Critical Mass Today!

Below is the text of a flyer passed out at today's Critical Mass in response to Matt Smith's piece in the SF Weekly:

Weakly Attacking Critical Mass
“Someday I’d like to look back on this Bike to Work Week as the moment when San Francisco’s bicycle movement grew up and abandoned Critical Mass. It would make for a pleasant memory.”
— Matt Smith, Critical Masturbation, SF Weekly, May 14, 2003

During San Francisco’s Bike to Work Week, as bike activists were working overtime to promote bicycle use in the city, Matt Smith wrote in the SF Weekly that Critical Mass is damaging the bicycle cause: “Here, the bicyclists protest mightily at the end of every month, and manage to set their cause back mightily in the process.”

It would be easy to write off a swipe from the corporate Weekly. The paper is as famous for being a flagship of the alt-weekly chain New Times as for its hostility to activism. Some might consider anything in the paper illegitimate, or just irrelevant.

But it seems a shame to let Matt Smith’s piece disappear into the recycling bin without comment. He has written a reasonable sounding critique — entirely missing the point, but nevertheless making an argument that deserves a worthy riposte.*

The Missing Backlash

Smith begins by establishing his credentials as a bicyclist, someone who has apparently ridden since childhood. As a committed cyclist, he believes in the cause of bicycle advocacy. Smith doesn’t argue that Critical Mass should be crushed by the police as a menace to decency (as many right wing commentators have done). What he does say is that those of us involved should just cut it out. Go home. Give up. Devote ourselves to tamer, less objectionable forms of social change.

According to Smith, the biggest crime of Critical Mass is that it is angering people. It is angering the police, who are supposedly so outraged by our selective approach to traffic laws that they selectively enforce the law when it comes to cyclists**. And it is angering the average San Francisco voter, who, but for their irritation with Critical Mass, would certainly have voted in more reasonable traffic policies by now.

We’re familiar with these points. We’ve been hearing them since we started this event. We were told back in the early 90s that if we persisted with Critical Mass we would irreparably damage the cause of bicycle advocacy! There would be a massive anti-bike backlash, and what little support there was in 1992 would certainly dwindle to nothing by 2003...

The backlash never materialized. In the 10 plus years that we’ve been riding home together, San Francisco has become vastly more bicycle friendly. There are more bicyclists, more bike lanes, more bike awareness, and issues that cyclists care about are on the agenda for good.

Perhaps Matt Smith thinks that, had Critical Mass not existed, even greater numbers of people would be flocking into the streets on bikes. Motorists would look to cyclists with newfound respect. The SF Bike Coalition would have double the membership, and even more clout! Absurd, of course, but it must take a powerful imagination to be a columnist for the Weekly.

To be fair, the SF Bike Coalition can take the credit for many of the visible changes to bicycle infrastructure around town. The SFBC has worked doggedly over the years to demand changes in public policy, and things have changed for the better to a degree none of us thought possible ten years ago.

But would anyone have listened to the Bike Coalition if Critical Mass had not been putting the issue of biking in the city on the front burner every month? And where would the Bike Coalition have gotten its army of volunteers? Where would its hard working employees have found the enthusiasm to face the city bureaucracy day in and day out? (Let’s not forget that back in 1992 when Critical Mass first started, the tiny Bike Coalition had no clout, no money, few members, and met in the back of a Chinese restaurant.)

What Critical Mass can take credit for is creating the invisible changes that made such a shift in politics possible. By bringing thousands of cyclists into the streets together, and doing so every month for 10 years, we have managed to provide a vision of a different reality — a better, more authentic urban life. And that ongoing commitment, not just to advocating social change, but to literally creating it on a regular basis, has had a big effect.

Please Please Me!

There is an unspoken logic behind the argument that Critical Mass — and other forms of disruptive, creative protest — are angering people. This unspoken logic says that you create social change by pleasing people, by making rational appeals to their decency, and by politely working with the limited tools that our “democracy” provides. So you should not make a noisy mess out in public. You should not risk angering people. You should stay home and be nice and polite and orderly, and every few months get out and cast your ballot. If you feel strongly about a particular issue, write a letter to the editor, or your congressperson. But by all means, stay out of the street!

Needless to say, we reject that unspoken logic by our very presence here at Critical Mass. We know that the creative use of direct action and the patient nurturing of organic social movements has had positive effects throughout history. These ideas and methods have re-shaped the world repeatedly, and we’re happy to be part of a movement putting them to work in our home town.

In fact, Smith has made the common error of seeing Critical Mass as a protest, and as a part of what he calls San Francisco’s “acrimonious political culture”. While Smith makes a reasonable plea that people “stop the war” — “dog wars, back-porch wars, dot-com wars, AIDS wars, tree wars, live-work-loft wars, park wars, library wars, freeway wars, museum wars, rent wars, homelessness wars, taxi wars, and bicycle wars, to name just a few” — he fails to see that Critical Mass has managed to avoid falling into exactly this trap — the trap of divisive, angry, accusatory politics. We invite Smith to join us on the ride so he can see for himself how badly he has mischaracterized the event.

This absence of the usual political patterns at Critical Mass is exactly what has drawn so many people to Critical Mass over the years (and why it has spread so quickly all over the planet). Critical Mass is not about bicyclists against motorists, or bicyclists against cops. Ultimately, it’s not really about bicycle advocacy, either. It’s about changing life.

— The Committee for Full Enjoyment

May 30, 2003

* A letter to the editor, however, was out of the question. Papers like the Weekly seem to take a perverse pleasure in snipping carefully crafted responses into incoherent gibberish. Better to reply in a public forum uncontrolled by corporate authorities — like Critical Mass!

** It’s pretty clear that the police have some sort of policy of selective enforcement when it comes to cyclists. But it long predates Critical Mass, and reflects their deep bias against cycling as everyday transportation. In any case, we suspect the police secretly appreciate our peaceful and relatively orderly event, if only for the easy and regular overtime it affords them.

A few people were arrested today during the Critical Mass.

Was this a provoked incident or an obuse of power?

I understand that police are there to keep peace but it seems they more often incite they excitement into the crowd which then just produces the very actions they are trying to thwart.

Good ride everyone!

criminal mass has set the cycleing world back 50 years with their childish behavior. it is long past time they grow up.

critical mass is an embarrisment to the cycleing world.
- Cycle Magazine