ASK SOMEBODY: Making it better

Woah, July, everybody still here? Christ. Well, here’s a hyper local question about niche shit, so honestly? Skip it if you want! Read my other stuff next time, pls. Anonymous advice column always open!!

taille haut!

ASK SOMEBODY #8:

So what's up?

What's your ordered list of who's making biking better in Chicago? Who's saying they're trying to make it better but are lost in the sauce?

looking for examples to emulate

Well shoot. Is this a trap? I immediately felt like this was a TRAP! I have almost managed to eject myself from a lot of “advocacy” and here we are!! I have put off answering this, but I am a whatever of my word, so here we go. Frankly, it’s a lot easier to rank beaches. I’d like to approach this with optimism, but we’ll see. Strap on that helmet. Let’s go.

Who I Think Is Pretty Okay

1. Active Transportation Alliance (You had to see this coming.)

2. Streets Calling

3. We Keep You Rollin’

4. West Town / Working Bikes / The Recyclery

Somewhere in the middle: Better Streets Chicago.

We’ll get to what has messed with the sauce later, because I’m Mr. Brightside.

When approaching local and regional advocacy, hierarchical rankings don’t do it for me. It ultimately breeds the race to getting the most attention, bizarre savior founder syndrome, an inability to build coalitions, and the lack of actual commitments to equity and access. TL;DR: If you’re some urbanist trying to claw your way up the crab bucket with no acknowledgement of how to 1) triage pretty fucked up conditions in areas of most need, 2) listening to the needs of those folks and working at multiple levels to meet those needs, and 3) recognizing picking the one problem impacting YOU, an individual you have decided is marginalized despite not actually being marginalized, IDK man. Disclaimer over.

Thus at this juncture in my, uh, spotty advocacy life I am less interested in rhetoric and more interested in direct interventions. People who work doggedly and continue their work to improve and impact ACTUAL VULNERABLE USERS OF THE ROAD. If I have to explain this to you, I would like you to actually meet a child, watch a senior citizen try and cross the street on the West Side, or maybe go somewhere South of Cermak and West of, hm, let’s say Central Park?. People need resources and voices in as much as other players who receive more attention in this little bikes ecosystem. Which is why although those are ordered, I put them all as Good.

Thoughts on why:

• I cannot emphasize this enough: you CANNOT improve conditions for riding a bike in Chicago (and the region) pulling on other levers and recognizing it is not an individual failure of someone who drives a car because they do not have: job opportunities, affordable housing, time or energy or money, and the myriad other reasons why in this city of 234 square miles, they may be driving a car. To me this means pushing and building coalitions on all these fronts, but also recognizing the need to improve active transportation! Buses especially! Trains! Pedestrian infrastructure! Traffic calming that does not involve the same 20 blocks of Milwaukee and it’s disgusting trademarked paint! (See also: Augusta, which, do not get me started). I’m sorry I’ve already gotten garrulous. I put Active Trans here because they are doing the work on all the fronts they have the capacity to do. Yep, I worked there, and I have volunteered for them for some time, and I just will never not believe supporting the work of the Red Line extension or Safe Routes to School or walk-ability assessments or the continued fight for BRT will not be equally as important as a bike lane. People deserve better choices, and working to improve transit and infrastructure, slow and demoralizing as it is, will at scale improve bikeability.

• The rest of the people on this list are groups who provide direct action, resources, and opportunities for what the most vulnerable users of the road, doing work in truly disenfranchised areas. Ms. Lucas has been doing We Keep You Rollin’ for a long time, and keeps doing it. West Town has been trying to provide economic development and workforce skills, tirelessly, and giving youth bike joy. The Recyclery and Working Bikes are community shops, vitally important! We need places where people can access bikes beyond whatever the industry shoves down your throat as what you need, and what they will build to profit. I’ve been out of the game so long, but I’d like to throw in neighborhood councils, people working on the long game of improving their infrastructure, and should be better about keeping abreast of that. I will just always probably think a community bike ride, providing safety tools, and continuing the work when you get no attention from white urbanists or whatever, is more interesting than, gosh, I don’t know. A stickering campaign? Okay, sure.

• Streets Calling also embodies powerful action, too. Expanding from Black Joy Ride a few years ago, their power to bring people (young people especially) out into the streets and around town is absolutely incredible. Shawnee is a force of nature (Moody Umbra is v v good) and watching the ride’s joy, I think, is something that can set the stage for the next generation of advocates. More importantly? It actually makes bike better in real time for people. If there’s anything I try and remember these days, it’s that joy is really important.

"Good Advocacy” looks differently to me now. It is simply resourcing and supporting people where they are at. Give people bikes, give people DIVVY memberships, support young people who deserve safe travel, support and help create active transportation access for disenfranchised people, which can include bikes. I have so many regrets about the past few years and the work I did for money, but I truly still believe in equitable access, and if you’re not acknowledging that in your work, I’m not interested.

