This piece was written by Rachel Halder for Unbound: An Interactive Journal of Christian Social Justice, in honor of the United Nation’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. It was published on November 28, 2012 and cross-posted on Our Stories Untold.

Walk­ing down a noisy Oak­land, CA, street on my way to do some writ­ing at a cof­fee shop, I heard a woman weep­ing as she stum­bled on the other side of the side­walk. I thought it was a strange scene, as did every­one within a 30 feet radius who could also hear her per­pet­ual sobs. Yet, no one said any­thing. Mul­ti­ple peo­ple passed and stared; oth­ers sped their gait and avoided eye con­tact. Sud­denly I real­ized she was walk­ing behind me. Her cries were ring­ing in my ears and her dis­tress sent warn­ing sig­nals to the part of my brain that’s always alert and scream­ing, “Some­thing bad is hap­pen­ing to a woman!”

The Mirabal Sisters

And sadly, that too often is the truth. Since the year 2000, the United Nations has com­mem­o­rated the Inter­na­tional Day for the Elim­i­na­tion of Vio­lence against Women on the 25^th of Novem­ber to raise pub­lic aware­ness of this world-wide issue and to kick off 16 Days of Activism against Gen­der Vio­lence. The date was cho­sen in honor of the Mira­bal sis­ters—Patria Mer­cedes Mira­bal, María Argentina Min­erva Mira­bal and Anto­nia María Teresa Mirabal—who were assas­si­nated on Novem­ber 25, 1960, in the Domini­can Repub­lic on the orders of then-dictator Rafael Trujillo.

This year the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon mes­sage  for the day opened with:

Mil­lions of women and girls around the world are assaulted, beaten, raped, muti­lated or even mur­dered in what con­sti­tutes appalling vio­la­tions of their human rights. […] We must fun­da­men­tally chal­lenge the cul­ture of dis­crim­i­na­tion that allows vio­lence to con­tinue. On this Inter­na­tional Day, I call on all gov­ern­ments to make good on their pledges to end all forms of vio­lence against women and girls in all parts of the world, and I urge all peo­ple to sup­port this impor­tant goal.

Not many would argue against the goals of the Inter­na­tional Day for the Elim­i­na­tion of Vio­lence against Women, and likely most peo­ple are even aware of vio­lence against women. Yet most of the pop­u­la­tion do not speak of the topic and view it as removed from them. Ban Ki-Moon though pur­pose­fully states that this is a day for “women and girls in all parts of the world.” It’s easy to think of rape in war-torn coun­tries far away, or to even view domes­tic vio­lence in the United States as a race or class issue in areas with greater poverty and less aware­ness. The truth though is that this topic affects both you and me, and peo­ple we know and love: peo­ple of all eco­nomic sta­tuses, races, nations, and cul­tures. This includes priv­i­leged peo­ple; poor peo­ple and peo­ple mak­ing an annual salary of $200,000; peo­ple unem­ployed; peo­ple who go to church; peo­ple in pow­er­ful posi­tions. It’s nicer to think of it as an issue removed from our own sit­u­a­tion though, isn’t it?

While trav­el­ing around the United States for a few months, I’ve become aware that when peo­ple see a woman in dis­tress (whether that’s bruises on her arm, tears stream­ing down her cheeks, puffy lip, etc.) observers rarely stop and ask what’s wrong or if she needs help. Jesus’ Good Samar­i­tan para­ble comes imme­di­ately to mind and makes me won­der, What if the injured “man” on the road to Jeri­cho had been a woman? What if the Samar­i­tan had also been a woman?

What makes us so reluc­tant to become involved? Do we want to avoid drama? Do we not want to appear to be nosy? Or are we just ignor­ing the truth that is in front of us every day?

That over­cast after­noon in Oak­land, even though my alarm bells went off, I still debated whether I should turn around and ask what was wrong. Finally, I did.

Ma’am, can I help with some­thing? Do you want me to call some­one? Is there any­thing I can do?

She col­lapsed on a nearby cement house step close to the road, con­tin­u­ing to wail. I asked again, Should I call someone?

No, she gasped through weeps. She was clutch­ing her stom­ach, nearly claw­ing at it. My mind raced through the mul­ti­tude of bad things that might have hap­pened to her.

Can I take you to a hos­pi­tal? Are you hurt? Do you need a taxi?

No, I’m fine, she man­aged to choke out. You can go away. I stood there for a while, until she pleaded with me to let her be.

Feel­ing extremely uncom­fort­able in my lack of abil­ity to do some­thing, I finally turned my back on her. A block down the street, I glanced over my shoul­der and saw her sit­ting on the steps. Mul­ti­ple peo­ple had passed her, includ­ing a secu­rity guard. But no one else stopped.

And that’s the end of what I know of her story. I think about this woman daily. I still won­der what was wrong. Did I do enough? Should I have called the police? Should I have got­ten her to some sort of shel­ter? Was this an abuse sit­u­a­tion? Was she hurt, vio­lated, hit? What else could I have done?

No one teaches us what to do in these sit­u­a­tions. No one ever gives a sem­i­nar on, “What to do if you walk down the street and run into a woman in vis­i­ble and obvi­ous pain.” And unfor­tu­nately, espe­cially in cities, such women are ignored by the major­ity of the pop­u­la­tion. They make us feel uncom­fort­able, or even pro­voke anger in us—why does she just sit on the street and cry like that?

The goal of the Inter­na­tional Day for the Elim­i­na­tion of Vio­lence against Women, as well as my own web­site Our Sto­ries Untold, is to bring aware­ness, yet I don’t think aware­ness will do much good if we choose to avoid women who expe­ri­ence vio­lence. We don’t just need a day, though it is impor­tant. We need train­ings and edu­ca­tion, speeches, sem­i­nars, and tools for how to con­front these sit­u­a­tions.  We also need com­pas­sion, endurance, and a desire to help those, even when help­ing makes us feel awk­ward and ner­vous, or when we feel we are invad­ing someone’s “pri­vate matter.”

The fact that the Oak­land woman’s tears were shed in pub­lic made this a pub­lic issue. And the pub­lic (includ­ing me) chose not to inter­fere. Let us stand up together on this day and all days for­ward to make a con­scious effort to stop vio­lence against women and girls, both on our over­cast streets and across the globe.