Critical Mass: Ask Your Council Why They Care NOW

Have you ever biked in Critical Mass in Vancouver?  It’s actually fairly fun.  My only ride, myself, was in 2001 and was then the largest to date.  I don’t suppose that was too difficult back then.  As a young UBC student, riding a bike and causing a bit of inconvenience for traffic seemed like a great idea.  There was this clever mantra everyone screamed:  “We’re not blocking traffic!  We ARE traffic!” There were great people to meet.  UBC students were commonplace, but there were also a lot of hippies, some advocates and a hell of a lot of activists.  I really thought that it was about the ride and about the awareness created by banding all these cyclists together.

As we snaked through downtown we went to the Woodwards Building and blocked Abbott Street for an impromptu pro-housing anti-poverty stint.  It wasn’t about cycling anymore, it was about another cause I really knew nothing about at the time.  As we eventually continued our journey, I started to look around at all the signs carried by cyclists.  There were signs prompting us to consider God and all Her graces, pro-Choice, anti-poverty, anti-government – you name it.  I wasn’t at a cycling rally, I was part of an exhibition where a bunch of activists were getting together to draw attention to themselves.  I never went back.

Fast-forward 8 years and not much has changed with Critical Mass except that the mass of people has increased to where it’s now… critical.  More drivers are upset (there’s a case to be made that more drivers today are more entitled than ever, too).  But the cyclists have been winning battles all over the place.  We have cycling infrastructure that we cannot take for granted and the city’s (not the council, but the city) willingness to try out a bike lane on Burrard Bridge might be heavily tried by the media coverage Critical Mass is now receiving.  Why is it just now receiving this coverage?

Two closely-related reasons.  There’s a nifty piece here in the Georgia Straight by Mike Cantelon where he argues that there’s a Critical Mass scheduled for February 26th, 2010.  That’s two days before the closing ceremonies for the 2010 Winter Olympics.  Cantelon points out that this is an issue for the city.  Unfortunately, the issue is much bigger than this inconvenience and pissing match between the Olympics and a bunch of professional activists.

Via Twitter today, I received a note about an article from @VanPoverty linking to a Vancouver Sun Blog here by David Eby.  He wrote about a recent Freedom of Information Request from the BC Civil Liberties Association where it was discovered that in 2003, then-Mayor Larry Campbell and then-City Manager Judy Rogers:

‘…promised  the IOC and VANOC in clause 47, that the City would “ensure that the provisions of the Olympic Charter relating to propaganda and advertising are strictly observed …[and] shall ensure that no propaganda or advertising is placed within the Olympic venues or outside the Olympic venues in such a manner so as to be within the view of the television cameras covering the sports at the Games or of the spectators watching the sports at the Games… [and] shall ensure that no propaganda or advertising is allowed in the airspace of the City…”’

So if you wonder how Gregor Robertson can go from a willing participant in this event to demanding some reform and route destinations, I really think it’s easy to find the real reason.  He has to.

He’s now part of the machine quietly switched on in 2003 that committed to altering our right to free speech for a period in 2010.

I’m not a fan of Critical Mass – I really think it served its purpose and needs to be altered to keep the integrity (and safety) of regular cyclists that it helped enable.

As for the Why Now? question – there’s something much bigger going on.