gathering space. And in between those two things, was a highway. I-65. So we would walk from the mall parking lot and try to cross the highway because that was the fastest way without a car to get to Rocketown, which is the only other place you could be after the mall closed at nine or whatever. So really smart stuff happening. And that space existed as sort of like ... some nights it would just be like dance night. Very like emo and like Hot Topic-y. But bands would play. Like I it might just be a Nashville thing, right? But so many people play music. So many young people play music because their parents or grandparents played music in Nashville. That's why so many people are there, right? So there's just a lot of talent I think in the city and suburbs. People interested in music so which was nice. And so I had a ton of friends in bands in high school like I was not unique. In that way of being in a band, which of course made me mad, because I wanted all my friends to come see my band play, but they were all busy practicing playing their own shows. But this ... you're just bringing up these memories actually of Rocketown just kind of being this big space that would just let kids hang out and like, you know ... no drinking, no drugs, but you could have a good time when you're still under age. But then at midnight, they would say, "Okay, if you want to hang out for a little while longer, you can have free pizza. And we're going to talk about God." And so that was sort of the trade off when you're 15 and don't have a car. I'm beholden to someone else taking me home or my mom picking me up. I just want to stay out late because it seems cool to be out with my friends. Okay, I'll eat the pizza and I'll listen to you talk about God. But as soon as I got a car and I could go anywhere else I did. And so the community changed when my resources changed, I guess.

Greg Dunlap  7:11  
It was interesting hearing you say that it didn't occur to you that you could play guitar until you saw another woman do it, because like I remember the first time when I saw Rock And Roll High School, I'm like, look at these with these lanky weirdos playing guitar. Like if the if The Ramones can do it, so can I. It's just a reminder about something that's kind of a cultural conversation now, which is that representation really does matter. Like when we hear about people of color talking about seeing Uhura on Star Trek, right? That seeing yourself in the things that you look up to make you believe that that you can do that as well. 

Shawna Potter  7:52  
100% and that's something I talk about as often as possible. If it ever comes up in an interview, I'm talking about the fact that I didn't know I could play guitar until I saw someone play guitar in a music video on MTV. And that representation really matters. You can't be what you can't see. It makes it so much easier for me to identify with. Like we're saying people of color, especially Black people, that just want to see themselves represented, that just want to see storylines that have anything at all to do with their lives or imagine other futures like Star Trek, you know. And that when they are represented, we're not just representing the pain. Like we can't only put out slave-era movies, right? Like, that's not enough, either. That's not something to aspire to. And it's not even the full truth of what people are going through today. It's just some part of it. And so we we have to, we have to just see more and more and more and that exposure not only helps people of whatever marginalized group we're talking about to see themselves and to maybe take up a new hobby or a new skill or or, you know, put themselves out there to be their best selves. That exposure also creates more tolerance from other groups of people that belong to the oppressor group, to just acknowledge, like, yeah, a bunch of other people exist. I'm not alone in the world. I'm not the most important thing. The world does not revolve around me. And that's really important.That tolerance and the fact that a person can look up and see themselves reflected, they work hand in hand.

Greg Dunlap  9:41  
Something that I've been thinking about since we started putting together this interview is how, you know, historically punk rock has been very sort of progressive when you think about things like racism and fascism and stuff like that. But on the issues of gender or sexism it seems like it's always lagged behind. I mean, we can look at particularly female fronted bands like The Slits and Bikini Kill and stuff like that. But in general as a cultural conversation within the punk rock scene, it seems like the awareness of gender and women's Issues is a very recent thing that's starting to become a bigger part of the picture.

Shawna Potter  10:26  
I don't have a perfect way to say this. I always feel like I'm having that moment where I feel like I might stick my foot in my mouth. And so let's let's hope for the best.

Greg Dunlap  10:38  
I don't think I don't think there is a perfect way to say, you know, historically punk rock has been an old boys club.

