A sign from the 2011 “Our Streets, Too!” march in D.C. (Photo by Ted Eytan)

Schyla Pondexter-Moore’s 13 and 16-year-old daughters were wary of heading to a table that hands out free meals in Ward 8 on a monthly basis, because it’s situated at the corner of a parking lot where they’ve experienced street harassment from groups of men who hang out there.

“My daughters were like, ‘Mom, I don’t like going over there, those guys are creeps.’ But we need the food,” recalls Pondexter-Moore. ‘”I said, ‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll handle it.'”

After a harrowing interaction that left her older daughter shaken, the 40-year-old mother of four and former community organizer is planning a speakout in that parking lot to address street harassment.

Every 23rd of the month since Thanksgiving, a group of Ward 8 residents has set up a table at 3900 South Capitol Street SW to pass out free hot meals. “We’ve gotten food there several times, and had started to look forward to the 23rd,” Pondexter-Moore says.

On July 23rd, her daughters stopped at the 7-Eleven to get slurpees while Pondexter-Moore and her 15-year-old son went to the table. Sure enough, men in the parking lot began catcalling the young teen girls and following them as they walked from the convenience store over to the corner.

That’s when Pondexter-Moore started yelling at the men harassing her daughter, telling them to leave her alone, according to Pondexter-Moore and Stan Jackson, one of the Ward 8 residents who organizes the food table and is a procurement officer for the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development.

Pondexter-Moore says most of the men who had gathered were laughing at her when she admonished them. “One older guy said ‘Well, we ain’t gay out here.’ I said, ‘What? You sound stupid—it has nothing to do with that.'”

A woman who was getting food at the table then approached the 16-year-old and tried to unbutton the bottom of her shirt and pull it down. Pondexter-Moore’s daughter slapped the stranger’s hand away and told her not to touch her.

“Then it turned into a whole bunch of chaotic words,” says Jackson, who was sitting behind the table.

Pondexter-Moore says that men in the parking lot, some of whom were sitting at the table, told her daughter she got what she deserved because of the way she dressed. Her daughter became so frustrated and overwhelmed, she says, that she threw her slurpee. It hit the table filled with food, and splashed the men sitting behind it.

“The guys were offended,” says Anthony Bigesby, one of the organizers of the table who was not present for the incident. He often promotes his mentoring program, Quest 2 Change DC, from the table, though the free meals are organized separately by several residents.

Pondexter-Moore says that after the slurpee was thrown, the men walked from behind the table, surrounding her daughter and threatening her. “The community men, instead of coming to the aid of a 16 year old, repeatedly threatened her,” she says. “Those men behind the table never said, ‘Leave these ladies alone.'”

Pondexter-Moore contacted Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White right after the experience. “He has promoted these guys on his page, saying these are good men in the community doing good work,” she says.

In a phone interview, White downplayed his connection to the food giveaway at the center of the controversy. “I support a lot of organizations trying to do good work in the community, and this is one of many,” he says.

But while White said that “anything done to a young lady in my community that is disrespectful is not tolerable in my eyes,” he also defended the men who organized the table. “The issue didn’t originate with those guys. It originated in other guys.” White passed along the phone number of Bigesby, of Quest 2 Change DC, telling DCist that “there are several different versions of the story.”

White scheduled a meeting between Pondexter-Moore, Jackson, and the other men who organize the table for July 31 at William Lockridge Library. He was ultimately unable to attend the meeting, saying he had to tend to a homicide in the community, but those who did show up did not reach a consensus about the events on the 23rd.

Pondexter-Moore and her daughter had three demands for the men: a formal written apology, an agreement to put a sign on the table that says “women will not be harassed here,” and that the men take a course on rape culture, which she defines as “a society that blames women for sexual assault and harassment, rather than telling men not to rape.”

The men did not agree to those demands, which Jackson says “are strictly to try to bring us into submission.” He says that the men did apologize “for the events occurring during our watch. We’ve apologized for the fact that something like that happened and we weren’t able to take more control over it.”

