Both submissions to Shift Happens!: Critical Mass at 20 from Rome—from the Network of People’s Bike Kitchens of Rome and by Rotafixa—speak from the difficulties of confronting the seemingly fixed car culture in that city of world wonders. To add to the wonders, they’ve inserted Critical Mass into the mix.  And Marco Pierfranceschi, in “Critical Mass Meets Italian Cycle Touring” recounts how applying a Critical Mass style of organizing to Italian Cycle Touring transformed it and increased the participation and fun immensely (no excerpt of this piece included, sorry!).

“Let’s take back Rome!: Critical Mass, Ciemmona and CiclOfficine Popolari in Rome” gives us a look at the origins of the People’s Bike Kitchens:

Before 2002 [when Critical Mass Rome began], bicycles in Rome were found only in basements and garages, and as decorative objects. Urban cyclists were rare animals: poor, unlucky, unimaginable relatives of the sport cyclist, the kind only normally seen on Sundays on Roman boulevards.

In this urban landscape, with an average of one car per inhabitant, Critical Mass Rome reclaimed the right to be part of traffic and to go beyond that. To be effective in pushing people to use the bike everyday, it was necessary to create support centers aimed at giving information on the use and maintenance of the bicycle in an unfriendly city like Rome. This meant also creating a social space where people could teach each other how to repair bikes used as means of transportation, by sharing mechanical knowledge.

In 2003 to fulfill this need, two “bike kitchens” were created inside two squatted social centers. …The bike kitchens immediately produced a new political voice in Rome, critiquing transportation models based on the dictatorship of automobiles. These groups used the bike on a daily basis as a form of direct action. A new political subject appeared in Roman demonstrations and social movement spaces: the biker activist—always with one pant leg rolled up and one down, and black grease on her/his hands.

Social centers started organizing events with the bicycle as a lifestyle theme. The bike kitchens became places where everyone could learn and contribute her/his capabilities, whether using the welder or becoming metal parts fetishists. The first monster bikes were created including two-story bikes, recumbents, long johns, rickshaws, and carts. The explosion of creativity took place on a foundation of everyday bicycling, leading to the formation of a community of cyclists and mechanics. It started to spread like wildfire, shaping a new kind of political awareness. The community centered around this daily struggle—but also with a monthly celebration in the Critical Mass ride—became more participatory, fun, and effective. Soon two bike kitchens were insufficient to satisfy the growing demand to learn to fix, disassemble, grease, polish, and improve bikes. In 2004, some Don Quixote mechanics opened another kitchen in the social center Angelo Mai next to the Coliseum. Rome, by then, had bike kitchens covering all the main areas, providing a self-made infrastructure for urban bikers’ safety and service, making cyclists more aware of their presence and strength in numbers.

Rotafixa muses about “Political Critical Mass in Rome”:

Critical Mass in Rome created a new way of acting politically. In less than a decade, it taught us to resist the hegemonic politics that have dominated Italy for decades. With Critical Mass we (re)discovered a way to relate to the world around us, and rediscovered the point of connection among all human beings. We even became reacquainted with the key to what makes us human, things like the opposable thumb, nomadism, communication, and an ability to connect the individual and the collective. Our species has these qualities, which are especially effective if used together.

During the last few decades we haven’t been living well. We depend too much on cars, and those who want to move by other means are struggling, especially bicyclists. Critical Mass emerged out of this need, establishing that roads are not just for motorists, but are actually much better without cars.

Not know where the Critical Mass rides go has a deeper resonance; humans don’t know where our species is going either! Supporting each other, sharing an intention, joining something we have only heard of, perhaps going because your beloved mentioned the idea to you. This “thing” called Critical Mass embodies many different motivations. it is so refreshing to become part of a community of people you don’t know, and find that group acting together effectively. In Critical Mass we share an intention to engage in the simple act of riding bicycles through the city streets, once a month. These meetings nourish a dream some of us cultivate in solitude: What if we were a really huge mass of bikers? The dream comes true in Critical Mass.

São Paulo has also had to fight against an über car-centric attitude in that city.  Read about what the bicycle movement has done to break through, and how one individual’s move toward autonomy came through Critical Mass and biking in our next installment!

We just sent off books today to all who have ordered them online!  Buy one from us and get your very own copy soon too!

Vanessa Bear reports from her active involvement in creating cycling culture in “Pedaling with Ghosts of the Industrial Revolution in Manchester, England”:

It’s where the industrial revolution began, where the computer was invented, where people first danced to house music in the UK. Zooming past chrome and glass modern buildings that sit next to crumbling mills, riding over cobblestones that lead to highways, it’s clear that Manchester is a city that embraces change. One of the main changes that’s occurred over the past 10 years being the huge increase in bicycles used as transportation. Many would say that’s mostly due to Critical Mass.