Shawna Potter  10:46  
Well, that's, you know, that's a given. You'll find no argument from me. So what I'm about to say that I might not say perfectly, isI I really do believe that no matter what social justice Issue we're talking about, whatever thing that someone cares about or is involved in, that they always have a problem with sexism and misogyny. And so I don't care how woke or progressive or knowledgeable someone thinks they are. I guarantee that in general as a movement, it's not serving its women or gender-non-conforming people like it, should. Whether we're talking about civil rights, black rights, Black Lives Matter. And now obviously, that's something that was started by three women. But when you're talking about on the ground, local organizing people showing up, like who's in charge, who's in charge everywhere? Are we actually listening to black women in every community? When we're holding protests and talking about things that matter to the black community? Are we even listening to women? So that applies to like, everything. I think it's so easy for people to still just discount women. To dismiss them. And so they might not feel this like overwhelming, you know, hate or intolerance. I think women are just easily cast aside by people. They're just very used to it. And so, you know, there is no genre of music that is safe from this. There's no corner of the world that's completely safe from this idea. You know, so it's not punk-specific, but I think anything that especially starts out fairly subversive and small and dedicated and, you know, ... once it gets bigger and co-opted and co-opted and co-opted .. of course, it's going to suffer the same problems as the rest of the world as any other corner of the world.

Greg Dunlap  11:17  
Something that kind of leads into a little is that I've been really interested in the community that forms when bands  and audiences get together at a concert. And it seems to me like it's so rare for that community to kind of meld like, you'll sometimes have bands that will that will you know, that will use the stage as their platform or audiences that will yell at bands, but bridging that wall between them seems to be pretty rare. And I know that in your band, you'll often use the behavior of somebody in the audience to either confront or call out or start a communication with somebody who's attending one of your shows. And I was wondering like, how that kind of develop?  Was it an intentional thing, what was it just something that came naturally because that's what you do, or like how did how did that kind of come out or build up in your performance?

Shawna Potter  14:05  
I think a lot of people that are socialized female, even when they grew up bratty, like me, you know, an only child who could ask for what they want from their lower middle class family. Even I still find or found any kind of confrontation to be a little difficult, especially if the stakes were ... not high ... but if it mattered to me. There's a difference between being like when you're talking about an issue, when you're just riffing with someone or a friend like, and you're just having a discussion to discuss. But when something actually applies to you or affects you, it can be difficult to sort of stand up for yourself sometimes. And so that's something I've certainly gotten better at. And, you know, and gotten better from, you know, at first maybe overcompensating right? And then like having to sort of swing the pendulum back and just go for healthy down the middle communication versus either extreme. But so I would say that at the beginning of War On Women playing shows, you know, one I couldn't prepare for what our audiences might look like. I had no idea if we would be a band, that kind of only preach to the converted, or we would find ourselves in front of audiences that maybe weren't used to seeing bands like us or hearing about these issues or just weren't used to seeing women that were angry about something. Which is ... most people are not used to seeing women that are angry about something. So you know, I couldn't really prepare and I wasn't used to having to put anyone in check from a stage. Every other band I'd been in mostly had polite audiences or, you know, just wasn't  political music. And so there just wasn't as much confrontation. So I think at first you just are like ... me, I'm someone that freezes when some sort of crisis occurs, I just kind of freeze up. So like, I just wouldn't do anything. But something happened kind of early on in the band, where  my brain shifted a little bit and I started thinking that if a band called War On Women can't call out someone in the moment for harassing us or harassing an audience member or being shitty or punching people under the guise of I'm just dancing. If we can't do it, well, who can. I started to accept the responsibility of being in a feminist political band, that is a hardcore punk band. This aint folk music. No offense folk. We've got to be ready to back up the righteous anger that we're yelling about, that we're expressing musicall and lyrically. We kind of have to be ready to back that up. If something goes down... I wouldn't say that I'm ... I'm not a pacifist because I think I just haven't researched enough about it to know if I am or not. But I'm not like super aggro of a person either. I think I would engage in self defense if necessary, if I can get over this damn freezing response. But yeah, at some point, you just have to say "Hey, person in the audience. You're acting like a jerk! Stop!" and realize that because you have a microphone people will be forced to listen to you, and that you have the best eyes on this audience. All these people that have gathered, whether they've gathered for you or not, they're all here. And I have the best view of everyone. And I have the loudest voice because of this P.A. that's backing me up. And so I have to use it for good. It's just this acknowledgement of any kind of privilege, right? Like we all have different different privileges in different situations. And the point is not to ignore them or feel bad about them. The point is to just always use them for good and realize that you are in this community. Voluntarily or not we're all here in this club right now. So this is what has to happen to keep everybody safe. That's kind of how I I think of it