But even though he pledged the men would “be more proactive” when giving away food, he doesn’t like the idea of a sign on the table calling people to respect women. “I would rather the sign say ‘We respect all people’ not just respect women,” he says. “It’s about bringing the community together. It’s not about putting women at the top of the hierarchy.”

He thinks that the ultimate blame for the catcalling lies with the way Pondexter-Moore’s daughter was dressed. “If certain parts of a child’s body are exposed, it’s going to draw that type of attention,” Jackson says. “Are you going to accuse the lookers who don’t know how old that child is? Or are you going to protect your child?”

Pondexter-Moore calls that whole line of argumentation ridiculous. “The only message my clothes are sending is, ‘This is what I want to put on,'” she says. “If one man wears a football jersey and another man tackles the shit out of him, can he say, ‘Well, your clothes say you’re a football player?'”

A national survey reported that 65 percent of women and 25 percent of men say they’ve experienced at least one type of street harassment, with higher numbers for people from already marginalized backgrounds, like people of color and members of the LGBT community.

After that meeting, Pondexter-Moore recounted much of the incident in a Facebook post last week that was shared more than 600 times.

The outrage, much of it directed at Bigesby’s organization, led to an apology from Quest 2 Change DC on August 2 “for any pain and frustration this has caused members of our community. We also take responsibility for the load it has added to our committed leaders of Ward 8 and the District.”

The apology didn’t satisfy Pondexter-Moore, who characterized it as “Sorry y’all feel this way.” She adds that her older daughter has been distraught since the incident, and is reluctant to leave the house.

White says he is planning a community forum to further discuss what happened that day. “Both parties agree that something happened that was disrespectful,” he says. “Now we have to figure out how we can work together to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

The Ward 8 councilmember co-sponsored legislation earlier this year that would use education, grant funding, and training to prevent street harassment.

Pondexter-Moore doesn’t think the town hall is a good idea. “I think there will be a lot of victim blaming, a lot of telling women and girls how to dress,” she says. “If he talks about stopping rape culture, that would be a good town hall.”

She’s focusing her energy on a speakout planned for August 23, to take place in the same parking lot where the catcalling occurred at the same time as this month’s food giveaway.

“We’re going to have hot food, a DJ, a microphone, art,” she says. “It’s just a speakout of women and men sharing stories about rape culture and how women have a right to be comfortable in their own skin. The message I want them to get is how it feels to be a woman and have to walk down the street every day and have men say, “Hey how you doing, hey how you doing?’ People don’t really get that that is a problem, every day, all the time. It’s not a compliment.”

Jackson said that they’re still deciding whether they’ll give away food on August 23, because they have back-to-school events planned, though he adds that the controversy “makes it in the pending stage a lot longer.”

Bigesby responded to a journalist’s Instagram post promoting the speakout by writing “You are gay lol” and calling the slurpee-throwing a physical assault. ((Note: Since this story was published, the comment was deleted. It is preserved in this screenshot.)

The pushback has strengthened Pondexter-Moore’s resolve. “I feel like this is a catalyst moment,” she says. “We can’t change the entire society but we can change our neighborhood.”

Pondexter-Moore wants to see White’s attitude change, too.

“His thing is about getting men and boys off the street—that’s a good thing. But it’s always men and boys, and our girls as an afterthought,” she says. “He keeps trying to take up for these guys saying there’s two sides of the story.” She says that rhetoric reminds her of what White said after he posted bail for an ANC commissioner charged with assaulting his girlfriend in a grocery store in Prince George’s County.

White declined to comment on that incident.

“Trayon, you say you mentor all these men,” says Pondexter-Moore. “But what kind of mentoring is going on?”

This story has been updated to reflect that some of the men who said the teen should dress differently to avoid catcalling were also sitting at the table, according to Pondexter-Moore.