“When someone says ‘more safety,’ I always have to ask, ‘For whom in the room?’“
The sentence came early in a community listening session held in a shared neighbourhood space in Germany. We invited residents, youth workers, disabled people, parents, queer community members, shop staff, and people active in mutual-aid groups to speak about safety without forcing agreement. Names are changed, and details are merged at contributors’ request. Some speakers asked to be identified only by role because the subject touches police, immigration status, family conflict, and local relationships.
This record is not rights guidance for a police stop or a complaint. Equal Voices Initiative has practical guidance on what to know during a police encounter, including how people try to stay safe while asserting rights. Our question was different: what does safety mean to people who do not experience institutions as automatically protective?
The first definition: being able to predict what will happen next
A parent who had raised two children in different districts said safety begins before danger.
“For me, safety is predictability. If my son is late, I want to know he can ask someone for help without being treated as suspicious. If my daughter is followed, I want her to know which shop will let her stand inside without buying something. Safety is not only what happens after violence. It is whether the world gives you enough signals before then.”
Several people nodded at the word “signals.” A blind participant described the difference between a train platform with clear announcements and one where every change spreads through sighted people first. A queer youth worker described scanning a public square before sitting down with young people: who is present, where exits are, which group is already shouting, whether security staff look bored or hostile.
“People call that anxiety,” the youth worker said. “Sometimes it is knowledge.”
The room did not treat institutional distrust as a mood. It was a record of encounters: reports dismissed, stops repeated, inaccessible offices, letters written in language that people could not act on, school staff minimizing racist threats, public officials asking for patience while harm continued.
The police thread, and why it did not become the whole conversation
Policing entered the session quickly, then kept returning from different directions. A Black student spoke about being asked for ID near a station while his white friends were not. A shop worker said she had called police after a violent customer and felt relief when they arrived. A migrant mother said police presence near her son’s school made him quieter, not safer. A neighbour who had experienced domestic violence said the emergency number mattered to her, but so did the question of what happened after the door closed again.
“I need them sometimes,” she said. “I also need people to stop pretending that calling them is simple.”
The group did not resolve that tension, and we do not smooth it out here. For some people, police are part of the safety map. For others, police are a possible escalation of danger. For many, both can be true depending on time, place, race, gender, disability, language, residence status, and whether they are believed.
A participant who volunteers at night events put it this way:
“Safety cannot mean one door for everyone if some people get hurt at that door.”
That sentence changed the rhythm of the session. People began naming doors that worked unevenly: the school office, the hospital reception desk, the Bürgeramt waiting area, the housing company hotline, the club entrance, the station platform, the family court corridor. Institutional trust was not discussed as a yes-or-no attitude. It was described as something built or broken at each threshold.
Why communities define safety differently
One reason communities define safety differently is that danger reaches them differently. A wheelchair user talked about public space in terms of surfaces, ramps, lifts, lighting, and whether strangers grab the chair without consent.
“People think I am asking for comfort,” they said. “I am asking not to be trapped.”
A woman who works late shifts spoke about transport connections and the calculation of whether to wait at a stop or keep walking. A young man with a refugee history said he feels safer when someone explains an official process before he is inside it.
“Not because I want special treatment,” he said. “Because surprise is where people with power can make you look difficult.”
A grandmother described safety as the freedom to correct a neighbour’s child without the conflict becoming ethnic or generational. A trans participant described safety as being able to leave an event without having to explain why a comment made the room unusable. A community kitchen volunteer described safety as enough chairs, enough food, and enough familiar faces that nobody has to perform gratitude.
The definitions differed because each person was answering from a different history of exposure. Safety meant being seen, but not watched. Help, but not control. Public presence, but not surveillance. A quick response, but not a response that punishes the person who asked.
What already exists outside formal protection
We asked what alternatives or complements to institutional protection already exist. People resisted the word “alternative” when it sounded like communities should replace public responsibility with unpaid labour.
“We are not the cheaper emergency service,” said a youth worker. “Community care cannot become the excuse for the state to do less.”
Still, the room named practices that already make people safer. Shopkeepers who let teenagers wait inside after harassment. Neighbours who know which elder has not opened the curtains by noon. Event teams with quiet rooms and sober contact people. Women sharing the exact route home, not as a ritual of fear but as a way to notice absence. Disabled people exchanging lift outage information faster than transport authorities do. Parents creating phone trees after racist incidents at school. Queer groups checking whether a venue’s security policy is more than a sentence on a poster.
A participant called these “small infrastructures.” The phrase stayed with us, though the image is ordinary: keys, chairs, lights, names, habits, the person who answers.
“The safest place I know is not perfect,” said one speaker. “It is a room where people correct each other early.”
Correction mattered. Several participants said safety fails when harmful behaviour is only addressed after it becomes dramatic. A neighbour who had mediated building conflicts said early intervention is usually less heroic than people imagine: someone saying, “Do not speak to her like that,” or, “We agreed this meeting would have interpretation,” or, “He already said no.”
The danger of making safety sound peaceful
Conflict was not treated as the opposite of safety. Some speakers said rooms that demand calm at any cost are often unsafe for the people carrying the harm.
“If I have to be polite about racism for the meeting to continue, the meeting is safe for someone else,” said a school parent.
Another participant added:
“Institutions love the person who complains quietly and alone.”
The room laughed, but the laughter was tired. People knew the script: be reasonable, provide evidence, wait, do not exaggerate, use the correct channel, accept the answer, try again later. For people with long experience of not being believed, safety includes witnesses and memory. It includes someone else knowing what happened so the next conversation does not begin from zero.
This is where community media and practical rights work touch without becoming the same thing. We can hold testimony and context. Equal Voices Initiative can help with the concrete rights and choices during a police stop. Justice Access Centre or other specialist advice may be needed when an incident becomes a legal matter. The listening session showed why those guides are necessary and why they are still not enough to define safety for everyone.
What the room asked institutions to hear
Near the end, we asked people to finish the sentence: “I would feel safer if…”
“I would feel safer if officials admitted when a process harms people.”
“I would feel safer if accessibility was checked before the opening ceremony.”
“I would feel safer if calling for help did not mean losing control of the story.”
“I would feel safer if my child could be angry and still be treated as a child.”
“I would feel safer if the person at the desk understood that not trusting them may be reasonable.”
The answers were not anti-institutional as a slogan. They were anti-denial. People wanted response systems that understand why trust may be absent, why authority can frighten as well as protect, and why public safety cannot be measured only by the comfort of people least likely to be targeted.
At the end, the first speaker returned to the question of “for whom.”
“If a safety plan makes one group disappear from the square so another group feels calm, call it what it is. It may be order. It is not safety for everyone.”
That distinction is the work. Safety, in the room’s language, was not a single institution, a single uniform, or a single feeling. It was the ability to move through public and private life with enough dignity, access, witnesses, and trusted response that help does not arrive as another threat.