Greg Dunlap  18:58  
Yeah, I think the key thing you said there, and I've had this in I've heard this in past interviews, is that conscious acknowledgement that when when people come together around something that you have created, whether this is a venue that you have opened, or whether you are a band that has brought people into a room, or whether you are hosting a group of people playing board games at your house or whatever, is that there is a responsibility there to the people that you've brought together. Because they're coming together around something that you built.

Shawna Potter  19:34  
Yes, absolutely.

Greg Dunlap  19:38  
And I think that's the part that I that I feel like is missing a lot in the music world, especially on the band side, is that a lot of I don't think a lot of bands think of it as their responsibility to police a space. 

Shawna Potter  19:57  
Right, well, like everyone's putting it off on the next person right? Like the band thinks its the club ... The club is like, well, why are your fans jerks? You know? 

Greg Dunlap  20:07  
Oh, the bouncer didn't do their job.

Shawna Potter  20:12  
No, I completely agree and believe that everyone has a role in community safety. Everyone can do something. Everyone has a specific role and that role changes depending on when and where you are. In my book, Making Spaces Safer, I try to walk through that and just really lay it out there. So the majority of the book I'd say is geared towards people that maybe are in charge for putting all these people together in the same room. So maybe someone at a venue or a bar or a club, you know, someone that you already would assume, they're in a role of authority. Right? So just kind of giving them one, the tools to deal with identity-based harassment when it comes up, and how do you prevent it? How do you deal with it in the moment. Then also just trying to hammer it in like, it is your job. You you can do this. You can affect change for good and it won't affect your bank account. And you know, you should be doing this. But also saying now, what about the people on stage? Right? What about the people in the audience? What about the people that help promote, that book the show that aren't even there. 

Greg Dunlap  21:26  
The people who work at the bar. 

Shawna Potter  21:27  
Yeah, like everyone. Everyone has something to do with community safety. And so yeah, hopefully in the book, I made it as clear as possible. How your role might change how you approach something, but it doesn't change the fact that you you can still make that good change.

Greg Dunlap  21:50  
Yeah, so that kind of leads into the thing I was going to ask you about next anyways, which is you know, a couple of years ago War On Women played on the Vans Warped Tour. And you started doing workshops at the various dates about creating safer spaces. Where did you kind of get the idea? How did that come about?

