WE LOVE TO RIDE
I Bike MCR is a group of cyclists that basically love to ride. We don’t do this for a job, nor do we get any funding other than bits to pay for equipment etc. for our events. We organise for ourselves, for each other and by organising stuff we want to do we hope that others who like what they see will join us and organise with us stuff that they like to do too.
We want people to join with us in our passion. We want to meet others that share our passion.
Whatever you do you should ride. Ride to school, to work, ride to places you never dreamt you could ride to. Ride in high heels or in lycra, ride a fixie with deep v’s or a sit up and beg. Come and ride with us. But whatever you do, please, ride.
HISTORY
Three years ago I went to the councils bicycle festival. There was a show with a kid doing tricks and a few older guys showing people around a penny-farthing. Both things were good but there was nothing to actually do. Nothing to feel part of or to get involved with, not anything really to make you talk to other people. And definitely no bonding experiences that would create real friendships or community.
I was lucky; I worked in a job with bikes and was friends with some bike messengers and some of the people that worked in local bike shops in our city. I also go on critical mass and meet cyclists there. But so many other cyclists aren’t that lucky and feel alienated and so don’t have a support network or benefit from sharing cycling experiences and know-how.
So I decided to organise our own festival. I got some of my friends together that ride bikes too, from different areas of bicycle riding- some commuters, some messengers, some mechanics, some ladies-bike-pootle-arounders- and we talked about what it could involve.
It was exciting. We came up with great things to do that we really wanted to do. For example we’d heard about bike polo and thought it sounded fantastic, so I contacted some guys I found on the internet and convinced them to come and teach us all. They did and now we’ve had a team that
plays twice a week for over a year.
Anyway, more importantly than learning loads of new stuff and having an amazing time, is that we really are and have built a much stronger bike community in Manchester. Before, the messengers only really hung out with messengers and commuters with commuters but now we all sit round a table in the bar together and go on I Bike MCR rides on Sundays together. It’s beautiful.
We all organise this festival because of a true passion for bikes and cycling and wanting to build a strong bike community in our city. We want a bike festival that helps to create and build that in a way that we, and anyone else that comes, can feel full ownership and able to fully participate and have a say in what happens, working together to create a beautiful month where it feels like there’s so much going on and so many fun things to do that time stands still.
Y Bike MCR?
“If an alien was to hover a few hundred yards above the planet It could be forgiven for thinking that cars were the dominant life-form, and that human beings were a kind of ambulatory fuel cell: Injected when the car wished to move off, and ejected when they were spent.”
Our lives and our planet is dominated by the motorcar.
Since its invention in 1885 we have been affected in a great many ways by the car. It promised us an easier life, more free time to spend on leisure activities and visiting places of interest, it allowed us a freedom that public transport didn’t provide and made us feel like the world was our oyster.
But it has come at a price.
Accidents on our roads have become so common that we don’t even bat an eyelid at the news that someone has been killed on the road. Not only are we numbed to the emotions that death naturally brings up, but we are so engrossed in the driving experienced, so detached from the outside world that most people’s only thoughts, when waiting looking at the lights from the ambulance, is how long it will take for the traffic jam to subside.
According to the World Health Organisation more than a million people are killed on the world’s roads each year and it’s increasing. It cannot be denied that the increase in car use has made our streets so unsafe that parents forbid their children to play in the streets, to ride their bicycles and to have the freedom that was known by children 50 years ago. And it’s not only children who suffer. Many adults are also too afraid to go out into the line of fire. The Automobile Association’s research ‘Cycling Motorists: How to encourage them’ (1993) shows that one of the main reasons for not cycling was because they thought the roads were too dangerous and there were too many cars.
We are not just dying from the accidents that cars cause either. “England has witnessed the fastest growth in obesity in Europe and childhood obesity has tripled in twenty years” (Commons Health Committee report on obesity).
This cannot be separated from the fact that fewer children are allowed to play out in car-dominated streets and more and more children are being driven to school. Rather than travel in active ways people are choosing to be paraplegics in cars: an eye flicker to look in a mirror, a slight twinge of the foot to move or stop.