The first Critical Mass bike ride in Manchester was inspired by reports in the radical press of those happening in San Francisco. It was organized as part of an anti-roads and G8 protest. However, this was only a one-off event and it wasn’t until 2004 that Critical Mass in Manchester became a regular monthly sight on our city’s roads.
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In 2005 a group of cyclists rode around the UK to spread news and information about the upcoming G8 protests taking place in Scotland. There were about 70 people riding together, stopping off at cities to do workshops and to meet like-minded people around the country. The workshops were inspiring but the most inspiring thing of all was that this was when Critical Mass in Manchester started to be noticed. The G8 bike ride came along on our Critical Mass increasing our numbers to over 150 people that month and creating such an incredible spectacle that everyone wanted to  know what i was and when the next one would be. To get more people cycling, we just need more people cycling!
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Before Critical Mass there was no real bike culture in our city, no place where we could meet. …Hardly anyone used a bike for transport and it was alienating to do so. Now with the increased fashion to ride we have countless bikes on the roads. However, Critical Mass has definitely helped that process here as well as creating a place for us to meet and share our experiences. Many people riding a bike said they were inspired to do so when they saw the monthly throng of cheerful, carnival-like riders going past them whilst they were standing at a bus stop. It has also inspired amazing community bike projects such as Pedal MCR, a community bike co-op that recycles bikes, has a drop-in tool club for the community, provides Earn-a-Bike programs, and much more.

Des Kay has also been closely involved in the presence of Critical Mass in London, even spearheading a court case to stop the Metropolitan Police from making Critical Mass illegal. Given the decision made by the House of Lords, the recent arrests at the start of the Olympics seem even more wrong. He gives us a taste of “London Critical Mass”:

The largest London Mass was in the middle of 2008 to oppose police controlling the event. They wanted to bind us to all sorts of bureaucracy, such as sending them a route map (!) and a list of organisers (!). A month earlier we were handed letters purporting that our london Friday night get-together was unlawful. They eventually cottoned on to the joys of joining us on bicycles and their support and cooperation continued until the legality was questioned.

…The court case was taken to the highest courts in the land …and we initially won, then lost on appeal, and finally on October 20, 2008, the case went to the House of Lords where it was heard by five Law Lords. Their decision was that, “the appeal is allowed and Critical Mass is a commonly or customarily held procession without organizers and therefore does not need to inform the police of each ride.” Once that precedent was set, no mass bike ride in the country has had any interference. The police must believe that after 18 years, we’re grown up enough to go out on our own.
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At 18, London Critical Mass has matured toward a more relaxed and laid-back kind of affair. We haven’t lost that radical edge, but we now are more aware of the power we had ego command the roads we choose to cycle along.

Stay tuned for Roman wheels spinning into your screens tomorrow! In the meantime, think about buying the book, available through us!

If you’re paying attention to Critical Mass or bicycling in the world, you probably heard about the horrific events in Porto Alegre, Brazil in February 2011 when a car drove deliberately into a Critical Mass ride, injuring many. We’ll let you read about the details of that day in the new 20th Anniversary book Shift Happens!: Critical Mass at 20, but what we want to showcase today is the inspiring coming together of community following the tragedy.

Marcelo Kalil, in “Critical Mass Porto Alegre” gives us his first hand view of the open meeting called by the cyclists in the aftermath:

There wasn’t enough space for everyone in Cidade da Bicicleta [a bicycle community center recently inaugurated-ed.]. There were over 200 people in there—many of them hadn’t been on Critical Mass but wanted to do something about it—so we had to hold the meeting in the backyard. And there were so many bicycles you barely had room to even get to the backyard. Everybody spoke in turn and after many hours we reached a decision: we would march on the following Tuesday asking for more humane cities and for the end of impunity for traffic crimes—because homicides where the car is used as a weapon are not treated as seriously as when other weapons are used. The protesters would meet at the same place Critical Mass gathered, would continue to the exact site of the incident to perform a die-in, then they would go to City Hall.
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On Tuesday, when we go tot Zumbi dos Palmares Square, there were already a couple hundred people. … Someone printed 200 posters with, “It was not an accident,” written on it, and below a drawing of a half black car, half pistol. There was a samba group playing Carnaval marches with thematic lyrics. And the crowd was growing and growing. There were dozens of reporters and police officers, but mostly it was ordinary people, by foot, by bike, skateboards, with their faces painted, holding signs. Someone had built a cage with PVC pipes around his bike and a girl built a cardboard shield for hers.

The march started and we filled the streets. People stood watching on the sidewalks shouting words of support. Some of them joined us and the march kept growing. Soon we got to the site where Critical Mass was hit, we laid down on the asphalt, we screamed, we cried. It was a magic moment, we were back in that place full of awful memories but we had brought in reinforcements: thousands of people who came to show us solidarity and support. We got up, we kept on. About 4,000 people were marching in the streets, singing along with the samba band who improvised the lyrics and created new songs every few minutes. After all the suffering, I was overflowing with joy once again.
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On the following days and weeks we received solidarity from all over the world….The following Critical Mass was one of a kind: there were people coming from different parts of Brazil, such as São Paulo and Curitiba, to ride with Porto Alegre’s Critical Mass. It was a huge ride by our standards. I believe there were more than 500 bicyclists, almost all of them people who had heard of Critical Mass for the first time in the news after the murder attempt. And it was beautiful, there were people in windows of buildings and sidewalks showing their support. Whenever we stopped at a red light everybody started clapping their hands in synchrony. The Mass was more alive and stronger than ever!

