Critical Mass
I rode Critical Mass today. It was my second time.
People do CM for lots of different reasons. For me, it's a cultural and political form of protest, a way to make a statement in truly a palpable way.
The standard way to "get heard" today about a political issue is to hold a demonstration and rally. The results are usually pitiful: people who show up to rallies aren't the ones who need to be persuaded; mass media coverage of these events can be very biased, thus harming the effort; the speeches bore the crowds; there's a lot of talk but very little action taken. The anti-war movement is the perfect example of lots of vocal dissent with few concrete results. The people who *have* become anti-war changed their minds because of things like government corruption and ineptitude, the use of torture, and the endlessness of it all... NOT because they saw a crowd of people carrying signs in the street and chanting slogans.
Critical Mass is not just about being heard. It's about doing. When bikes take to the streets, asserting their right to *be* traffic and to occupy road lanes, they are doing something. They don't simply make drivers and pedestrians "aware" of bikes, like an inert billboard advertising a message that one can take or leave. No... CM *forces* people's actual behaviors to change. Drivers must physically slow down or stop. They must pay attention to avoid an accident. The experience of being on the road is altered by CM.
It's also about working together. With no organized leader or authority, how does the ride stay together as an effective "mass"? The answer is, it doesn't always. Some people at the head of the pack ride too fast sometimes and the mass dissolves, along with its power to occupy the road. The routes taken are sometimes a little crazy. People have to voluntarily stand guard to halt cross traffic at intersections when the mass is riding through red lights. Not everything works perfectly all the time, but the fact that it does manage to work at all, a good deal of the time, speaks to the willingness of the bikers to work together, create, and problem-solve in a highly improvisational way. Amazing things are possible without hierarchies and structures.
These are powerful things.
Tonight, a woman in a car tapped a biker with her front bumper. Then she got out of the car and started screaming at him at the top of her lungs. There's always a few irate drivers at every CM, but she was totally over the top... clearly, she was having an extremely bad day. "PEOPLE NEED TO GET THINGS DONE," she yelled, shaking her fist at the biker. She was almost in tears. "MAY. YOU. FUCKING. DIE!" she shouted.
I felt really bad for her. I don't know what kinds of personal things she was dealing with that made her lose it on a Friday night. What's really tragic is that CM was just the straw that broke the camel's back... and what a HUGE back that must be. She probably puts up with so much in her life that she either doesn't or can't criticize. Obviously she was willing to deal with rush hour traffic, since she was driving in it. She probably had troubles with her job, her family, her friends... but those were facts of life she had to live with. Now, a bunch of bikers taking maybe a minute off her ride? That was too much. It pushed her over the edge. In her mind, I'm guessing, it was too absurd, too extraordinary, too frivolous for a crowd of bicyclists to enjoy a ride once a month. After all, people need to get things done.
That made me really sad for her.
People do CM for lots of different reasons. For me, it's a cultural and political form of protest, a way to make a statement in truly a palpable way.
The standard way to "get heard" today about a political issue is to hold a demonstration and rally. The results are usually pitiful: people who show up to rallies aren't the ones who need to be persuaded; mass media coverage of these events can be very biased, thus harming the effort; the speeches bore the crowds; there's a lot of talk but very little action taken. The anti-war movement is the perfect example of lots of vocal dissent with few concrete results. The people who *have* become anti-war changed their minds because of things like government corruption and ineptitude, the use of torture, and the endlessness of it all... NOT because they saw a crowd of people carrying signs in the street and chanting slogans.
Critical Mass is not just about being heard. It's about doing. When bikes take to the streets, asserting their right to *be* traffic and to occupy road lanes, they are doing something. They don't simply make drivers and pedestrians "aware" of bikes, like an inert billboard advertising a message that one can take or leave. No... CM *forces* people's actual behaviors to change. Drivers must physically slow down or stop. They must pay attention to avoid an accident. The experience of being on the road is altered by CM.
It's also about working together. With no organized leader or authority, how does the ride stay together as an effective "mass"? The answer is, it doesn't always. Some people at the head of the pack ride too fast sometimes and the mass dissolves, along with its power to occupy the road. The routes taken are sometimes a little crazy. People have to voluntarily stand guard to halt cross traffic at intersections when the mass is riding through red lights. Not everything works perfectly all the time, but the fact that it does manage to work at all, a good deal of the time, speaks to the willingness of the bikers to work together, create, and problem-solve in a highly improvisational way. Amazing things are possible without hierarchies and structures.
These are powerful things.
Tonight, a woman in a car tapped a biker with her front bumper. Then she got out of the car and started screaming at him at the top of her lungs. There's always a few irate drivers at every CM, but she was totally over the top... clearly, she was having an extremely bad day. "PEOPLE NEED TO GET THINGS DONE," she yelled, shaking her fist at the biker. She was almost in tears. "MAY. YOU. FUCKING. DIE!" she shouted.
I felt really bad for her. I don't know what kinds of personal things she was dealing with that made her lose it on a Friday night. What's really tragic is that CM was just the straw that broke the camel's back... and what a HUGE back that must be. She probably puts up with so much in her life that she either doesn't or can't criticize. Obviously she was willing to deal with rush hour traffic, since she was driving in it. She probably had troubles with her job, her family, her friends... but those were facts of life she had to live with. Now, a bunch of bikers taking maybe a minute off her ride? That was too much. It pushed her over the edge. In her mind, I'm guessing, it was too absurd, too extraordinary, too frivolous for a crowd of bicyclists to enjoy a ride once a month. After all, people need to get things done.
That made me really sad for her.
posted by Hacky Biker at 11:40 PM
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