Anyway, I’m pretty neutral while grudgingly impressed with Better Streets Chicago. To grab attention in this day and age takes talent; to mobilize people is impressive. I suppose it’s a nice dream to think DLSD could turn into a park or "boulevard” (which, what?? words have meaning!). Also: it’s a Federal Highway!! Anyone who has spent twenty seconds in IL advocacy knows fighting IDOT is bringing an Urban Arrow to a Road Rally. You can do it, but it’ll be demoralizing and ugly. I’m assuming when Better Streets Chicago holds up San Francisco as an aspiration, they mean the Embarcadero or JFK drive through Golden Gate Park. I find these comparisons not so useful. I am far more interested in BRT or bus only lanes on DSLD (which has been done on local interstates!). And that was DOA. Perhaps if some of the “Lake Shore Drive should be a park!” energy was aimed elsewhere there could be targeted wins for marginalized folks. I don’t know. I just don’t get it. I’m stoked on the snow shoveling thing, though. Getting people to do outreach is always a big lift, so good job.

Here’s how to lose me in the sauce, re: better biking:

• Egg on bike commuters into playing community cop by supporting a surveillance and carceral state. You all know I hate it. It’s not advocacy. That guera is the definition of transera. There’s too many cars, so people have shitty choices, so maybe try and support the big picture of reducing car traffic. Publicly shaming and sharing photos of working class people doing their jobs is gross. Look! It’s the hill I’m dying on.

• I don’t know what a Bike Grid is, frankly. If you’re ever looking for routes places, I’m happy to share what I find low-stress, but we already live on a grid, so I think I just don’t get it.

• Generally? If there’s a whisper network about you, I think maybe your advocacy could be flawed. That’s all I’ll say about that in writing.

All of the players have their place in the make it better machine. I wrote a Master’s Thesis on the concept of building capacity in advocacy/non-profits via harnessing (at that time) Millennial energy and resources. (GROSS I HATE mentioning my degree, I am sorry). I am grudgingly impressed at good social media game. There’s a place for outrage. If you are showing up to meetings, I give you props. I just wish the groups that seem to me hyper-individualistic and strident would maybe not shit on legacy groups doing the boring work, or that there was some way to get people together and move needles where it is most needed. Probably we should be listening to the people who have the most need in terms of livability and active transportation, and getting that shit done.

I’m ending with two anecdotes:

1) Last fall at the ATA member meeting/awards thing, I stood chatting with someone I respect, when two dudes shouldered in to harangue said person about bike lanes and how Chicago was failing and people were (horror of horrors!!!) leaving to move to HOUSTON and WHERE was the better infrastructure in Logan Square and Avondale and Bucktown!! I butted in with my question on where they got that data, and perhaps to understand group outmigration? To which I was scolded with, Haven’t you read STRONG TOWNS? (Yes, motherfucker.) But what am I supposed to do? Whip out my urban planning dick? (Note: I did say something snarky, but it was pretty weak, because I can’t remember it!)

2) The other day I sat in on a call about advocacy work, because I was really excited to hear about the McKinley Park South River Trail Development plan. It started with a lot of talking from the Park District about interventions they were putting in to curb the increase of cars on the trail. As I sat there listening, all I could think was that people on the internet must have taken a lot of pictures of cars on the trail and yelled about it. Look, I don’t want cars on the LFT either. I just sort of again wonder why the yelling has to be dealt with first. To listen to the needle threading and patient explaining that in order to keep the trail in shape, there has to be like, Park District Vehicles, and people who WORK there doing things, and also how rapidly they’re going to like, build a gate! But also we need to be careful of the roadies who go so quickly around McCormick Place they wouldn’t stop if there was a bollard there, so we have to design an entirely new thing! I wouldn’t know if the cars are actually a problem. I don’t fuck with the LFT north of 18th between the months of March to October. I couldn’t care less seeing a car dropping off barbecue supplies. Like, don’t kill anyone. I wish I’d been able to hear more about my neighborhood, though. There will probably be planters and a moat on the MKE protected bike lane before there’s ever safe passage from the SW Side to the North.

I’m guessing this is not the answer you hoped for! I’m just tired, and sort of bummed that this is how the landscape would play out fifteen years after I started biking because I liked it and because I just wanted to zone out for a while and look at stuff and be in my city and be in my body.

Unfortunately the realest talk I can give you? Maybe don’t start your own biking group. Maybe go try and fit in with the rest of the sauce and bring your values and principles and sweat equity to support a long game and people who need support. Go help kids. Go support community rides. Redistribute. Listen to advocacy and policy calls. Volunteer. Again, what do I know? See ya at Big Marsh.

-caiken