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<div> <font size="2"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">There is no point to a CM ride? This lad needs to think beyond his shoelaces some more. </font></font><br>
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<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica; font-size: 10pt; color: black;">-----Original Message-----<br>
From: Rebecca Albrecht <ralbrecht@speakeasy.net><br>
To: list@bostoncriticalmass.org<br>
Sent: Thu, Nov 4, 2010 12:06 am<br>
Subject: [*BCM*] Nice statement about CM from a Londoner<br>
<br>
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From the blog "At War With The Motorist"<br>
<br>
<br>
← Weekly War Bulletin, 26 June 2010<br>
→<br>
What point are you tryin to make, mate?<br>
Posted on June 30, 2010 by Joe Dunckley| 2 Comments<br>
<br>
Confession: before friday, I had never joined a Critical Mass. I liked <br>
the idea, but I had always been busy, or else it had slipped my mind. <br>
But on friday I remembered, had no excuses, and it was a lovely day to <br>
head down to the river after work. Clearly, several hundred people <br>
agreed that it was a nice afternoon for a bicycle ride.<br>
<br>
A colleague declined to join me. “Yeah, because that’s a brilliant way <br>
to win people over and promote cycling.” A cabbie asked what point we <br>
were trying to make, as we blocked his entry to the Strand to let the <br>
mass pass. A North American gentleman out for a walk on Picadilly asked <br>
us what we thought we were doing, and raised the excellent philosophical <br>
point that no man has any right to block the traffic. A young lady on <br>
Shaftesbury Avenue asked what we thought was achieved by a thousand <br>
people riding around in a slow moving block?<br>
<br>
What we were doing was having a nice afternoon bicycle ride in the sun. <br>
What we achieved was a nice afternoon bicycle ride in the sun. The <br>
point that we made is that it’s nice to have an afternoon bicycle ride <br>
in the sun.<br>
<br>
If Critical Mass had to make a point at all, I would suggest that the <br>
point it should be making is that no man has any right to block the <br>
traffic. That no man has the right to hold a city hostage, to <br>
intimidate and inconvenience the people who are out trying to enjoy a <br>
summer evening in town, to make an unpleasant racket, and to destroy our <br>
heritage, environment, and health. And all day every day of the month <br>
the Motorist is blocking the traffic. Every traffic jam in London, <br>
every dead pedestrian and uncrossable road, every background drone and <br>
booming truck, every smog cloud and dirty building is caused by the <br>
Motorist, and they get away with this without comment the width and <br>
breadth of the city, all day, every day. Critical Mass is a couple of <br>
hours a month where some people stop them and say: this is you. These <br>
five minutes when we piss you off and laugh in your angry face: this is <br>
what you do every day to everybody in this city.<br>
<br>
But Critical Mass doesn’t have a point. It’s just a nice bicycle ride <br>
on a sunny afternoon.<br>
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