Our health is affected in other ways too. The chemicals that are expelled from car exhausts cause chest infections, heart and lung disease, cancer, asthma and a whole host of other health problems.
The health of our planet is also deteriorating with the increase in car use. Not only is the constant stream of CO2 that is being poured constantly into our collapsing ozone layer creating all sorts of problems but our landscape is also changing. More and more roads are being built to accommodate the growing numbers of cars and as they are built landscapes, animals, parks and homes are destroyed.
Local shops have gone out of business because people are choosing to shop at large out of town shopping malls where it is easier to park their car.
Despite our hopes that cars would enable us to visit more places and see more friends instead our social lives have deteriorated because of them. Instead of walking to the shops and bumping into our neighbours or our friends on the way we are now isolated from interacting with anyone else.
Surrounded by metal and glass we cannot speak to each other, instead we become impatient and the “me first” attitude instantly kicks in. We become aggressive and tense and feel that we could go faster, quicker, we could get through that gap “what the hell are they doing?!”. The fact that we are physically cut off from the world cuts us off emotionally too and we forget that the other car driver is a person too, with feelings and emotions. We feel like we’re in a computer game, that the other people on the roads aren’t real anymore. The only communicating we do is with traffic signals…
The idea that a car gives freedom now seems like a sick joke. We have become car dependent and many people can’t envisage a life without them. The reality is that cars make us ever more dependent. Dependent on large corporations and governments to provide us with more roads, more traffic police, more ambulances, more hospital beds, more taxes to pay for all of this.
We need more people sat in the sky indiscriminately dropping more bombs on countries that have more oil reserves than we do, more soldiers ordered to mame and kill to get the black gold so that we can carry on with the school run.
Not only are we physically and financially dependent but emotionally we feel that we are nothing without our car. Adverts tell us that it makes us sexy, macho, more godly, stylish, without it, we are told, we have zero social status and so we have no self-esteem.
A bike offers a magical alternative and a true freedom. We can still have that autonomy that a car promised us- we can still go where we want to when we want to but instead of an autonomy that alienates us, a bicycle makes us feel more part of our surroundings.
A bicycle allows us to interact with the environment around us. We can smell the cut grass, the curry wafting from the restaurants, we can hear the birds sing as we cycle past the rustling trees. We can feel the sun on our faces and the glorious rain running down our face. We can even chat to friends and strangers, wave to other cyclists riding by, we feel alive and can interact and feel part of the world that car drivers feel alienated from as soon as they slam that door.
We no longer see ours and other people’s lives as computer simulated. We look into the eyes of others as we pass them and see they are real, and so keep our eyes and ears open careful not to harm them and ourselves.
If we are mindful of others and our world we can travel in ways that can benefit our society and our environment. It can benefit our health and our mental state. We can hugely reduce the number of tragedies, it can save us money, give us a voice, it can even improve our social life. It’s a simple solution and it comes on two wheels.
ANARCHOBICYCLISM
“It may be that when governments break down, many people lose their lives in the resulting chaos and infighting. But this fighting is almost always between other power-hungry hierarchical groups, other would-be governors and rulers. If we were to reject hierarchy absolutely, and refuse to serve any force above ourselves, there would no longer be any large-scale wars or holocausts. That would be a responsibility each of us would have to take on equally, to collectively refuse to recognise any power as worth serving, to swear allegiance to nothing but ourselves and our fellow human beings. But if we all were to do it, we would never see another world war again.” (CrimethInc, 2000)
I’m reluctant to even write the word “anarchist” because I know what pictures that conjures up in so many minds. Anarchy has a reputation for meaning chaos, irrational behaviour, and violence. People think of punk rockers throwing hissy-fits, Sid Vicious’ raucous behaviour: “I’ll do what I want and sod the rest of you”. But in fact anarchy is the exact opposite.
Anarchists believe in a society where everyone’s input and ideas are valued equally. Anarchists don’t believe in government and big business and instead believe in taking responsibility individually and collectively for our actions.
