Dear Kristin Ostberg:
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As a regular participant in the Critical Mass bike rides (who by the way can barely contain his frustration and outrage at your dismissive point of view), I have yet to see as regular an expression of economy, safety, etc as Critical Mass. I am also a regular bicycle commuter and a former bicycle courier, and I realize all too acutely the point of Critical Mass. Too often I find my rights-of-way disregarded by automobiles and other larger vehicles as I cycle solo into the Loop, having to brave road conditions so deplorable (such as potholes of indeterminate depth in the extreme-right side of the street filled with water or slush during the winter) that I can almost understand why there are so damn many SUVs on the road in Chicago. We as a group take that one measly part of a Friday evening out of the month to commute out of the Loop together; the old nostrum “safety in numbers” put into praxis. So as not to have our point completely lost on the spectators and noncyclists along the route, the participants pass out flyers explaining who we are and what we’re doing. We as a group are a convivial, inclusive, and jocular bunch; I for one would love to see more cyclists join in, but not at the cost of deradicalizing our tactics. Perhaps more people would join our ride if it were organized, sponsored, and promoted by some hypocritical commercial entity as well as routinely escorted by Chicago’s vilest (the cops, that is), completely gutting the concept of self-management upon which Critical Mass was founded. You even have the gall to put us on par with automobiles at a certain point in your article when you stated: “Aggressive bikers can be even more lawless than those drivers in their chugging behemoths.” (Perhaps it seems like I am taking these quotes out of context, but it is not so much the specifics of what you say, it is the spirit of it.)
Yes, I have heard the (lily-livered, in my opinion) criticism among cyclists who won’t join with us that we are just a bunch of anarchist scofflaws who flout the rules of the road. I am not surprised. Chicago–or the United States as a whole (with the exception of, say, Eugene, Oregon)–isn’t a particularly radically minded place these days, and many who choose to ride bikes in the city do so only for leisure and are part of the more affluent sector of society that sees cops, law, and order as being on their side. There is a preponderance of apologists for car culture among them as well. The cops and other agents of control have fought long and hard to get into our heads and get us to convince ourselves that we must go through the system to change things and abandon all other tactics as “antagonistic” and “repellent.” Unfortunately there has been an aggressive increase in the factors that create and propagate car culture: increased affluence of a certain sector of society, increased social fears, strip malls, medium-to-low density urban development, the curtailing of funds for public transportation in favor of funds for highways, artificially low gasoline prices (in places other than Cook County, at least), the marketing of sport-utility vehicles to the urban uberconsumer, to name but a few of those factors. In short, the point is that extreme conditions do call for “extreme” measures. Many would agree with me that conditions have become extreme, and actions such as Critical Mass are a relatively peaceful and orderly (as far as self-organized actions go) response to the current madness, while also being direct and pointed. It is our way of saying “Enough!” There will always be those who view our response as “extreme,” and so be it. Let them try and lobby in Springfield.
