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October
2005
Editorial:
Talk About the Weather By Catherine Clyne
Photo by Kevin Lysaght
A Reason to Fight for Bike Safety
Brandie Bailey:
November 27, 1983 - May 8, 2005
By Maureen C. Wyse
Brandie Bailey is one
reason to fight for bicycle awareness—especially to make New York safer for cyclists.
On May 8th of this year, my best friend, Brandie Bailey, an impossibly
remarkable woman, was struck and killed while biking home from
her waitressing job at Red Bamboo. Brandie’s death brings
awareness to us all. Even through this inconceivable loss and
pain, I have seen a greater importance in fighting for equal
rights on
the road and fair enforcement of the law in bicycle related accidents
and fatalities.
Despite the millions of cars, trucks and SUVs on the roads, like
it or not, New
York is a cyclist’s city. There are bike lanes and thousands of cyclists
using them and other roadways. Cyclists must be acknowledged and respected—it
is imperative that we share the road. Not only are cyclists being killed, their
deaths are written off as accidents. Many drivers get away without summonses
or charges. We urge cyclists to demand their rights, claim equal rights to
the roadways, and bike safely.
To pay respect to the 206 cyclists who have died since 1995, please visit the
locations of their deaths, which are memorialized around the city by local
cycling groups. In locations where bicyclists are killed, Time’s Up! stencils the
outline of a body and “killed by automobile,” with the name of
the person who died and the date they were killed. Another group, Visual Resistance,
puts a spray-painted white (ghost) bike and a plaque as a memorial that daily
accumulates flowers, notes and people stopping to reflect.
We can’t do anything to bring back Brandie, nor any of the eleven others
who have died this year, but we do have hope for the future. Keep pedaling.
Cycling Road Rules
Obey all traffic laws. Cyclists have basically the same rights
as everyone else out on the road and we are subject to the same
duties.
• Ride in the bike lane if there is one.
• On a wide one-way roadway, ride on either side of the road.
• Ride on the right side of a two-way road.
• Do not ride on the sidewalk (unless you are 12 or younger).
• Do not ride on expressways, highways, interstates or thruways unless
authorized by signs.
•
Do not “hitch” or hold on to any other vehicle on
the road.
• Use hand and arm signals to indicate turns and stops.
• If carrying packages, keep one hand on the handlebars.
• Do not ride with anyone else on the handlebars or seat.
• Ride with your feet on the pedals.
•
Don’t wear headphones or a walkman while riding.
• Use a white headlight and a red taillight from dusk till dawn.
• You must have a bell or other audible signal.
• You must have reflectors, reflective tires and/or other reflective
devices.
• You must have working breaks.
• Only cyclists under 14 must wear a helmet (although everyone should).
Now that you know your rights, take it to the streets in confidence.
For more information visit www.transportationalternatives.org.—M.W.
Film Review
Still We Ride directed by Andrew Lynn, Elizabeth Press, Chris Ryan
(37 min).
In scientific terms, critical mass is the minimum mass required
to start a chain reaction. In over 300 cities across the world,
this term has been embraced to inspire monthly Critical Mass bike
rides promoting non-polluting transportation. San Francisco was
the first city to get the wheels in motion in 1992, and since 1993,
cyclists in New York have been riding together on the last Friday
of every month, promoting cycling and having fun, hoping to start
an even larger chain reaction.
It’s easy to see how New York could be an even greater
and greener city with more bikes and less cars, and hard to
imagine why anyone would be against
that. But Still We Ride vividly documents the obscene harassment NYC cyclists
have faced since the 2004 Republican National Convention.
As a young child shouts in the beginning of the documentary, Still We
Ride is about “something critical that has become criminal.” With interviews
from Time’s Up!, civil rights lawyers Norman Siegel and Gideon Oliver,
and NYC cyclists, the film discusses the infringements on our rights to ride
and assemble and the larger implications. With shocking footage of police
brutality toward cyclists, illegal searches and confiscation and destruction
of bicycles,
Still We Ride makes you wonder why this is happening and who is calling the
shots. How can a celebration of cycling be treated as an illegal activity?
