Perhaps the thought of all those white guys in expensive cycling gear, on expensive bikes behind a police escort kept away the bicyclers who call themselves anarchists or who call themselves ‘radicals’ or revolutionaries fighting for economic justice ( most of whom are also white guys from not-so-oppressed backgrounds.)
Also, I saw at the Columbus Ride of Silence none of the Latin American immigrant cyclists I sometimes see around town, or any of the Black teenage cyclists, nor any of the South Side cyclists either.
As we rolled north on High Street through the artsy-barsy Short North, I realized that making a conscious effort to cycle slowly can make one’s shoulders ache, along with other body parts.
But to talk about the mental and not the physical, as I rode yesterday in that crowd of cyclists, keeping my lips tight, making sure I was not going to be the one jackass to blurt something out during the Ride of Silence, a thought occurred to me. Why can’t this be a celebratory ride in which we’d wave and shout out to onlookers? We could have thrown to people along the streets of the Short North, the campus area, or Weinland Park, fliers about the joys of cycling, and how it’s part of a cause for economic justice.
Instead, I just smiled and waved and tried, irrationally, to make eye contact with people through the lenses of my sunglasses. The cloudy morning and afternoon turned into a vivid early evening. The ride spilled north on the main street of central Columbus like a colorful liquid curving around parked cars.
The fliers I would have thrown would have mentioned cycling as part of a ‘transportation revolution.’ That’s what I tell some of my Mexican coworkers when my Spanish seems inadequate for conversations about ecology or undoing the concentration of economic and political power.
But as things went, multiple onlookers shouted “what’s the ride for?” None of us answered, keeping to our silence, as part of a vigil on wheels. But maybe we would have honored the injured and fallen cyclists more had the spectacle of four hundred or so of us been celebratory, like a New Orleans funeral, instead of somber. My friend and landlord, Eugen Beer, aka The Piano Peddler, could have been part of the carnival, with his keyboard on his handlebars.
Instead of a welcoming party, the Ride of Silence emphasized victimhood and identity politics. Yes, some cyclists get injured and killed, and I may sooner or later be one of them, as I do a sort of vehicular dance with motorists on Morse Road on a regular basis. Further, I have been mugged once while cycling.
But cycling is not a cause to promote in isolation to other causes. It’s connected to other issues, both environmental and socio-economic. It pertains to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to the injustices in our own communities right here in Columbus. Cycling is relevant in terms of the damage we’re doing to our life support system, which some people such as James Lovelock refer to as Gaia. Like the Comfest slogan of couple of years ago stated: No planet. No Party. Those Tee-shirts are still around.
The Ride of Silence somehow reminded me of Queer-themed public events I have participated in over the years, in that there was that sense of a shared identity among the participants, along with a sense of righteous indignation. Amidst those Queer marches and rallies of the past , I kept thinking there ought to be ways to connect that particular cause with other causes for justice. I feel the same way about cycling.
As the Ride of Silence made its way down Summit Street with police lights flashing and sirens chirping and burping, there was standing on a stoop a child who looked to be 8 or 9 years old. The doorway he stood near seemed uncomfortably close to Summit Street, which is at times a busy road. He had an unkempt ‘fro and was wearing a dingy t-shirt and shorts. He shouted out to us en mass: “ Can I go home with one of you ?”
It was an innocent question to the relatively well-off and well-connected people rolling briefly thru this child’s hood, not an attempt to call out to some of the women on bikes. The kid somehow reminded me of how cycling a way to defy the custom of using automobiles to display our materialistic standing in the community, and a way to divest ourselves from a system that tends to deny low-income people without cars access to jobs, entertainment, and healthful food.
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