[*BCM*] tonight's ride

[Hiroyuki Yamada]

Hooray for meaningful contributions to the discussion.

I'm not sure where the other e-mail about the bike action on the common 
went, so I will respond here. I would be in favor of either teaming up 
with another bike advocacy group (does the BRA/Boston Bikes have any one 
on this list we can talk to? MassBike? I know we are kind of "having a 
tiff" with MassBike, but fundamentally we all want the same thing) or 
just doing our own thing. Either on a separate day, and either on the 
common or the steps of gov't center or wherever else, just making a big 
ol' scene. Maybe co-opt a CM day and utilize the energy of the 300+ 
cyclists -- announce it at the beginning so that those who want to just 
ride CM for the sake of riding bikes can do so, and anyone who supports 
our cause can come along with us to ___ (be it state house or the common 
or wherever). The only problem with co-opting a CM is that then we are 
at night, but I think it might be an interesting thing to try, and would 
almost definitely get a lot of numbers.

Also, as per the comment about "pontificating" versus "acting" -- 
sometimes it's not quite that simple. In the case of CM, just riding at 
the front doesn't guarantee that the ride will go where you want it to 
go -- as I'm sure you all know the ride can kind of make decisions on 
its own without any one person making that decision. That, and, even in 
the event of a sensible group of people at the front making these 
so-called "decisions" and taking "action," it only takes one or two 
other cyclists to go down a one-way street or onto an on-ramp or whatnot 
before 2 more follow, and now five and ten and suddenly half the ride is 
100 yards down the road and it is too late, too cumbersome, or just 
plain hard to shout to everyone to stop and turn around -- see the 
staircase example this last friday. And, as with all things CM, it is 
safer to act en masse, and splitting the ride into a few people who want 
to avoid a certain road and the remainder all plowing onward is counter 
productive to the safety-in-numbers CM enjoys.

--Yuki

jb fentner wrote:
> frankly i didn't know the cop had actually stopped the riders.. it 
> looked more like one of them fell or something. meh
>
> anyway, when else do you get to ride on storrow? i've done memorial a 
> few times but that's way less of a death zone even during rush hour. 
> frankly, i was so effing wasted by that point that i was under the 
> impression that we were going outbound on memorial until we pulled off 
> by BU.. ;D
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > From: dave at st.germa.in
> > To: list at bostoncriticalmass.org
> > Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2008 23:33:53 -0400
> > Subject: Re: [*BCM*] tonight's ride
> >
> > Riding on Storrow Drive at night was a bozo move. Frankly, I'm
> > surprised the cops didn't do more than stop a few folks. What kind of
> > solidarity would you have liked? Should the entire mass have stopped
> > in the middle of Storrow and yelled at the cop? We're not talking
> > about a human rights march here -- the idiots at the front of the mass
> > decided to risk endangering the rest of the riders, and if they get
> > tickets as a consequence, too bad.
> >
> > Dave
> >
> >
> > On Oct 31, 2008, at 22:59 , jennifer thomson wrote:
> >
> > > hey all,
> > >
> > > just wanted to say that tonight's ride was awesome. especially
> > > riding on storrow!
> > >
> > > however, it wasn't ok that the ride abandoned the people who got
> > > stopped by the cop on storrow. we need a lot more solidarity in
> > > situations like these.
> > >
> > > jennifer
> > > _______________________________________________
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