Apparently we currently live in a democracy. But I don’t feel like I have a voice or any say in what the government does. Putting an X next to a politician’s name is not my idea of participation or taking responsibility for my life and my community. All their politics are the same and they are as boring as hell. It was apparent, for example, that we do not have any influence over our government when so many questioned the Iraq war. The government didn’t even hesitate at over a million people asking them to make a different decision. Instead they did as their wallets told them, the big business and rich elite who could make money out of the genocide.
A democracy is where all participate, yet, for a variety of reasons, in the 2001 general election turnout dropped from 71.4% to 59.4%, less than 6 out of 10 eligible voters took part. Out of this 61.3% of the UK population that did vote, only 35.3% voted for the winning party (Labour). The majority of the population of Britain did not put an X in the box marked Labour, and therefore did not ask for Tony Blair to be a world leader representing them and being their ‘voice’. (“How can 36% of the vote give one party total power?” J Freedland, May 7, 2005 The Guardian Newspaper)
This is not democracy.
Anarchy follows a true idea of democracy whereby we make decisions through consensus. Consensus is a group decision making process that not only seeks the agreement of most participants, but also to resolve or mitigate the objections of the minority to achieve the most agreeable decision. It allows everyone to participate and everyone’s ideas to be heard. An X next to a box doesn’t allow me to say which policies I do agree with, what I would change, why I didn’t put an X in that box. It isn’t even recognised when I spoil the ballot paper to say no I don’t want any of that, I want something completely different.
“But that can’t happen, people can’t agree”
Well in my experience they can With I Bike MCR we reach consensus really easily, But that’s only a few people. I have facilitated meetings of hundreds of people whereby affinity groups sat together with spokespersons. The affinity group came to a decision then the spokesperson took that to the other spokespersons. The decisions went backwards and forwards until everyone agreed.
It was like when you’re with your best mates on a Saturday night and you’re deciding what pub to go to. You don’t have a ballot box and start voting as to whether the Queen of Hearts is better than the red lion you just know what will be better. You decide together don’t you? That’s why their politics are shit. Its because they don’t make sense. Voting and putting a leader in charge of your night out doesn’t make sense. And neither does putting a leader in charge of your life. It’s the same thing. You know what its like, going to the pub where you all discuss it but then all realise what’s best. Well it was like that but instead of just a few of us there were hundreds representing thousands. It was then that I saw we don’t need leaders. We can take control of our own lives as a collective, where everyone is autonomous and can do whatever they like but they are also part of a wider community and so consider and take responsibility for the actions of that group. And if it turns out that pub is shit then we move to a different one…or make that one better!
So many people say “Yeah that all sounds great but who will do the washing up? The trains will never run on time”. Well let’s be honest they don’t run on time now! Anarchists believe that when we are in control of our own lives and are able to take responsibility for ourselves that we will value our place in a community more. Right now we are unable to participate in society and that has bred apathy, low self-esteem, anti social behaviour, a hatred for work and an incredible feeling of isolation and alienation. These feelings may only be overcome when we can feel truly part of something and truly accepted and valued. Anarchy offers this (and so much more).
This lifestyle is not a million miles away. People have already begun to organise and live in this way or at least move towards socially, physically and spiritually being ready for it.
One New Years Eve I was sat with some anarchist friends who asked me if I could change one thing about the world what would it be? I told them that it would be for everyone to ride bicycles and everyone laughed. But I meant it. Bicycles allow us to interact with our surroundings and so immediately we feel responsible for our actions, much more so than if we were separated from them by metal and glass.
For everyone to make a conscious decision to ride bikes instead of cars it would mean that everyone had chosen to respect each other and themselves. They will have chosen not to pollute the earth. A bicycle forces us to take responsibly for our actions- if we crash we’ll hurt ourselves and someone else. Like anarchy, a bicycle gives us autonomy but also requires us to consider the wider community and environment and take responsibility for our actions.
I think that choosing to ride a bicycle over driving a car is a small step that will spiritually and intellectually help us move towards anarchy. Towards a society that is mindful, caring, spiritual, respectful and feels connected with the world.
Join the Revolution…Ride a bike!