Shawna Potter  22:09  
Well, I had already been doing safer space trainings for about five years before that, like, that's what I did in my community. And so it made perfect sense when they said, "Hey, just so you know, we have this, like, teaching opportunity that any band can do." It was like, what are we gonna do? We're gonna do another drum clinic? We also had to fill in members to do that tour. It's a grueling two month tour. We were having some lineup changes, so we had like, two subs. And so it's like, everyone's extra time was sleeping because it's hard. It's a grueling two months, to you know, probably going over songs to make sure everyone knows what they're doing. And then you know, having a drink or smoke with friends and bonding. That's like summer camp for punks. So there's not a lot of extra time and as someone that, you know, I'm the singer of the band. I, for all intents and purposes, I was the tour manager for that tour and general manager for the band. So I certainly had a lot to do, but I didn't necessarily have to load a bunch of gear or, you know, do the physical demanding labor every day. So I thought, well, the least I can do is offer up these skills of creating safer spaces to people in the audience who could literally turn around and use those skills the second they leave my workshop, Right there. So I wish I could say I did a workshop every single day. I definitely did not. It was hard to compete with people that are actually famous. That literally have like, 50 kids in front of them. And it's, I would walk by ... dude. And it would just sound like they were shooting the shit and just talking about whatever came to their mind in that moment. And, and some of these kids were just, you know, and source old, listening to them. And I was like, yeah, no wonder my numbers are low. No one cares about what I'm talking about. Because I'm talking about ... One I'm not famous and two I'm talking about stuff that sounds like homework to people sometimes. But the thing is, it's so important. It's so important. Yeah, what you can do in the moment when harassment happens, like, there's a lot of planning that people can do. So in my book ... I'll just give some people some tips. Even though it might seem a little weird right now, if we're all socially distancing. Still remember this until the next time you're in a public space. You know, signage is really important. Make making your intentions obvious is what I call it. Just letting people know what you stand for. What you're about. What the rules are. What happens if you're harassed? How do you tell who's in charge? Everyone that works there or is volunteering has a button or a shirt or just something so you know where to go, just making everything obvious if something does happen, right? And then by preparing people for the idea that harassment won't be tolerated, you actually will get a little bit less harassment, because people know that venue or that space takes it seriously and that they're not going to let it slide. And then the next thing is how do you respond in the moment? That's more than I can give you in like a 20 second soundbite. But it's all about active listening, and crisis response, and giving people options, but not too many, so you don't overwhelm them. Doing the things that are actually in your power to help the situation, while also acknowledging that you're not a cop. You're not a judge. You're not there to figure out who's guilty or innocent. You're not there to push anyone away. You're also not a counselor, you don't need to be talking to someone for an hour about their trauma and their life, you know? So finding that sweet spot of like, what exactly is your role and responsibility and doing everything in your power so that people do feel safe and you take care of the situation. Nothing more, nothing less. And I don't know how to finish what I'm saying. To wrap it up with Warped Tour. But basically, I wish that more people took the training when I was on Warped Tour. I think it would be really beneficial. But I would say that, you know, we also had a couple volunteers running an organization for us called Safer Scenes on that tour, and we put it next to our merch table for most of the days because we wanted people to maybe come to our merch table, they saw us play, they like us, and then here's this thing right here. This other booth telling them general bystander intervention skills. The five Ds of bystander intervention and and what can I do right now? And here's a rape crisis hotline number. And how do I help refugees. Just the skills that you could, again, use immediately if something happened on Warped Tour.

Greg Dunlap  27:25  
Was it mostly like kids and young people coming to the workshops while you were there? Because I mean, even if it's a small number, I feel like I wish I had that training when I was a kid. And a lot of times. I mean, there's a lot more cultural awareness of these kinds of issues now today than there was 30 years ago when I started going to punk rock shows, but it seems like especially for young people, that's such incredibly valuable information for them to have at hand.

Shawna Potter  27:53  
You know, I believe everyone should have been taught active listening skills and good communication skills and setting boundaries and consent and you know, that's just good human stuff that we need to know that would help. Just like mental health should be like a part of healthcare and be free and normal. I wish that was the norm. And I know it's not and the interesting thing about Warped Tour is that it hits so many towns that are, you know, in between big cities. Places where bands don't necessarily come on tour, but the Warped Tour goes there. And so it has this potential for being a really great place to expose younger people to great ideas. And whether that was always done, who's to say. But I found that in general that tour skewed a little older than maybe previous Warped Tours, because of some of the bands that were on the lineup. Right? There were some amazing hardcore and punk bands and, you know, people closer to my age than not. So I think most of the people I was talking to were in their 20s, maybe even 30s. But I think that something that's really beneficial for people younger than that is just the idea that, you know, especially at this booth that was next to us, the idea that, hey, if you're harassed, if someone makes you uncomfortable here, that's not okay. And you have the right to be upset about it. And it's not normal and it's not acceptable. You can tell us and we understand, we believe you. That's actually really huge. To hear at a younger age, that whatever you're going through, someone someone gets it. Someone's been there. It's not just something you have to put up with, it's not the price you pay for being in a public space. So I think that is almost a better first step for much younger people that are dealing with any kind of identity based harassment, that they can find an outlet to talk about it, and not just bottle it up or internalize it and think that they deserve it or, or anything damaging like that.

