Showing posts with label League of Bicycle Voters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label League of Bicycle Voters. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Two-Wheeled Politics II
Saturday, May 10, was Election Day for the Austin City Council. I voted for the three candidates endorsed by the League of Bicycle Voters. They all lost--even the incumbent, Jennifer Kim! I guess bicycle politics has a way to go here!
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Two-Wheeled Politics
I was only 9 years old when I was introduced to the idea of bicycling as liberation. My family moved to a new house about 4 miles from the house I had grown up in. Playmates were scarce in the new neighborhood, so I began riding my bike back to the old neighborhood to hang out on weekends and during the summer. Quickly, I understood the fact that my bike gave me the freedom to escape from my parents' supervision years before I was old enough to drive. By the time I was in my early teens, my friends and I were taking long "bike hikes" to local points of interest, delighting in the fact that we were able to escape the parental sphere of influence merely by pedaling the 13 miles to Valley Forge Park.
The summer before my sophomore year in high school, we moved to a refinery town in Texas. The terrain was absolutely flat, favoring bike travel, but, in August, at least, the Turkish bath-like climate deterred it. Nonetheless, when school opened in September I jumped on my bike to ride to school, only to discover that all of my classmates had obtained their driver's licenses the previous summer and would rather be dead than be seen riding a bicycle! Despite the fact that I was the one of only two people riding to school in a student body of almost 3000, I persisted in my two-wheeled commute the entire school year--my first experience with bicycling as rebellion! However, my non-conformity had limits; at the beginning of junior year I got my own driver's license and put the bike back in the garage.
In the years that followed, my biking was sporadic. Most notably, my student years in Austin began during the first OPEC oil boycott--I saved gas and avoided the on-campus parking problem by bike commuting. On leaving Austin for Houston, however, my biking fell to near zero. While Houston's topography favors pedal power, its traffic patterns are wholly auto-centric.
In the early part of this decade, my daughter, then a college student in New York, told me that some of her friends were engaging in mass bike rides in which they would take over the city streets, ignoring traffic signals and flowing through Manhattan like a force of nature. She seemed to view these rides as being, somehow, political, but I confess that I couldn't really understand the content of the politics.
Last year, a few months after moving to Austin, I bought a bicycle and began bike commuting. My motive for doing so was vaguely green, but, mostly, I was looking for a way to force myself to exercise. However, once I hit the streets on my bike, I soon realized that there is a war going on between drivers and bikers, a war that is simultaneously ideological, territorial, and cultural. In the decades since I had last biked, the motor vehicles, like the American empire, had grown larger and more hegemonic. At the same time, the downside of America's auto culture had become more obvious; global warming and a failed war for Iraqi oil were merely two sides of the coin first minted in Detroit. Given, this state of conflict, everyday encounters on the streets of Austin took on new significance--that guy in the Escalade who pulled out in front of me like I wasn't even there wasn't just a dangerous driver, he was trying to stop me from saving the planet!
Last October, I decided to ride with Critical Mass, a worldwide movement of anarcho-cyclists that stage monthly mass rides. (My daughter's friends in New York were part of CM). I loved it! After only a few months of bike commuting, I understood intuitively that the act of bikes taking over the streets was political, and so did the drivers whose commutes we disrupted. It was the most organic demonstration I had ever been a part of--the medium was the message!
This spring, I participated in a more conventional sort of bike politics when I attended a candidate forum sponsored by the Austin League of Bicycle Voters. More than 100 Austinites showed up to grill candidates for city council about how they planned to incorporate the bicycle as serious transportation into the city's plans for the 21st century. Some of the candidates seemed to actually get it, and I could see that the politicians were impressed by the turn-out.
So, I guess I'm a born-again bicyclist. Better that than other conversion experiences. At least, it doesn't require me to give up my vices or talk to imaginary beings.
The summer before my sophomore year in high school, we moved to a refinery town in Texas. The terrain was absolutely flat, favoring bike travel, but, in August, at least, the Turkish bath-like climate deterred it. Nonetheless, when school opened in September I jumped on my bike to ride to school, only to discover that all of my classmates had obtained their driver's licenses the previous summer and would rather be dead than be seen riding a bicycle! Despite the fact that I was the one of only two people riding to school in a student body of almost 3000, I persisted in my two-wheeled commute the entire school year--my first experience with bicycling as rebellion! However, my non-conformity had limits; at the beginning of junior year I got my own driver's license and put the bike back in the garage.
In the years that followed, my biking was sporadic. Most notably, my student years in Austin began during the first OPEC oil boycott--I saved gas and avoided the on-campus parking problem by bike commuting. On leaving Austin for Houston, however, my biking fell to near zero. While Houston's topography favors pedal power, its traffic patterns are wholly auto-centric.
In the early part of this decade, my daughter, then a college student in New York, told me that some of her friends were engaging in mass bike rides in which they would take over the city streets, ignoring traffic signals and flowing through Manhattan like a force of nature. She seemed to view these rides as being, somehow, political, but I confess that I couldn't really understand the content of the politics.
Last year, a few months after moving to Austin, I bought a bicycle and began bike commuting. My motive for doing so was vaguely green, but, mostly, I was looking for a way to force myself to exercise. However, once I hit the streets on my bike, I soon realized that there is a war going on between drivers and bikers, a war that is simultaneously ideological, territorial, and cultural. In the decades since I had last biked, the motor vehicles, like the American empire, had grown larger and more hegemonic. At the same time, the downside of America's auto culture had become more obvious; global warming and a failed war for Iraqi oil were merely two sides of the coin first minted in Detroit. Given, this state of conflict, everyday encounters on the streets of Austin took on new significance--that guy in the Escalade who pulled out in front of me like I wasn't even there wasn't just a dangerous driver, he was trying to stop me from saving the planet!
Last October, I decided to ride with Critical Mass, a worldwide movement of anarcho-cyclists that stage monthly mass rides. (My daughter's friends in New York were part of CM). I loved it! After only a few months of bike commuting, I understood intuitively that the act of bikes taking over the streets was political, and so did the drivers whose commutes we disrupted. It was the most organic demonstration I had ever been a part of--the medium was the message!
This spring, I participated in a more conventional sort of bike politics when I attended a candidate forum sponsored by the Austin League of Bicycle Voters. More than 100 Austinites showed up to grill candidates for city council about how they planned to incorporate the bicycle as serious transportation into the city's plans for the 21st century. Some of the candidates seemed to actually get it, and I could see that the politicians were impressed by the turn-out.
So, I guess I'm a born-again bicyclist. Better that than other conversion experiences. At least, it doesn't require me to give up my vices or talk to imaginary beings.
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