Even though the RNC has long been over, the harassment has continued with hundreds
of arrests in the past year. As our rights to ride continue to be challenged,
the best way to protect them is to use them. So still we ride.
Time’s Up! is New York
City’s direct action environmental
organization run entirely by 150 or so volunteers. Their goal is to
raise awareness about how our actions affect the environment and, over
the past 18 years, Time’s Up! has focused on several campaigns
from reclaiming public space to saving our community gardens. Within
the last four years, most of the volunteers have shifted their efforts
toward transportation issues, bicycle riding in particular, with the
hopes of making the city more bike-friendly.
Bill Di Paola, the Executive Director of Time’s Up! talked with Sangamithra
Iyer about their fight for non-polluting transportation and the city’s
recent crack down on cycling.
Time’s Up! has been active in promoting a more sustainable New York for
the past 18 years. What are some of the challenges you’ve faced in promoting
environmental issues in New York?
Being an environmental organization in a city like New York is just difficult
to begin with because most people are here to make money. It’s a capitalist
city. For raising concern about the environment, sustainability and animal rights,
it is not an easy town. However, a lot of people, through how they live, are
environmentalists without even realizing it. They live in apartment buildings,
which actually save a lot of energy, and get to work using mass transit and sometimes
bicycles. In a way they are doing things that, compared to the rest of the U.S.,
is very advanced and leaves less of a global footprint. So part of what we do
is let people know what they are doing is something unusual to begin with.
It is Time’s Up!’s opinion that the city is not interested in promoting
non-polluting transportation. Some of the leaders of the city, for whatever reason,
are fighting it and not creating the proper infrastructure. So we do our best
to have events to put new cyclists on the street. Increased cycling will create
the necessary pressure to drive the city to create infrastructure to support
the cyclists. We have been incredibly successful at increasing cycling in New
York City.
Can you explain Time’s Up!’s relationship to the Critical
Mass bike
rides?
There’s two major ways in the city where new cyclists are generated. One
is the west side greenway—a place where people start riding bikes for the
first time, feel comfortable, and then start commuting. Another big way is the
Critical Mass bike ride.
Time’s Up! is not the organizer of the Critical Mass ride, nor do we have
a route for it. However, the ride attracts new riders with positive energy and
this is what Time’s Up! is interested in. In turn, these new cyclists will
most likely become everyday bike commuters.
The city has also been trying to seek an injunction against the ride.
Bicycling is a means of transportation that promotes a healthy environment and
lifestyle.
Why do you think it’s been targeted as an almost criminal activity?
The Critical Mass ride’s been getting bigger. More cycling is happening
and the city is still taking its stance that it is not interested in promoting
cycling and just feels that there are too many cyclists on the road. There are
a lot of cars out there too. Why is the city so unhappy with bikes when they
see them in mass, and they are not unhappy with cars?
Have you found it to be more targeted since the Republican National Convention
last year?
Sure. Time’s Up! has been working on these issues for the last 18 years
and probably has had the most problems with the police last year after the RNC.
Prior to the RNC, individual officers would come on the ride.
Last August, we had set up a Bike National Convention, to run parallel to the
Republican National Convention. This was not a protest. This was to show all
the people coming to town and everyone in town, the environmentally sustainable
things happening in the city. Of course the major focus was that bicycles should
be viewed as a sustainable solution for our city. But the city [and the Republicans]
didn’t want the bicyclists in the streets and they wanted less biking during
the convention.
One of the events during this was the RNC Critical Mass, which possibly had 7,000
people in it. The police said the event couldn’t happen without a permit.
Obviously that didn’t fly too well. The event happened anyway, with great
success, and it was an embarrassment to the city because they tried to stop this
beautiful event and they couldn’t. There was a party after the event where
they arrested over 250 people after the ride was over. There was a lot of media
attention about the arrests.