Greg Dunlap  30:30  
Yeah, in a way I'm thinking like, I'm kind of riffing here this might not go anywhere. But I think back to when I was you know ... you talked about this place you went to that was all ages where weirdos and freaks collected even though they had to listen about God And when I look back on growing up and what an influence that all-ages spaces had on me, it seems like that's become a much harder and harder thing to find. In the world,  especially any place where kids gather, seems to be, both by parents and by communities kind of looked down upon as potentially trouble. And it seems like we're losing the opportunity to reach those kids when they're impressionable even more than we had the small amount that was available when we were growing up, you know?

Shawna Potter  31:28  
Yeah, I don't know. You know, sometimes I wonder, like, what was my mom thinking? She let me do that. But then again, I wasn't just going to see the show. I was sometimes the show. So I think it gave her a different outlook. It was like an extension of me doing plays and musicals in school. Its performing and so she can wrap her head around it. She loves music and always has and so the fact that I was in a band, like a rock band, she was like, Oh, that's pretty cool. My daughter's cool, you know. Sfter, you know, Christian pizza Rocketown, when I got the car and I wanted to play, you know, in the city, downtown cooler bands and maybe bands that whoa came from out of town. We played at Lucy's record shop, which was famous in Nashville. A place to play, even though you know, terrible pa and very small and it's just like the punk place to play. So once I could go there, I was there every Friday and Saturday night without fail to watch whatever band what was there. And I made friends there, and so therefore, that's where all my friends were after a while. I was friendly with people I went to high school with, I had a couple of good friends, but most of my friends I didn't go to school with. They were people in other bands. People I'd played with. People that saw me play. People that you know, were touring came from out of town. It was just such a definitely very unique and magical time in my in my life. Yeah, I also don't know where I'm going with that. But yeah, it brings me to the idea like, I can't believe my mom let me hang out downtown Nashville at a punk club. I'm so grateful for that. Um, maybe she just needed alone time. I don't know. Good for her. But I feel like when we see kids gather, like yeah, we have this idea. There's nothing but trouble and like these kids, some of us had Mohawks you know, leather jackets. Of course we looked like trouble. But I think as long as we did it at this punk club, which was, you know, a sober club. There's no alcohol, there's no bar. Then there was a sense of safety there, I guess.

Greg Dunlap  34:15  
Yeah. I mean, in Chicago, we had this place called Medusas, which was also a juice bar, where punk bands played and they and a big industrial scene grew up around that. But it also turned into a big center for the gay community in Chicago, especially gay young people, because that was, again, a place where they could felt like they could just come out and be themselves and not be judged. Really the only place that they could do that underage before they could go to bars and things. I feel like there's a story in every town of a place like that, that was so formative for people. And I just feel like the loss of those spaces ... it's such a shame to me, that that those spaces have largely gone away.

Shawna Potter  35:01  
It is wild how my basically my brain, of course, is going to COVID because i can't not at some point when we're talking about gathering in these spaces. There is a 16 year old in my life that started going to school virtually a couple days ago or a week ago. And the idea, like I honestly can't even imagine when I was 16 being trapped where I lived, in my mom's apartment even if the internet was as much of a thing back then, as it is now. Like to be stuck there. I would have lost my mind. And I can't even put myself in her shoes. I just can't imagine what it's like. Especially considering the freedom that my mom gave me, an independence that my mom gave me to go to a place, to freely express myself to find out who I am and have different experiences and different friendships and learn about the world and then come home safe. I just I feel for her so much. And I just don't know how you bounce back from that. And then all that makes me think is how there's a version of that story for every single person right now. There's a version of how COVID is affecting someone in this weird, maybe small way, maybe huge way. Maybe many, many ways. You know, it's hard to think of all the ways that this will affect people and has changed their lives. It's just so big and so I'm happy to talk with you now about public spaces and gathering and I bet it's making me miss it a little bit in the process. But I think something else I've been thinking about is when it's actually safe enough for all of us to gather and be a little you know, our guards are down a little bit more and we can just be ourselves maybe hug someone, you know that we are going to need safer space skills maybe even more because ... I don't know about you, but I have completely lost all sense of general politeness in society. Like, I have forgotten Oh, yes, I'm supposed to say please or thank you to someone. Like it's gone out the window. When I do see people and I interact I'm quick to be a little too familiar and sarcastic and it even happened like once and I was like, Shawna reel it in. This is too much, you know. But it's like any kind of pent up socialization is just like blach onto people when I'm actually around them because it's so infrequent, right? And so that's like kind of Oh, that's kind of funny and cute and innocent, you know, but imagine multiply that times all these people,