Eventually life got back to normal. The meetings with the City Hall and [government] were a fiasco—almost all of our demands and suggestions were completely ignored. The ones that were initially accepted were later dismissed…

I believe our strength is in the streets, not in politicians and their meetings. We do our politics in the streets.

We look forward to welcoming many Brazilians for San Francisco’s 20th Anniversary ride and the week of events leading up to it. Next we “visit” the UK and hear from rides in Manchester and London.

The Critical Mass model of a mass ride has been used as an inspiration to go in directions the monthly ride never imagined it would. Alissa Starodub and Robbie take us across the borders of many countries and take on international issues through two-wheeled activism. In today’s installment of excerpts from Shift Happens!: Critical Mass at 20, we go to both Ecotopia and to Palestine.

Alissa Starodub’s “Take a Bike to Ecotopia (Take a Car to Hell)” gives a personal look at international activists coming together on bikes against climate change and for social and environmental issues:

Imagine you go on a Critical Mass in your local town, you ride a route around the city center and then the bike tour just continues. All the cyclists just keep going to the next town, form a Critical Mass there shouting, “Two wheels are enough!” and “System Change not Climate Change!” and then move on to the north or to the south … whatever has been decided. With all the other cyclists you camp on a field somewhere along the way and continue the next morning.  You won’t come home for the next few months, maybe years, because you finally broke free from your daily routine, or whatever prevents you from going on the journey, and now are reclaiming the streets for non-polluting cyclists everywhere in the world.

Now imagine it’s true. There is a version of an almost never ending Critical Mass—or at least some kind of ride that goes through different countries and lasts for months. It is called Ecotopia Biketour.
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The first action I performed joining the Ecotopia Biketour was dumpster diving at a Dutch discount supermarket to get some more ingredients for the common dinner. In rich countries up to 30% of the food produced and imported ends up unconsumed in a dumpster. Most of it is still very enjoyable; sometimes the eat-by date hasn’t arrived yet. Mass consumption, overproduction, and a really bad pricing policy that aims to produce more at cheaper costs creates a very environmentally unfriendly thing. So I learned to perceive dumpster diving for food as a political action.

The cyclists with banners on their bikes and leaves in their hair who picked me up introduced me to the whole Ecotopia Biketour community. We reached an organic goat farm in the afternoon of my first day. Twenty people arrived bit by bit to the garden where we were camping. Later on some of us would sleep smoothly on soft hay bales in the neighboring barn. Cyclists exchanged stories from their ride and collected firewood to feed the rocket stove which would heat our delicious vegan curry dinner.
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On the way from Holland to Belgium and then Germany we met up with various local environmental NGOs, participated in a demonstration in Brussels, some of us gave many interviews to local media, we attended a permaculture festival, organized a Critical Mass in Gent and joined one in Cologne, cycled through the heaviest rain that I have ever seen, some of us lost our shoes and decided that we didn’t need new ones for the moment, some of us slept in a tree house one night.

My head is stuffed with pictures of all the nice people that we met who shared our interest in cycling and environmentalism…

Robbie’s “International Solidarity: The Bicycle as Creative Response” reflects on the motivations for a cross-Europe bicycle ride in support of Palestinians living under a military occupation:

When we take part in Critical Mass rides, we remind ourselves not only how we can re-imagine our urban landscapes away from the dominance of the motor car, but also how we can use our bikes as a form of collective action. Over recent years, many mobilisations and protests such as the anti-capitalist demos against the G20 in London in April 2009 have had a Critical Mass contingent as part of the plans. The concept of longer distance solidarity rides has also been used in Europe and elsewhere with groups such as Bicycology riding from Southern England to Gleneagles in Scotland for the G8 counter-summit in 2005.

After a few months of planning and preparation in March 2011, a group of 20 cyclists set off from London to make a 7,000 km journey across Europe and the Middle East within a loose target of 100 days. Having stopped in several communities along the way, the “PEDAL—100 Days to Palestine” riders arrived in the West Bank in July 2011.
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The bicycle was not simply our mode of transport. If resistance is art, then the bike was our form! We saw the rid as a creative response to the Palestinian Civil Society’s 2005 joint call for a programme of Boycotts, Divestments, and Sanctions against Israeli companies and institutions complicit in ongoing human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza. Just as we might distribute a flyer, poster our streets, blockade an arms factory, or organise a mass boycott—so too could we use the bicycle as a spectacle through which to talk about the realities of Palestinian life under Occupation—and how we can oppose it.
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In several places we organised Critical Mass rides in order to meet people, find out more about various sites of contention within different communities, and to listen to the stories of people who lived there.

To find out where PEDAL’s Critical Mass rides took place, and what issues were hot, pick up a copy of Shift Happens! to be found in bookstores around the Bay Area this week. Or you can order online from us directly!  Hope to see you at a few border crossing events during the week lead up to the 20th Anniversary ride on 28 September! Tomorrow join the conversation for Porto Alegre’s dramatic Critical Mass story.