Some type of decision was made to continue the harassment of this particular
event over the last year. There have been all these techniques they have been
using—most of them illegal—to deal with this.
Can you describe these tactics?
In the beginning, they said the bicyclists had to be over in the right hand [lane]
of the street. We found a city law saying that bicycles can ride in the whole
street. Then they said that bicyclists need a permit. We said we don’t
need a permit to ride a bicycle. So they have taken us to court on this.
Then, they have infiltrated the group and have come on some of the rides with
undercover police posing as bicyclists. In some cases these undercover officers
have led the ride, acting aggressively to intimidate our peaceful events.
They have also tried to raid our space at after parties without a search warrant.
That is illegal. At some of the after parties they go around just randomly stealing
bicycles. It’s hard to believe, but Time’s Up! caught them doing
this and videotaped it. Our lawyer Norman Siegel went to federal court with it
and we won the case.
The city’s major complaint is that we don’t stop at red lights. Time’s
Up!’s opinion is that everyone should stop at red lights and [they should
issue] tickets for that. They have given no tickets for [running red lights],
but use that in the courts and in the media as their number one complaint.
A lot of this is really about morale. The police do illegal things to discourage
people from riding and screw with morale. If you do get arrested it is close
to $700, you spend a night in jail and you get your bike taken away. There is
no reason why you should have your bike taken away.
Time’s Up! and the bicycle community have rallied together to deal with
this intense harassment, but legal costs are adding up and we are trying our
best to raise funds to continue promoting non-polluting transportation.
I’m not sure if you have an answer for this, but who is calling the shots
here? We’re not sure, but the officers on the scene tell us the orders are coming
from very high up and it’s out of their hands. But aside from Mayor Bloomberg,
we’re finding that almost all community leaders and politicians are in
support of the cyclists.
Can you talk about the lawsuit New York City has filed to censor Time’s
Up! for promoting Critical Mass?
There are several lawsuits going on. There are individuals who get arrested—on
the last ride there were 48 arrests. The amount of people getting arrested every
month varies—anywhere from 15 to 50.
When the ride starts, it’s pretty much a chase the whole time. The city
is doing whatever it can to shut down whatever street they can to arrest cyclists.
Cyclists sometimes do everything the city asks them to do and they still get
arrested. It’s not really about the ride. It’s about stopping the
movement.
There is another case brought up by NYC and the parks department. This makes
us mad because we are an environmental organization and we’ve done hundreds
of community garden cleanups and promoted parks, but somehow the police got the
parks department involved. The lawsuit states three different things. First is
that Time’s Up! cannot advertise an event, which the city deems is illegal,
such as the Critical Mass. The second thing pretty much says that Time’s
Up! needs to apply for a permit for the Critical Mass bike ride, which we claim
is not our ride and it happens in over 300 cities around the world. Third is
that any meeting in a public park of over 20 people needs a permit.
What are the larger impacts from these infringements on biker rights?
As an environmental group we feel this is about what is happening in America
right now. Corporations are pretty much taking control of the media and the politicians.
One of our biggest problems in the U.S. is our dependency on oil—which
is not a great thing and will add to erratic climate change
We are looking for long-term sustainable solutions, where the city seems to be
looking for short-term quick solutions. Promoting cycling is wonderful for people’s
health and a great way to get to work. It doesn’t take up much space on
the street. We are hoping the city is going to value non-polluting transportation.
The tide has shifted in a more positive way where we are shedding light on some
of the corruption that supports oil in this country.
How do we go about making New York a safer and friendlier place to bike and live,
and do you have any advice for aspiring cyclists?
Even though there is much police harassment against cyclists and it can be dangerous,
cycling has continuously increased for the past five years in New York City and
is getting better all the time. Change does not come easy, and Time’s Up!
is suggesting that people ride together in small groups for safety reasons and
if they keep riding, in a few years we are sure there will be more infrastructure
and safety will come.