Greg Dunlap  38:24  
Writ large, yeah,

Shawna Potter  38:27  
People are losing all sense of other people's boundaries and will again just kind of have these pent up feelings that need to get out. And you know, I'd say my tolerance for alcohol is probably higher than it was before COVID at this point, but maybe other people's tolerance for alcohol is lower, and they go out and they have some drinks and they just lose sense of boundaries and consent and what's okay in public spaces and how you treat other people. I could easily see that happening. So I think that now is the time. Unfortunately, it's always the time, but now is the time to make sure we know what to do. When we see harassment happen, how do we intervene? How do we check in on the person? How do we confront someone? You know, how do we use the five Ds basically? And then how do we, if we are running a space or have any responsibility at all for a gathering, how do we try to prevent it from occurring in the first place? How do we respond when it does happen? I just think it's vital that people start start this conversation now if they haven't already, because by the time people are gathered, it's gonna be really hard to catch up and learn all this stuff when you really should be concentrating on making as much fucking money as possible.

Greg Dunlap  39:50  
I do think that the ideas and the principles that you that you're talking about don't just apply to physical spaces, because there's a lot of digital gathering going on, be it in Facebook groups or in private chat groups or whatever. Groups of people coming together on Zoom or whatever. And a lot of those principles, I would say, apply just as much, if not more to those spaces than in person, because when you're online or you're involved in a digital community, you feel that kind of sense of removal of personhood from the other person. So, I would say that those that those principles apply just as well, now, if not more than they did in physical space.

Shawna Potter  40:41  
And you know, when you're in digital spaces, I think we want to create a sense of community if we can. We want to try to have that same human connection, virtually, even though we might not get there as we would if we were actually in a physical space together, but to try to get as close to that as possible, just to appease our ancient brains and give us that comfort socialization that we we really do rely on whether we know it or not. So for trying to create that sense of community, like maybe we're doing little exercises at the beginning of a meeting to get everybody talking and bonding with the people on the screen, but also we need to let people know that we do care about them, and we care about their safety. And we show that by having policies in place by by being prepared for someone to, you know, crash a meeting or whatever. By being prepared and dealing with things as they come up and just acknowledging that it's going to happen and so you've thought about it, and if you've thought about it means you've thought about the people you've invited to this gathering.

Greg Dunlap  42:07  
A lot of people I think are building or creating communities right now or gathering people together in different ways, and especially as there's more discussions around issues of social justice and harassment and having spaces be safe ... You know, we talked earlier about responsibility, and I think a lot of people are kind of scared of that responsibility, or they don't know what to do with it, or how to start with it. So what is some advice you would give to people who feel like they don't they don't know how to take on that responsibility? What some good first steps are for them?

