* You've probably all heard that BikeKC passed the City Council today by a vote of 11 to 1/2 (the "1/2" being Ed Ford, who, in a hilarious slip, voted "aye" and then quickly caught himself and changed to "nay"--taking the average of these two, I conclude it is a 1/2 vote).
* Thanks to all who have contributed in any way to the LONG fight to get this proposal developed, get it out of the committee, and finally get it passed by the full council today. I know many, many people have been involved with this over a period of years, and ALL of them should be vigorously patting themselves on the back right now!
One way the "big guys" beat down grassroots movements like bicycling is by s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g things out with delay after delay. In a grassroots organization, people just start to lose steam after a while--there are only so many times in a row you can miss work (or whatever) to come to a boring meeting on a Wednesday afternoon. Meanwhile, the big guys just love delays because the more boring meetings they have to attend, the more they get paid.
So the fact that we outlasted them says something good about us!
* Special thanks to all those who have put up with my many, often repetitive, emails over the last weeks. I think things will return more to normal now.
But--I have to say that BikeKC is the BIGGEST thing ever to happen in Kansas City bicycling. Today I called it the biggest day in Kansas City cycling since the invention of the bicycle. I don't think that is an exaggeration.
And the KCBicycle email list has absolutely been ground zero for BikeKC. It is very fair to say that without KCBicycle, BikeKC *may* not have passed, may have been subject to further delay (in hopes of letting it die of obscurity), almost certainly would have been subject to amendments that would have diluted it greatly, and almost certainly would NOT have passed with such an overwhelming majority.
Our campaign of writing, calling, emailing, riding, attending, and notifying media really, really, REALLY paid off.
This has been an astonishing example of the power of the internet to organize. The only hard expenses have been a couple of mailings I did to bike shops, and the T-shirts. All the rest has been entirely organized online--something that simply could not have been done 15 or 20 years ago. Our type of campaign would have been MUCH more expensive or much more ineffective just a few years ago.
So let's remember what we HAVE DONE and what we CAN DO!
And thank you all again!
--Brent
posted by Brent Hugh at
Sunday, August 25, 2002 |
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