Shawna Potter  42:43  
First, I would say you're not alone. You know, the reason I wrote my book is because people need it. Right. And so I think in general, people like to do what's easiest, you know, it takes a decision to take a path that might be a little bit harder. And so if the easiest thing to do is just ignore harassment, hope it goes away, think well maybe the troublemakers just won't come back, you know, that kind of thinking can only get you really far. But especially with the digital age of people taking their complaints and concerns online, putting people on blast, it's not something that especially business owners can really let slide anymore. We can't just ignore harassment until it goes away. Because it doesn't work that way anymore. And so if all you care about is, you know, the bottom line, then that's my argument for that. Hopefully, anyone listening cares about people too. And so that's great, and I hope you do, and it means that, you know, harassment and hate crimes have actually been on the rise since 2016. And that's not stopping anytime soon. And so we just have to acknowledge that the people coming into our space are dealing with a lot of shit before they walk in. And if you want them to spend money and have a good time, and hang out and come back and tell their friends, they had a good time, we don't want to put the same shit on them that they get from the rest of the world. We want to take some of it away. We want to lessen their burden. We want to give them actual leisure time. So like I was saying before, one of the first things to do is just signage, make your intentions obvious, make just make it clear you have policies in place. What are you going to do if someone says they're harassed? What kind of behavior is not okay? Like, just spell it out. Make it make it idiot proof. And then I would say buy my book. Honestly. I would love to go to every single venue and do a training for your staff. Don't get me wrong. But my book is cheaper and it's safer right now because of COVID. So what I tried to do with this book is it's not theoretical, right? Enough people have done the research about harassment and trauma and the brain and the effects of enduring harassment over a lifetime. That's all out there. There's all kinds of studies. That's not what people needed. Like, you're welcome to read that stuff, if you're interested in kind of the why, but I'm just trying to give people the okay what what do I do? What do I do right now? What do I do tomorrow? What do I do if they say this? Okay, what if they say this, though, you know, like, I just wanted to almost just make a bunch of bullet points of, Okay, here's what you do. Here's what you say, there you go, you'll be fine. So it's a perfect place to start when you just want to get something accomplished. And it will certainly, you know, if you're interested it can lead to other questions and other schools of thought and research and if not, it's enough. It's enough to make your space safe for everybody that walks in.

Greg Dunlap  46:09  
And I would point out that in addition to the full size book, there is the the more easily consumable pamphlet version as well, right?

Shawna Potter  46:17  
Yeah, there's a little pocket guide version. That is definitely bare bones and just here's the basics kind of thing. But the book has more stories, like personal stories, it has more information about, like, there's actual research and numbers for any skeptics that need to hear that. It also has information about what to do if you're the person being harassed. There's a chapter on restorative justice. There's a chapter on healthy flirting, and how to recognize it or engage in that instead of harassment. And so I say get the full book. Yeah. But you know, what do I know?

Greg Dunlap  47:03  
Yeah the stories in particular, I think, are really important because they really bring home the seriousness of it from the people who have experienced it.

Shawna Potter  47:15  
Yeah. And I always like to ... "always" ... as if I've written another book, I don't know. But I've always found that there is a balance to be had, between personal stories, anecdotes, and research and hard numbers and then "Okay, now talk to me plainly. And what am I supposed to do right now?" So I tried to find that. If it was just anecdotal stories, well, that doesn't tell a bar owner or a coffee shop manager what they're supposed to do, or what the sign should say that they put up, right? But if you only give people the point by point, here's what you say, they're gonna sound like a robot and they're not going to know why. They're doing what they're doing. So it's all in there and I tried to strike a nice balance so that everyone could find what they needed to hear.

Greg Dunlap  48:11  
Cool. Well, we've been going for a while here and before we go I wanted to ask how can people find you or get in touch with you? Do you have anything you're working on right now? I know War On Woman has a new album that's coming out soon.

Shawna Potter  48:26  
Yeah, that's the big thing. War On Women's new album is called Wonderful Hell and it's out October 30 on Bridge 9 Records so everybody please please please go to bninestore.com and sign up to getpre order information or order information. If you're looking to help feminist art or DIY bands or struggling artists, underemployed people. That's a great way to do it right now is buy our record. Or you can buy my book just to prepare for when people gather in public spaces again, and people can book me for virtual trainings. I do bystander intervention and safer space tactics and even one on one kind of consultation, whatever issue you're having, we can try to find like the best feminist solutions for it. And people can find me just at shawnapotter.com and get in touch with me there and learn about everything else I do.

Greg Dunlap  49:38  
Cool. Well, thanks for coming on. I've been I've been a big fan for a long time, and I really appreciated what the band has brought to the music scene these days because, you know, when I when I got into punk rock, I loved the angry just like ... putting the truth right out there in your face aspect. I remember seeing the video for "Say It" for the first time and really being like, this is what I've always appreciated about punk rock, right? This this just like taking it and putting it in your face and saying you cannot look away. This is the reality that you have to accept and deal with in your life. So I appreciate you coming on today and thanks a lot for sharing with our audience. 

Shawna Potter  50:22  
Thank you so much for having me, Greg.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai