Archive for the 'Equity' Category

In honor of National Bike Month, we’re spotlighting how bicycles are tools for personal empowerment, social justice and community development in our with our “Where the Ride Takes Us” web series. Today’s post features the radical revolution of the Ovarian Psycos, an all-womyn bike crew in Los Angeles.

“Ovarian Psycos is a bicycle brigade. Ovarian Psycos is a movement comprised of young women of color who refuse to accept the status quo. We’re trying to create change in our neighborhoods, so we are forging our own path with bicycles. This is our own way of protesting. We think our bicycles are a revolutionary concept.” – Ovarian Psycos documentary

In 2010, a small band of young womyn in East L.A. found solidarity in riding bikes together — and discovered the power of the bicycle as a vehicle for revolution.

Established in Boyle Heights on the East Side of Los Angeles, the Ovarian Psycos host monthly rides on the full moon, raising awareness about issues that directly impact women, like domestic abuse. They’ve shattered stereotypes about bicycling with their assertive presence and slogan: “Ovaries so big, we don’t need no balls.” Both playful and powerful, they’ve reclaimed the streets with “Clitoral Mass” and created a strong voice for womyn of color in the bicycle movement.

Focused on providing a safe space for womyn of color, the Ova also become a uniting presence in their community, organizing events like the Black & Brown Unity Ride, with other diverse groups like the Black Kids on Bikes.

When a trio of Ovarian Psycos took the podium at the National Women’s Bicycling Summit for the “Beyond Spandex, Toward Social Justice” panel, they ignited the crowd. Twitter blew up with folks sharing their vision and pride. They instantly became an inspiration to everyone in the room.

I dare you to try to watch the trailer for their new documentary just once.

Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director

Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.

In honor of National Bike Month, we’re spotlighting how bicycles are tools for personal empowerment, social justice and community development in our with our “Where the Ride Takes Us” web series. Today’s post comes from Neil Walker, a leading League Cycling Instructor Coach, a youth program coordinator for Metro Atlanta Cycling Club, founder of Cycles and Change and member of the League’s Equity Advisory Council.

Two years ago, the Atlanta Bike Coalition, the Dream Team and Metro Atlanta Cycling Club partnered with City Councilman Aaron Watson to do a series of rides called “Living Smarter.” These rides were developed to support farmers markets and community gardens.

There has always been the conversation about quality food and the fact that it isn’t affordable for those that are financially challenged. Unfortunately, whole foods are not an option when you are living on a limited budget — but visiting the local community gardens and understanding how they work gives parents a more viable option.

The initial idea was to find a way to deal with obesity and Type 2 diabetes. We have always worked with nutrition as part of our  programming but most of it had been done through our partnership with the East Atlanta Kids Club. The Tour de Farm was different than anything else that had been done in Atlanta — an opportunity to educate our youth contingent (The Dream Team and The Drew Charter School Bike Club) on healthy eating choices and  affordable food options other than the local supermarkets.

Each farm or vendor site represented a unique aspect of local sustainable agriculture, offering a great learning experience — with riders having the option of participating in the whole tour with camping or for one-day only. All meals and snacks were provided and primarily sourced from the farms on the tour and other market vendors and partners fincluded the East Atlanta Farmers Market, the Grant Park Farmers Market, Whole Foods, The Atlanta Bicycle Coalition, Loose Nuts Cycles, Georgia Organics, and the participating farm sites.

While bike tours are common, it’s not often you get to camp out on an urban farm and have a casual dinner with one of the city’s hottest chefs. The kids not only saw the backyards and patched pieces of land that urban farmers are utilizing; they also get to see behind the scenes of some of the most popular new food entrepreneurs. From experiencing sausage making to perfecting a croissant, the event highlighted the most unique and edgy parts of the Atlanta local food scene.

The response from the kids was superb; after all, they love to ride and they love to eat! The most fascinating part for me was to see them get involved. They have no problems getting their hands dirty. The knowledge they received during those rides and the various classes have birthed two new Community Gardens in areas that were once abandoned lots.

The other aspect is that they are aware of terms such as GMO (genetically modified organism), saturated fats, cholesterol and pesticide. They now know that “you are what you eat.” They know that potato chips and sodas are not an option — and the proper foods they should eat to help fuel their bodies on our weekly bike rides.

It all works together, exercise (cycling), proper nutrition and the rest. Overall, it has been a success for the farms, the farmers markets and for the riders. We are looking forward to the second annual Tour de Farms and to continuing to ride, as well as educate and inform.

The collaboration of bicycling and proper nutrition is just one of the ways we are fighting against obesity and other health related disparities in our city.

Read more about Neil and his efforts in the January/February issue of American Bicyclist. 

Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director

Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.

In honor of National Bike Month, we’re spotlighting how bicycles are tools for personal empowerment, social justice and community development in our with our “Where the Ride Takes Us” web series. Today’s post comes from Kristin Gavin, founder of Gearing Up, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit that uses bicycles to help women transition from abuse, addiction and incarceration. 

In my early twenties I began using a bicycle for transportation, to get around Seattle and, frankly, to avoid having to pay for parking or wait for public transportation. Nearly immediately, I recognized I was arriving to my destinations in much better spirits than I would have had I driven. This enthusiasm led me to find a job as a bicycle tour guide.

Kristin Gavin, pictured right

Over the course of four seasons leading bicycle tours, I witnessed countless emotional and social changes among accomplished professionals and recreational enthusiasts. Week after week the same theme was unfolding: a day in the saddle can be transformative.

It’s a relational experience in which new friendships are established, new places explored, and unforgiving emotions managed. My experiences as a tour guide inspired me to return to graduate school to study exercise and sport psychology – and further investigate how physical activity can be an effective intervention for adults managing anxiety and depression.

Gearing Up is a result of my master’s internship experience at a women’s residential recovery home in the Mt. Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia. Founded on National Bike to Work Day in 2009, Gearing Up is a Philadelphia-based non-profit organization whose mission is to provide women in transition from abuse, addiction, and incarceration with the skills, equipment, and guidance needed to safely ride a bicycle for exercise, transportation, and personal growth.

In addition to the scientifically proven benefits of exercise in combating depression and anxiety – which for many are both root causes of addiction and obstacles to recovery – exercise-based programs build self-esteem through tangible accomplishment and the ongoing goal of positive progress. Group bike riding in particular has additional advantages, including learning how to build and maintain something valuable (the bike), gaining a mode of transportation for potential employment purposes and, of course, the camaraderie of accomplishing a common goal through teamwork.

Bicycles – they can save the world!

Click here to watch the trailer of a new documentary about Gearing Up.

Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director

Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.

Last year, the League celebrated Bike Month with our daily Why I Ride web series. This year, in our “Where the Ride Takes Us” series, we’re spotlighting how bicycles are tools for personal empowerment, social justice and community development. Today’s post comes from Mario Giampieri, a delivery cyclist in New York City and a co-founder of the Biking Public Project.

I started riding a bike in the suburbs of Denver when I was seven years old, but, as I grew up and my world expanded, distances made riding an impossible means of transportation (even my school was 20 miles away). That same mentality persisted throughout high school, especially after I turned 16 and got a car.

But, when I moved to New York two years later, I noticed that everyone that rode around on a bike just seemed so… happy. I saw people riding and they looked free and in control of how they got around, and they were always smiling.

Needless to say, I wanted in on that action.

The first bike I bought in New York was dumpy to say the least — it literally fell apart over the course of two years. One day, as I was riding, a pedal just… fell off in the middle of the street. But I guess that’s what you get when you pay $20 for a rusty road bike at a stoop sale. After that, I decided to invest some more money in my ride! Soon after, I was looking for a job and a friend of mine delivered cookies. I realized that getting paid to ride a bike was about as good a gig as I could ever hope for, and started delivering for this bakery. After about a year-and-a-half, and several vicious struggles between fellow delivery workers and management, most of us quit. They cut our hourly rate (which was $5/hr, plus tips) and were generally very nasty to us.

Over the course of the next year, I started delivering for another four restaurants at various levels of frequency, and was generally happy doing it. The money was usually decent, although it fluctuated quite a bit (as it goes, when you depend on tips). I’ve been doored on several occasions on the job, and have been in a number of other accidents in the line of work, which of course went on no matter what the weather was like. Sadly, tips didn’t often reflect conditions, and were often stingy even in snow storms or downpours.

From Bicycle Utopia’s “Am I Invisible? A Portrait of New York City Bicyclists” Credit Andrew Shiue

After about a year and a half into this line of work, it really began to strike me as to just how much I stood out as a delivery guy — the vast majority of other delivery workers I saw out on the streets were Latino or Asian, and I became curious as to why that was. It didn’t take long to find out that there was very little being done to represent this huge, ever-present (but often ignored or scorned) workforce that provided such a widely used service to a lot of New Yorkers.

There was some existing support systems in place for traditional bike messengers, and others still for restaurant workers, but very little work has been done at this intersection of the two. It was about at this time in 2012 that Helen [Ho, now development director for Recycle-A-Bicycle] and I went to the Youth Bike Summit and realized that little work had also been done to reach out and connect with and engage female and minority riders more broadly. It was after that conversation that the two of us, along with our friends Shelma Jun and Jessame Hannus started the Biking Public Project to try and change that.

The goal of BPP: Expand local cycling advocacy discussions by reaching out to underrepresented bicyclists around New York City including women, people of color, and delivery cyclists.

From left: Mario, Helen Ho, Shelma Jun and Jessame Hannus

These days, I ride mostly for fun or to commute around — the bicycle still represents freedom and a sense of agency to me, just as it did when I first saw people riding around New York five years ago. It makes it easy to travel in between places that public transportation forgot, and transforms any sort of mundane trip into a healthy endorphin rush. I recently started delivering pizzas again on the side, partially as a favor to friends at a restaurant I always very much enjoyed working for, and partially because any excuse to ride a bike for seven hours is reason enough.

I still think that being a food delivery worker is a largely thankless job, but I have high hopes that through our work at the BPP we can celebrate the diversity of the cycling community — including, and highlighting, the thriving economic system that depends on bicycles and workers — and get more delivery cyclists involved in ensuring that they can do their jobs safely (and have fun, too!).

I wouldn’t trade my years of experience as a delivery worker for anything, nor would I ever trade in the freedom my bike offers for the confines of a car.

If you’re in NYC, help BPP celebrate its first birthday on May 8!

Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director

Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.

Last year, the League celebrated Bike Month with our daily Why I Ride web series. This year, in our “Where the Ride Takes Us” series, we’ll be spotlighting how bicycles are more than means of recreation and transportation, but tools for personal empowerment, social justice and community development. Today’s post comes from Mathew Portell, the founder of Ride for Reading, in Nashville, Tenn.

During my first year of teaching, I asked my students to read for 15 minutes at home each night. One student replied that he didn’t have any books at home to read. It didn’t take me long to realize that student’s problem wasn’t unique. According to the Handbook of Early Literacy Research, the ratio of books per child in low-income neighborhoods is 1 age-appropriate book for every 300 children.

I felt compelled to do something to help my students and others like them — so I combined my passion for cycling and reading. The result: Ride for Reading.

Our mission is to promote literacy and healthy living by donating books via bicycle to children from low-income areas. Since our start in February 2008, RfR has donated more than 110,000 books, delivering them by bicycle to kids at Title I schools.

Every month in Nashville, as many as 40 cyclists gather and ride to the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods with books in tow.  The riders arrive to smiles, homemade welcome signs, and cheering children. Once they come to a stop, a RfR representative speaks to the children about the importance of a healthy life and literacy — and describe the various types of bikes ridden by the volunteers (mountain, road, commuter, tandem, etc.).

Then the children raise their right hand and pledge: I promise to read my book twice. I will never ever throw my book away. I will pass it on to a friend, family member, neighbor, classmate or someone else I know. And I promise to be the best student for the rest of the year

In 2011, we brought our mission to Interbike — and, with the help of several industry companies, government agencies, and other organizations, more than 100 volunteers showed up to help transport more than 2,500 books to the students of Peterson Elementary School in Las Vegas. The first year was such a success that RfR completed a second Interbike delivery in 2012 and is planning its third delivery during Interbike 2013!

In order to help more children, we began a national push called Ride for Reading Week in May. During this week, RfR volunteers and partners across the nation host their own book delivery via bicycle.  In 2013, there are 20 cities, from Maryland to California, who will be spreading Ride for Reading’s mission to children who come from low-income areas.  The organization is ecstatic to be partnering with Colorado Women’s Cycling Project, Stan’s NoTubes, Pivot Cycles, RideKick, Primal Wear, Girl Bike Love / Cyclofemme, Global Bikes, Safe Routes Philly, Devon Balet Photography and many local bike shops across the country.  RfR is also honored to have an amazing partnership with Better World Books! which is donating thousands of books to partnering cities around the country.

In 2008, I met professional mountain biker Dejay Birtch. Since then, Dejay has supported RfR in a variety of ways, including raising funds for the organization through his 2011 Tour Divide finish. This partnership led to the launch of Team Ride for Reading in 2013! Dejay will be wearing Ride for Reading’s colors as he races nationally and internationally. The team will not only focus on winning races, but also informing the public of the need for books in the homes of children in low-income areas.

Ride for Reading believes that education is not only found within the four walls of a school building. Within the pages of a book you can go anywhere, see anything, and experience everything. Every child deserves that despite economic status. To donate or learn more about our organization please visit us at www.rideforreading.org.

Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director

Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.

Often when we use a term, we fail to grasp its full impact or the significance of the context in which it is being used. To get a sense of what I mean, ask a sampling of people what they understand the word “race” to mean, and you’re likely to get answers that span multiple meanings.

While this dexterity in language can be exciting and useful for those of us cashing in on that high-wage-earning English degree, multiple uses in language can act as barriers to mutual understanding — and in many cases progress. So instead of playing one big game of organizational telephone, the Equity Advisory Council is working to create some working definitions in which to frame the complicated conversation around making biking accessible to all.

Recently the group developed some shared definitions around some key terms that kept popping up in our conversations on this topic. We wanted to ensure that, when these terms are used, everyone has a clear sense of their implications, usage and meaning. While these definitions are being utilized by the Council — and likely the League — they are not by any means the only appropriate definitions for these terms. We’d love to get your feedback on how others have used shared language to have difficult conversations in their communities and what other terms might be helpful in moving these conversations forward.

Here’s what we came up with:

Diversity:

The acceptance of members from different types of self identified groups into an organization or unit.

Diversity includes all the ways in which people differ, and it encompasses all the different characteristics that make one individual or group different from another. It is all-inclusive and recognizes everyone and every group as part of the diversity that should be valued. A broad definition includes not only race, ethnicity, and gender — the groups that most often come to mind when the term “diversity” is used — but also age, national origin, religion, disability, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, education, marital status, language, and physical appearance. It also involves different ideas, perspectives, and values.

Inclusion:

The act of creating environments in which any individual or group can be and feel welcomed, respected, supported, and valued to fully participate. An inclusive and welcoming climate embraces differences and offers respect in words and actions for all people.

Inclusion integrates the fact of diversity and embeds it into the core mission and institutional functioning of an organization. It is the active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with diversity —  in communities with which individuals might connect — in ways that increase one’s awareness, content knowledge, cognitive sophistication, and empathic understanding of the complex ways individuals interact within systems and institutions.

Equity:

The guarantee of fair treatment, access, opportunity, and advancement for all, while at the same time striving to identify and eliminate barriers that have prevented the full participation of certain groups. The principle of equity acknowledges that there are historically underserved and underrepresented populations and that fairness regarding these unbalanced conditions is needed to assist equality in the provision of effective opportunities to all groups.

Equity is the just and fair inclusion into a society in which everyone can participate and prosper. The goals of equity must be to create conditions that allow all to reach their full potential, erasing disparities in race, income, ability, geography, age, gender and sexual orientation.

Are there other terms or definitions that you’ve found essential to having productive discussions about Equity, Diversity or Inclusion in cycling? Share them with us and others and who knows we might be able to develop some other common definitions.

Want to help us define our focus on Women and Equity here at the League? You can do just that by filling out our Women & Equity survey so we can make sure our work around equity shares and advances your work, too.

Photos: Alliance for Biking & Walking Photo Library

Hamzat Sani
Equity and Outreach Fellow

Hamzat joined the League in September 2012 after working with the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition. Before working in biking, Hamzat worked with Martin Luther King Jr.’s son as a Program Associate at The King Center in Atlanta. A founder of the Red, Bike and Green chapter in Atlanta, Hamzat sees biking as a hub for change on the communal level.

Last week, Women Bike hosted its latest webinar on “Getting More Moms and Families on Bikes” — with a great line-up of panelists and an amazing turn-out of engaged participants. Stay tuned to the blog tomorrow for the recording and slides!

One common barrier that came up during the conversation was the up-front expense of family-oriented gear and the challenge of engaging low-income women and families in riding. It’s certainly a big issue that we’ll be digging into more deeply, but I was immediately reminded of the amazing work around this issue being done by Cycles for Change up in Minneapolis.

Following-up on the discussion last week, I checked in with Claire Stoscheck, the Cycles for Change Community Partners Bike Library Director, to provide some insight into their successful efforts to engage women and moms from diverse economic and racial demographics….

Claire Stoscheck, second from R, discussed Cycles for Change efforts at the 2012 National Women’s Bicycling Summit

Cycles for Change is really committed to equity in its programming; how does that extend to your outreach to women and families?

The goal of Cycles for Change is getting access to bikes and bike education to the communities most underrepresented in the bicycle movement and culture. Apart from targeted outreach through community partners to diverse economic and racial communities, we also work to eliminate the gender gap in cycling, as well as empowering women riders by working with community partners who are led by and for women in the Twin Cities. Through our Community Partners Bike Library program, we provide women with free bikes to borrow (fully accessorized for transportation purposes), as well as trailers and tag-a-longs for people with children. We have found that many women — in particular women from the diverse immigrant communities in the Twin Cities — do not know how to ride a bike. We teach extensive Learn to Ride classes to adults in order to open up the world of cycling to more women.

What specific programming do you offer that makes cycling more accessible to low-income and underserved communities? What barriers have you discovered — and overcome — for women with this program?

Training the trainers for Cycles for Change Learn To Ride program

The programs we offer to make biking more accessible include the Community Partners Bike Library, in which we partner with 18 community partners to lend 275 bikes and 30 trailers to low-income community members, following up with bike education classes and leadership development programming. We also offer an Earn-a-Bike program where participants can learn basic bike mechanics and volunteer six hours in order to earn themselves a bike free of charge.

These programs help to overcome one of the major barriers for low-income women: cost. The programs are completely free of charge. In addition, the Bike Library teaches Learn to Ride classes so women who don’t know how to ride can learn, and we offer child trailers to accommodate women with kids. The Bike Library loans bikes that are customized for each individual, so that we find the right fit for women no matter her size or shape and provide her with a comfortable ride.

Finally, through our leadership development we are working with and empowering women leaders in the bike movement from diverse backgrounds who then are inspirations to others in their communities to break cultural norms and ride a bike, despite the taboos.

What has been the response or feedback from participants or the community?

The response to the Bike Library has been tremendously positive. You can read some of the stories and testimonials in the 2012 Bike Library Zine called “Pedaling Forward”– just click here to read some amazing stories about the joys of cycling by participants in the Bike Library!

What advice or tips would you have for other advocacy organizations, bike shops or co-ops who are starting outreach to women generally or moms / families specifically?

Be conscious of access to bikes and trailers, and find a way to provide women with free or very affordable bikes. Be conscious of women with families, and offer trailers and tag-a-longs for the kids. Try partnering with non-profits that work with diverse communities and have bi-cultural and bi-lingual experience who can help bridge language/cultural barriers. Offer child-care and interpretation/translation. Be aware of structural barriers that women face to biking, including poverty and double responsibility (in our patriarchy, women are expected to not only work but also do the bulk of housework and care-taking). Work to change the structures! For more information please contact me at claire@cyclesforchange.org or visit www.cyclesforchange.org

What’s your organization doing to engage moms — from diverse backgrounds? Share in the comments!

Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director

Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.

Exactly two months ago we gave our dedicated blog followers a sneak peak of the newly selected Equity Advisory Council, before its formal announcement at the National Bike Summit. Since then, the Council has been busy meeting, reviewing League policy and organizational history and informing League resources.

The day before the Summit, all members of the Council gathered for this first time, getting to know each other, becoming familiar with the League’s inner workings, and meeting with the League’s Board of Directors. During the first Council meeting, members learned about League history before launching into a fruitful preliminary discussion about how to update, expand and enhance the organization’s policies, outreach and programming to be more representative and inclusive. The Council then ended the day having dinner with the League’s Board of Directors, who pledged support for the work and (coming) recommendations of the Council.

The Council had its first monthly (virtual) meeting this week, defining and solidifying key terminology around the issue of equity. We will be sharing some of these definitions and terms with you soon. Next on the Council’s buffet-sized plate is setting some concrete goals and outcomes to help keep our collective eyes on the prize: better cycling for ALL!

We’re doing our best to synthesize all the great research, ideas and people we encountered at the Summit; keep up with a fast moving Equity Advisory Council and gather information from YOU about the great work being done around Women and Equity around the country, as well as the best ways to support you in your efforts.

How can you get involved in this important work? Click here and fill out our mini-survey on Women and Equity by April 12.

Want to stay connected to the Equity Initiative at the League of American Bicyclists? Stay tuned to this blog, keep a lookout for a dedicated page on our new website and shoot me your questions, suggestions and critiques: hamzat@bikeleague.org

 (Photo: Equity Advisory Council and League Board dinner. Credit Brian Palmer)

Hamzat Sani
Equity and Outreach Fellow

Hamzat joined the League in September 2012 after working with the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition. Before working in biking, Hamzat worked with Martin Luther King Jr.’s son as a Program Associate at The King Center in Atlanta. A founder of the Red, Bike and Green chapter in Atlanta, Hamzat sees biking as a hub for change on the communal level.

The League wants your help in advancing equity and women’s participation in bike advocacy. You game? We thought you might be.

We’ve recently launched two initiatives to start institutionalizing some real change. The Women Bike program is empowering, engaging and elevating more women to get on a bike and ride, as well as influence the bike advocacy world. We’re also developing a full-scale Equity Initiative, with our new Equity Advisory Council charged with guiding the organization’s efforts to become a model for equity, diversity and inclusivity both in its internal and external programming.

Both initiatives are off to a great start — and now its time to make sure we keep the momentum going by highlighting the work you’ve done and are doing around equity and women in biking. We need your help to:

• Identify initiatives related to equity and women around the country
• Understand what resources would be helpful to YOU as we move forward
• Benchmark key demographics among cycling organizations currently

So please take a moment to fill out our brief, online survey by April 12th — and circulate to other organizations that might be interested, as well.

***Extra bonus: Is there work around issues of equity or women in cycling that you can’t wait to tell someone? Well, stop waiting and post in the comments section. Who knows? Your story might be our next post!

(Photo: Eboni Hawkins of Red, Bike & Green – Chicago is a member of the League’s Equity Advisory Council. Credit Brian Palmer)

Hamzat Sani
Equity and Outreach Fellow

Hamzat joined the League in September 2012 after working with the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition. Before working in biking, Hamzat worked with Martin Luther King Jr.’s son as a Program Associate at The King Center in Atlanta. A founder of the Red, Bike and Green chapter in Atlanta, Hamzat sees biking as a hub for change on the communal level.

Veronica Davis couldn’t have put it better: “A lot of times we try to make women this monolithic group — but we’re not.”

From the Fender Bender LGBT crew out of Detroit to the Kidical Mass moms of Washington, D.C., there are countless subgroups within the women’s cycling movement — and, of course, bicycling at large. At the National Women’s Bicycling Forum we hosted a session on “Community-Based Bike Advocacy: Building the Movement from the Groud Up,” to unpack the diverse definition of “bicyclist” and explore how to encourage and engage underrepresented communities to ride.

With Davis, the co-founder of Black Women Bike DC (and member of the Women Bike Advisory Board) at the helm, we heard from three leaders from across the country: Jenna Burton, founder of Red, Bike and Green; Megan Odett, founder of Kidical Mass DC and Adonia Lugo, co-founder of CicLAvia, City of Lights, and Bicicultures (to name a few of her endeavors).

Drawing on black history: We carry with us this element of black history and people notice in the mission that we’re talking about more than just bike riding.We’re talking about health, we’re talking about sustainability, we’re talking about economic and environmental conditions. Our mission expanded into this three point plan that parallels the 10-point plan the Black Panthers came up with… The second element of history you can see in our aesthetic and logo and colors we wear: red, black and green. That’s really how we found the inspiration for the title of the organization.

Creating space: We put on community bike rides and the purpose of these rides is to create space for African Americans to come together and enjoy each others presence and ride bikes together. We go on two- or three-hour bikes rides that are intergenerational: It’s for families, for young people, for elders.

Being visible: We are establishing a presence, not only in the Oakland community, but among the African American population within the Oakland community. We’re creating visibility, representing an image of what bike riding can look like within the black community. The more people see it, the more it becomes commonplace and less intimidating.

Empowering riders: Our bikes rides serve a number of purposes. It makes it less intimidating. Some of our cyclists come on a bike ride for the first time in their lives or since they were 9-years-old. After that first bike ride, it becomes easier and easier to form a lifestyle around bike riding.

Addressing gentrification: Oakland is part of a larger metro area that’s rapidly changing. It’s economically changing, changing what it looks like in terms of the people who live there and don’t live there. These bike rides are a social response to way those communities are changing. Just that visibility is a reminder that this is also a space where African Americans have been living for generations. A lot of people say that bike lanes are the first sign of gentrification, but by using those bike lanes and taking up that space, it’s a reminder that these bike  lanes are for us, as well. It’s a great way to engage in community and to have these conversations that are about more than just bike riding.

Establishing a new bike culture: The great thing about what we’ve been doing over the past few years has been establishing a culture around bike riding. We talk a lot about how we need to diversify the bike movement and diversify cyclists and the industry, but the change needs to happen within communities themselves, especially underrepresented and disadvantaged communities. One of our favorite sayings is “It’s bigger than bikes.” We’re using bikes as a tool for community development. We have this aesthetic — we’re wearing the colors and the history and the style that is unique and well-received with black community… We use the black power fists in some of our images and, as it becomes part of the culture, we’ll start to see more black people getting excited about bikes — for reasons we don’t think about right away.

Click here to watch Burton’s full presentation — and stayed tuned for more insight from the panel tomorrow.

Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director

Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.

Adonia Lugo’s resume is a veritable list of the most ground-breaking campaigns to bridge bicycling and social justice. As a co-founder of the City of Lights initiative (now Multicultural Communities for Mobility), CicLAvia, Bicicultures and the Seattle Bike Justice Project, Lugo is a leading voice and on-the-ground innovator in building a more inclusive movement.

Last month, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Lugo penned a powerful and provocative piece — “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Legacy and Bicycling: How Do We Build a Coalition for Bicycle Justice?” — that explores the necessity and complexity of uniting the goals of the bicycle and social justice movements. Still inspired by her call to action, we couldn’t be more excited to have Lugo’s perspective on the League’s new Equity Advisory Council — and as a speaker at the National Women’s Bicycling Forum.

Below is a short excerpt from Lugo’s MLK post; read the full post here and more of her thoughts on her blog, Urban Adonia. And register for the Women’s Forum to meet and hear from Lugo in person!

I grew up in a town where the Latino families on my side of the railroad tracks were seen as a menace by white residents on the other side, who pulled nearly all the white children out of the local school. When I joined students from the other local elementary school in junior high, a girl informed me that I had attended “the Mexican school.” It wasn’t until years later that it occurred to me that her parents may have been using a term left over from the era of segregated schools in Orange County. When I was a child, I used to watch white recreational cyclists ride past my family’s apartment, using our neighborhood as a connector between regional bike paths. When I got involved in the bike movement in Los Angeles in September 2008, I started hearing advocates talk about being “second-class citizens” on car-dominated streets. I was struck by the irony of hearing white men and women use that term. I wondered how many of them were the products of our society’s informal segregation, where Americans arrange themselves in suburban enclaves according to race and income.

… The burden is on the bike movement to show how our goals are not different from the goals of social justice movements. We want all people to benefit from bicycling. Good for the body, good for the city, good for the planet. But it’s hard to show this when we get dismissed as a selfish group of gentrifiers. We need to work together to confront the inequality that our cities are reproducing by using bike infrastructure as a means to raise property values and push out the poor. Too many American children grow up in isolation from other ways of life, and it is not hard to see how this might affect our ability to understand each other as adults.

… We need a human infrastructure to connect our divided communities. We need bike advocates to go to neighborhood groups and come to a consensus about livability, not as outsiders imposing on longstanding communities from outside, but as engaged leaders in the shift we must make to a cleaner future. Inspired by the work of Dr. King and all the people who have heeded his call, we can bring just conditions of social equality to our country, our streets, and our planet. But we have to work together…

Hear more from Lugo at the National Women’s Bicycling Forum!

Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director

Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.

The League is committed to a bold goal: The diversity of people on bikes will mirror the diversity of America by 2020.

We’ve started the wheels turning toward a more inclusive movement by bringing on a new Equity Fellow and convening an Equity Advisory Council. Now we want to ensure that our biggest event of the year — the National Bike Summit — is as diverse and accessible as possible.

And we need your help.

We’ve set up a campaign on Razoo to help raise funds for our new Cycling Opportunity Grants. These grants will help ensure the participation of bicyclists whose voices are often missing from the national conversation. All funding raised in the Razoo campaign will be awarded as scholarships to COG applications, covering the registration costs for folks’ who would otherwise be unable to attend.

The Cycling Opportunity Grant will benefit people like Mario Giampieri, a co-founder of the Biking Public Project, a delivery cyclist, and a native Spanish speaker. Mario works to expand local cycling advocacy discussions by reaching out to underrepresented bicyclists around New York City including women, people of color, and delivery cyclists.

So, are you in? GREAT! Click here to make your donation.

But don’t stop there — help us spread the word. Here are some ways you can help us get to our $5,000 goal.

Send this e-mail:

“I’m helping the League of American Bicyclists in its effort to make cycling more equitable for all and I thought you might want to help as well. The Cycling Opportunity Grant Fund will provide registration scholarships for the National Bike Summit and support the League’s effort to address equity in cycling. Based on available funding, applicants will be awarded scholarships to cover registration to the Summit in DC. The National Bike Summit is only weeks away so we need you to help us spread the word about this campaign and contribute to make this possible. Donate, share and repeat here: http://bit.ly/11ME4eB”

Tweet this:

“I support equity in bicycling. Join me: http://bit.ly/11ME4eB #CyclingEquity”

Facebook this Post:

“Support diverse voices at the National Bike Summit. Donate to the Cycling Opportunity Grant Fund and support a movement to build a Bicycle Friendly America for ALL communities. http://bit.ly/11ME4eB #CyclingEquity

We only have a small window to make this possible so we are relying on you to spread the word. Let’s see what we can make happen together.

Donate, share and repeat!

Hamzat Sani
Equity and Outreach Fellow

Hamzat joined the League in September 2012 after working with the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition. Before working in biking, Hamzat worked with Martin Luther King Jr.’s son as a Program Associate at The King Center in Atlanta. A founder of the Red, Bike and Green chapter in Atlanta, Hamzat sees biking as a hub for change on the communal level.

The a-ha! moments abounded earlier this week at the Equity and the Future of the American Economy conference, hosted by PolicyLink and SEIU.

The event, held at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., was packed with impressive panelists and speakers like Ben Jealous, president of the NAACP; Heather McGhee, Vice President of Policy and Outreach at Demos; and Jacob Hacker, a professor of political science at Yale University. They discussed how equity plays a vital part in building a healthier and sustainable economy.

I was joined by League colleague Darren Flusche, our Policy Director, and two words stuck out to us as we listened at the event: sustained growth.

Darren and I were busy scribbling notes as we made the connections to words like ‘equitable economy,’ ‘diverse constituencies’ and ‘principled conflicts.’

Here is some of what we heard and asked courtesy of Twitter and my really bad handwriting:

(Click here to read more tweets.)

• We have to illustrate just how economically beneficial bikes have become and continue to be to local economies. In case you haven’t noticed, Bicycling Mean Business, especially in many hard-hit communities recovering from difficult economic times. They are taking advantage of bicycle tourism and increased foot and bike traffic to foster growth.

• We have to make sure we have a “no-drop” mentality or we risk losing our movement. Think of the communities not currently served by safe cycling as new markets. If you don’t identify and work with new markets, no industry in the world will be able to sustain growth. Our cycling movement has to ensure that we don’t drop communities already stifled by a lack of viable transportation options.

These themes also bring us to our ongoing campaign on Razoo to help raise  money to fund registration costs to the 2013 National Bike Summit for youth, activists and advocates from communities that we don’t usually see at the bike advocacy table.

You could say we were inspired by the old saying “Either you’re at the table or you’re on the menu.” Click HERE to find out more and to donate.

Hamzat Sani
Equity and Outreach Fellow

Hamzat joined the League in September 2012 after working with the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition. Before working in biking, Hamzat worked with Martin Luther King Jr.’s son as a Program Associate at The King Center in Atlanta. A founder of the Red, Bike and Green chapter in Atlanta, Hamzat sees biking as a hub for change on the communal level.

The League aims to be the voice for everyone who rides a bike in the U.S., but we recognize that many important voices are still missing from our membership and leadership. Not only are women, youth and people of color underrepresented in policy discussions that impact their neighborhood health and economic development; they are also missing in many bicycle advocacy discussions — particularly at the national level.

One of the League’s priorities in 2013 — and beyond — is to change the face of bicycling and work toward true equity and inclusion in the movement. For years, diversity has been a buzz word, a one-hour conference topic. We need to do more. To address equity, an organization has to commit dedicated staff, time and funding.

So that’s what the League is doing.

We’re excited to announce the launch of a strategic process engaging diverse leaders and advocates to assist in addressing equity and inclusion within our organization, its programs and external efforts. This work will be informed, developed and led by the newly convened Equity Advisory Council, comprised of 10 diverse leaders from different backgrounds working in their communities to get more people on bikes.

Our hope is that the work of the Equity Advisory Council will not only benefit the League but will also be a tool for local cycling organizations to utilize in developing their own initiatives, ultimately building a Bicycle Friendly America that promotes and protects the rights of ALL cyclists.

The Equity Advisory Council will be formally announced at the National Bike Summit in March but we wanted to give you a preview of the individuals that make up this dedicated group of changemakers:

Brian Drayton is the founder and executive director of Richmond Spokes, a non-profit, entrepreneurial youth training program located in Richmond, Calif., that empowers young entrepreneurs to use cycling and sustainable transportation to enable physical, personal, and professional mobility.

Anthony Garcia is Principal of The Street Plans Collaborative and is a leader in the field of pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure. A member of the faculty at the University of Miami- School of Architecture, Anthony has a strong background in urban planning urban design, policy writing and code analysis.

Eboni Hawkins is the founder of the Chicago chapter of Red, Bike and Green, an organization that promotes biking for improve health, economic vitality, and environmental sustainability in the African American community.

Helen Ho is an advocate and thought leader in fields ranging from alternative transportation and waste management to environmental education and community empowerment. Helen currently serves as the Development Director for Recycle-A-Bicycle and is Co-Founder of the Youth Bike Summit.

Keith Holt is the Executive Director of Milwaukee Bike Works, which sees bicycling as a tool for sustainable change in the community. Keith has been advocating for trails and bicycling in large urban communities for almost a decade, emphasizing ridership in communities of color.

Adonia E. Lugo is the co-founder of City of Lights/ Ciudad de Luces and CicLAvia. A doctoral candidate at the University of California, Irvine, Adonia uses ethnographic research on bicycling to advocate for social justice in urban sustainability through the Bicicultures Research Network and her blog Urban Adonia.

Sara Pelerin is an 18-year-old intern at Recycle-A-Bicycle, where she designs and produces recycled bicycle jewelry and is helping to plan and organize the 2013 Youth Bike Summit. Sara is a resident of the Ali Forney Center and plans on attending college this fall to major in Environmental Science.

Anthony Taylor is a founding member of the Major Taylor Bicycling Club of Minnesota, a nonprofit social/recreational club that promotes safe and fun cycling geared toward the African-American communities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. He is also the Vice President of the National Brotherhood of Cyclists, a group of grassroots African American cycling clubs from around the country.

Neil Walker is a leading League Cycling Instructor Coach, a youth program coordinator for Metro Atlanta Cycling Club, and founder of Cycles and Change.

Elizabeth Williams is a bike advocate and League Cycling Instructor (LCI) focused on empowering underserved communities, particularly women and youth, to live healthy, active and green lifestyles through cycling. Elizabeth lives in Long Beach, California and is the Founder & President of Cali Bike Tours.

Come to the National Bike Summit to meet the Council in person — and look for some great things to come out of this group as we work to make cycling inviting and accessible for everyone on the saddle.

Hamzat Sani
Equity and Outreach Fellow

Hamzat joined the League in September 2012 after working with the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition. Before working in biking, Hamzat worked with Martin Luther King Jr.’s son as a Program Associate at The King Center in Atlanta. A founder of the Red, Bike and Green chapter in Atlanta, Hamzat sees biking as a hub for change on the communal level.

Bike advocates in Georgia decided to get creative this year: They used a chunk of their budget to provide scholarships to the National Bike Summit — with funding from car owners.

Georgia is one of 20 states that offer Share the Road license plates, and Georgia Bikes is one of a number of organizations that benefits from the Peach State’s plate sales. This year, the advocacy organization dedicated a portion of its funding to get more folks to the Bike Summit.

“I secured approval from Governor’s Office of Highway Safety to use part of our travel budget to offer Summit scholarships,” said Brent Buice, executive director of Georgia Bikes. But the scholarships weren’t just for first-timers. The criteria prioritized folks who are active in bike advocacy; diverse in background and experience; and hail from Georgia districts that are underrepresented at the Summit.

So who are the lucky recipients of these funds?

• Zahra Alabanza (pictured), Chapter Co-Founder of Red Bike and Green-Atlanta. RBG is “a community-building collective of Black urban cyclists seeking to [create] a relevant and sustainable Black bike culture.” Alabanza will also be speaking at the Summit on how to bring businesses on board.

• Julie Smith, President of Trails for Recreation and Economic Development (TRED) of Rome and Floyd County. TRED works in Floyd County (northwest of Atlanta, on the Alabama border) to sustain and clean-up trails, and urge the local government to install more bike infrastructure.

• Tracie Sanchez, Board Member of Griffin Bicycle Coalition. The coalition is a group of community leaders, government officials, and local business owners that are working to make the City of Griffin and Spalding County more bike-friendly.

• Tyler Dewey, Executive Director of BikeAthens. BikeAthens works ”to promote walking, cycling, and public transit as solutions to transportation needs in Athens through education, advocacy, and community service.”

We’re excited to have so many new faces at the 2013 National Bike Summit, thanks to Georgia Bikes — and certainly would love to see this model spread to other states, too!

It’s not too late for you to register for the Summit, too! Click here to learn more and sign up today!

Katie Omberg
Events and Outreach Manager

Katie joined the League in April of 2010. For the two years prior, she worked at the Corcoran College of Art + Design as a programs coordinator. Katie has a BA in Religion from Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass. She enjoys biking to work.

While he didn’t ride up to Capitol Hill, President Barack Obama showcased the city’s bicycle-friendly facilities during the inauguration last week, giving millions of Americans a glimpse of the bike lanes on Pennsylvania Avenue. When not occupied by a presidential motorcade or thousands of cheering supporters, those lanes are a steady stream of bicyclists, including many using Capital Bikeshare.

With so many people converging on D.C. to celebrate what some consider “a win for a more multiracial America,” I wondered: how are those facilities and the bike sharing system serving our multiracial cycling community?

To help answer that question, Darren Buck of Bikepedantic recently published his analysis on “Encouraging Equitable Access to Public Bikesharing Systems.” The 107-page report delves into how 20 bike-share programs across the country, including D.C., are working to ensure access to public bike sharing systems in low-income and communities of color.

While bike share systems are becoming a popular idea in many urban areas nationwide, where bike-share programs currently exist there is a persistent truth that they often don’t serve the populations that could benefit the most. Benefits associated with bike-share include:

• Greater transportation mode shift. (Fewer cars, more bikes)
• Neighborhoods w/ less greenhouse emissions. (Cleaner air)
• Lower household transportation expenditures. (Spend less to get to work)
• Increased accessibility to public transit. (Greater mobility without a car)
• Increase in physical activity. (Fewer shouting matches with your scale)

So who benefits from all this bike-sharing goodness? Well, it turns out its mostly well-educated, white users 34 years old and younger.

Why is this happening? Are low-income and minority populations too cool for bike-share? According to the report, there are some clear barriers that make the demographic of bike-share users more homogeneous than we’d like. There are both barriers to bicycling in general and barriers to bike-share use as well.

• Lack of access to bike facilities.
• Counties with high poverty and low educational attainment were less likely to have dedicated funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects.
• African Americans bike less but feel more threatened while cycling.
• Low-income households have lower rates of access to a bicycle.

There are several other barriers that make access to bike-share a difficulty for low-income users and people of color. One popular example from Capital BikeShare is the system’s requirement that riders pay with a credit card. This limits accessibility to low-income users that may not have credit cards or bank cards. Capital BikeShare responded with a Bank on DC campaign, which provided discounted membership via a partnership with local banks to make the service more affordable.

Another barrier is the location of bike share stations and how far they are from other stations and public transit. In an article from Grid Chicago concerning Chicago’s plans to unveil a bike-share system soon, Eboni Hawkins from Red, Bike and Green – Chicago noted, “In many black and Latino communities on the South and West Sides, destinations are farther apart than in dense North Side neighborhoods, which makes bike commuting more challenging.”

Outside of highlighting just how one sided bike-share user demographics might be, Buck’s report also hinted at some potential ways to address the imbalances. Just a few of the suggestions included:

• creating financial assistance programs directly targeting low-income users
• tapping bike-share users as advocates for bike facilities in underserved communities
• linking bike-share cards and fobs with public transit farecards
• providing user information in more than one language
• hiring diverse staff representative of the city’s population
• hosting workshops for low-income residents to learn how to use bike-share
• creating incentives for late-shift workers to use bikeshare due to a lack of public transit

Bike share systems are making a huge difference in getting more people out riding. But, if the benefits are confined to a limited group of users its appearance in urban centers will continue to beg questions like this: “If it is truly about behavioral change, make it available where it is really needed or where it will have impact,” said Councilman Paul Lopez in Denver, Colorado. “Is this truly about the issues and behavioral change or is this just for looks?”

Click here to read the full equity in bike sharing report.

Hamzat Sani
Equity and Outreach Fellow

Hamzat joined the League in September 2012 after working with the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition. Before working in biking, Hamzat worked with Martin Luther King Jr.’s son as a Program Associate at The King Center in Atlanta. A founder of the Red, Bike and Green chapter in Atlanta, Hamzat sees biking as a hub for change on the communal level.

What lies at the intersection of transportation and technology? In a word: TransportationCamp.

Put on by OpenPlans, I attended the most recent event last weekend in Washington, D.C., which brought together professionals, advocates and nerds like me who gladly give up their Saturday to delve into wonky discussions about urban transportation. Of course, balancing the wonk was the unconference structure: An interactive and spontaneous forum in which each attendee is empowered to propose and lead a session on a topic of their interest.

Not surprisingly, bicycles featured prominently into the lively and informative discussions.

My day started with a session called “Are we representin’? Bikes, infrastructure, crowd sourcing, equity, digital divide.” The session was led by Georgia Tech students who were involved in creating the CycleAtlanta smartphone app to collect bicycle ride data and apply that data to planning and prioritizing bicycle infrastructure projects. CycleAtlanta is a joint project between the City of Atlanta Department of Planning & Community Development, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Bicycle Coalition and Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC).

CycleAtlanta app

There was a lot of discussion about the need for data on actual trips to see where bicyclists ride and how current infrastructure affects route choice. Much of the conversation focused on whether data obtained by a smartphone app would be representative of average cyclists and how equity could be maintained in planning if our data is skewed towards engaged cycling enthusiasts likely to discover and use the app. Many outreach methods were brainstormed and everyone agreed that the data will be valuable, especially as the app’s functionality is expanded.

In the next session I learned about the difficulties that were faced by transit advocates in Atlanta while campaigning for a referendum. Equity issues were again a prominent part of the discussion and I was amazed by the complexities that face advocates as they deal with local and state governments. The strong showing from Atlanta-based groups was great to see, considering the setback of their failed referendum — and is a good sign for the upcoming TransportationCamp South on February 9^th.

After lunch I saw great visualizations of Capital Bikeshare data from MV Jantzen (see below) and innovative hardware from Social Bicycles. Capital Bikeshare is one of the few bikeshare systems that provides data to the public on a regular basis. It was amazing to see the different ways Jantzen worked with the data to make it meaningful and interesting. Seeing the data visually made me appreciate the work to ensure bikes are available throughout the system and where people need them.

 My day ended with a discussion of how we communicate about funding for transportation projects. Much of the discussion centered on historical distrust for transportation funding and a lack of knowledge amongst the general population about how much they pay for transportation — and what they get as a result. Developing better data and transparency were key tools that came up repeatedly in developing better messaging about transportation funding and engaging public ownership of our transportation network.

Overall, I had a great time interacting with members of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, Toole Design Group, and other organizations that believe that bicycles are an essential part of our transportation system. The unconference format not only encouraged participation, but made me feel at ease while attending my first transportation conference and it was great to see the energy of so many people directed at important transportation problems. For those that are interested in learning more about TransportationCamp and the things that were discussed visit: http://transportationcamp.org/.

Ken McLeod
Legal Specialist, Advocacy Advance

Ken joined the League in 2012 after graduating from William & Mary School of Law. He is a licensed attorney in the state of Virginia. During law school he worked for a private law firm in Cambodia and the Washington State Department of Natural Resources. Prior to that, Ken worked at a law firm in Orange County and a legal services provider in Seattle. He graduated from Pomona College in 2007 with a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. He began using his bike regularly after college and has been car-free since February 2012.

We need your knowledge and expertise to show Congress and the nation that Bicycling Means Business. We’re looking for the very best speakers to present their insight and expertise at the 2013 National Bike Summit — and the deadline for submissions is TOMORROW, December 13.

This year we’re looking for presentations on the following themes:

• Making the economic case for bicycling
• MAP-21 Implementation: Lessons learned
• Making cycling relevant in rural, small town and suburban communities
• Developing an effective strategy for the NEXT transportation bill

We’re also accepting proposals for sessions at the Women Mean Business event, hosted by the League’s new Women Bike program, on March 4 — immediately preceding the start of the Summit.

The Summit has a unique blend of participants from the bicycle advocacy community, the industry, and a wide variety of partners in health, environmental, transportation, and safety organizations. We’re looking for submissions that…

• are relevant to bicycle retailers, elected officials and advocates at the federal, state and local levels
• address equity and diversity in content and speakers
• are creative — thinking outside the box of boring Powerpoints and formulaic panel discussions

If you’re interested in presenting at the 2013 National Bike Summit, please complete this short online application by TOMORROW, December 13.

Questions? Contact Katie@bikeleague.org.

Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director

Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.

Last week, I had the pleasure of traveling up to New York City to help Recycle-a-Bicycle celebrate it’s 18th birthday. But their incredibly cool event was more than a fundraiser for their nation-leading work to empower diverse youth to become bicycle riders, advocates and mechanics. It was also to support their recovery work in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

And a couple of special guests from Giant Bicycles were there, too: Bevan Harris and Josh Fonner.

Working with both RAB and Transportation Alternatives, Giant recently donated 100 bikes to people in the areas hit hardest by Hurricane Sandy. By helping folks move about their neighborhoods and commute to work by bicycle, the “Ride NYC Forward” partnership is increasing mobility for residents in Rockaway, Red Hook, the Lower East Side, and coastal Staten Island.

“Thanks to the hurricane, it’s clearer than ever that a robust variety of transportation choices — including bicycles — makes New York City stronger and more resilient,” Paul Steely White, Executive Director of Transportation Alternatives said in the group’s press release. “We’ll be working hard with Recycle-a-Bicycle to get these bikes where they’re needed most.”

“Now more than ever, the bicycle is the way to go,” Pasqualina Azzarello, Executive Director of Recycle-A-Bicycle, said in the release. “We are grateful to partner with Giant USA and Transportation Alternatives to bring these bikes to people who need them most. Such a generous donation will serve to further relief efforts by providing transportation and delivering food and supplies. With the help of a dedicated team of mechanics and tremendous goodwill, we’ll get neighborhoods and businesses growing again.”

And the dedicated team of mechanics went to work just last weekend, assembling the Revel 2 bikes and getting them ready for the road.

On December 1, mechanics and volunteers from RAB assembled…

… 100 bikes for neighborhoods hardest hit by Hurricane Sandy.

Thanks to Giant for their generosity and RAB and TA for their active and innovative role in the hurricane recovery effort! Stay tuned to RAB’s Facebook page for updates as they “Ride NYC Forward!”

Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director

Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.

On this day, 134 years ago, a cycling legend was born: Marshall “Major” Taylor.

Born in rural Indiana in 1878, Taylor was a pioneer in American sport — not just in bicycling. Shattering cycling records even as a teenager, Taylor was the first African-American athlete to achieve the level of world champion and only the second black man to win a world championship. But, even more than his impressive victories on the track, Taylor was a trailblazer for equity in sport.

According to the Major Taylor Bicycling Club of Minnesota: “What made [Taylor's] accomplishments even more impressive was the fact that he was a black man who overcame open racism and overt threats of violence by those who did not want to see him succeed, because track cycling at that time was dominated by the Europeans. He established several world records during his 16 years of competition. In the 168 races in which he competed, he finished first in 117 and finished second in 32.”

As Taylor himself acknowledged in his autobiography: “In most of my races I not only struggled for victory but also for my very life and limb. Only my dauntless courage and the indomitable fighting spirit I possessed allowed me to carry on in the face of tremendous odds.”

That courage and spirit continues to inspire cyclists today, with dozens of Major Taylor cycling clubs in communities nationwide.

Let’s all take a moment today to tip our helmets to a true leader of our movement.

Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director

Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.

As Carolyn mentioned in her post yesterday, we both attended a the Facing Race conference this past week(end). Why, you might ask, would two League staff members sacrifice their weekends for a conference?

Well, one lesson that almost everyone took away from the recent election was that campaigns must be inclusive of a diverse America to win. Here at the League, our politics are simple: better biking for all. But in recent years that “all” hasn’t been as diverse and inclusive as it should be. We want to change that and it starts with educating ourselves.

After finally finding parking in downtown Baltimore that didn’t cost me a crank arm and a wheelset, I got to the second day of the conference just in time to catch most of the Opening Plenary. The plenary focused on issues of race and gender specifically, but the prevailing theme centered on the power of storytelling.

Panelist and journalist Janet Mock, for instance, spoke about the power of coming out as a transgender woman of color in the midst of an epidemic of LGBTQ kids taking their lives due to bullying and harassment. I couldn’t help but think, we cyclists have some pretty powerful stories to tell about why we ride, what motivates us and how we want to see our world. The plenary definitely reinforced the need for us to share those personal transformations.

Another great take-away from the plenary included thinking about our bi-gendered language, which doesn’t address potential advocates and club members that view gender beyond the binary. A great way to be inclusive is to use language that is multi-gender conscious and respective. Increasingly, local bike co-ops are getting the message and their memberships are seeing the benefits. Cycling facilities, clubs and resources should be developed in a manner where everyone feels safe, invited and considered.

After an energizing plenary, it was off to the first breakout session: Engaging White People in Racial Justice. The room was packed and overflowing into the hall, and there was incredible knowledge from leaders from Philly, Kentucky, New York and even Baltimore about mobilizing people that identify as white in working toward racial justice and equity in their communities.

Just a few great terms and highlights from the session:

• Collective liberation: What affects one, affects us all. In this session, the presenters used the term to frame white people taking ownership in the fight for racial justice as much as non-whites. But I saw it’s application in local advocacy for biking facilities, too. We all know the safest areas to bike in our communities; they have bike lanes, motorists that know you exist and, wait, was that a bike shop/cafe/bar? But once in a while our journey takes us beyond our usual roads and lands us in communities that have none of these things. The term collective liberation reminds me of the freedom we all feel when we get on our first bike and feel we can go anywhere and that we can’t just fight for cycling in our immediate communities but also for greater connectivity in others.

• Mutual interest: A young Jewish organizer spoke about the Jewish community in New York bringing together multi-cultural caregivers and their mostly white employers to talk about fair employment standards and the common ground between both groups. That got me thinking: What are some organizations in your community that share some mutual interest around bicycling? Is a local neighborhood association looking to get a street light or stop sign? Is there a Women in Business incubator in your area looking for opportunities? Is a local business district looking to boost foot traffic?

After lunch I checked out another session: From Colorblindness to Race Equity. By far my favorite quote from this session went something like: “Achieving equity is not a one shot deal; it should be like brushing your teeth everyday.” We already know this from our work: After all, getting a local politician to ride a bike for a photo-op doesn’t mean that she’ll be a sure vote for bike funding in the next legislative session. It’s important to have primers that can be used to make equity habitual and systemic. A primer could be something as simple as a  a few simple questions that remind leaders to consider whether they’re making a decision based on an implicit bias. Does your organization or club have a system in place to ensure that your outreach for members, staff and leadership is inclusive of diverse candidates?

Sadly, the conference had to come to a close, and the final plenary discussion — Culture Trumps Politics — gave us all some key perspective and one liners (you can find a few here) to take home. One thing that resonated with me was a comment from author and cultural artist/activist Jeff Chang: “After the laws change, how are we going to live together?” After we pass legislation like a 3-foot passing law, which is vitally important, we still have to coexist with one another as motorists, pedestrians and cyclists. While Chang’s context was calling for an increase in multicultural equity, it’s hard not to see its application to multi-modal equity.

While race can be a scary word, equity certainly isn’t At the crux of it all, the conference boiled down to discussing ways to create a more equitable America. Whether that equity is ensuring safety and accessibility for all types of transportation users, or ensuring opportunity and access for all groups of people, equity serves our mutual interest. As a community focused on making biking better for all, we have to seek racial equity as well. There are too many potential allies, opportunities and policy successes to gain. After all, we share some pretty remarkable mutual interests: better transportation choices, better air quality, better quality of life and better communities.

Click here to read more about the conference (and keep this event in mind for 2013)!

Hamzat Sani
Equity and Outreach Fellow

Hamzat joined the League in September 2012 after working with the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition. Before working in biking, Hamzat worked with Martin Luther King Jr.’s son as a Program Associate at The King Center in Atlanta. A founder of the Red, Bike and Green chapter in Atlanta, Hamzat sees biking as a hub for change on the communal level.

At bicycle gatherings over the past few years, I’ve attended discussions about building an inclusive movement, engaging more diverse communities in our work. We’ve started the sometimes difficult but absolutely critical conversation about race, class and bicycle advocacy.

But it’s not just about who’s at the table when decisions are made about our streets. It’s also about who’s engaged and how we’re doing our work within bicycle advocacy organizations themselves.

That’s why Hamzat and I went to the Facing Race conference last week. We know the League has a lot to learn.

Organized by the Applied Research Center — which addresses racial justice though media, research and leadership development — this national conference brought more than 1,400 people from the public, private and nonprofit sectors to Baltimore to learn how we can address social justice in our diverse work to build better communities.

Now, addressing racial inequity can be an uncomfortable topic, and, in my experience, that unease can push the conversation to the backburner as we scramble to fight the day-to-day fires of grassroots advocacy.  So for the first session I went to a panel on “Changing the Conversation on Race.” Right away, Maya Wiley, founder of the Center for Social Inclusion, made a great distinction about how we even approach conversations about engaging diverse communities.

In many cases, “we’re conflating racism with race,” she said. “If you start with racism, people feel like you’re accusing them of being really bad people. But the vast majority of Americans consciously believe that racism is bad. What they don’t always necessarily see, in a visual way, is how there is structural racial inequity. That doesn’t require bad actors. We want to get at the structural underpinnings — how even when institutions operate race neutrally, they may be reinforcing inequity that continues to exclude communities of color.”

Rinku Sen, ARC’s executive director, took that explanation a step further, explaining that there’s a difference between diversity and equity. Think of it like a party, she said. If she’s invited to a gathering, sure, it adds diversity. “But if I get to the party and the music doesn’t suit me and there’s no way for me to change the music, then I’m not going to stay at that party very long… Diversity is about getting bodies into the room; equity is about what people are able to do once they’re in the room. Diversity can get people to come to the meeting, but, without equity, they won’t necessarily pay any attention to what you say. Diversity is a good start, but equity is the real prize.”

That’s certainly a key point to remember as we work to broaden the number of folks at our growing bike party: Not just opening the door but getting everyone’s input on the playlist.

In many cases, that kind of change isn’t just about shifting folks’ personal beliefs. Perhaps even more importantly, it’s about creating policy, too. “Policy is a fundamental way in which we change attitudes,” Wiley said. “What takes attitude change to scale is changing the policies that continue to drive the decisions.”

Certainly, bike advocates know plenty about the power of public policy — we all work for good laws and funding criteria that lead to better streets for bicyclists. Many organizations and coalitions — like the Community Cycling Center in Portland; City of Lights in Los Angeles; and Local Spokes in New York City — are extending the circle of stakeholders, making sure city leaders hear the voices and needs of day laborers, refugees, low-income people and communities of color.

Especially in tough economic times, Milley Hawk Daniels, from PolicyLink, said her organization emphasizes: “Equity is a superior growth model.” And that’s more than a catchphrase. To help advocates, across a range of issues, advance equity in their campaigns, PolicyLink produced a guide called “GEARs: Getting Equity Advocacy Results.” The resource charts, step by step, the benchmarks, frameworks, and tools for measuring progress in equity efforts for policy change; click here to download.

But policy isn’t just the domain of our city council and members of Congress. Advocacy organizations and clubs create norms and standards, too. That’s why I was particularly interested in the “Internalizing Racial Equity Institutionally” session, which addressed how the policies in our employee handbooks and the overall culture of our nonprofits can make or break our efforts at inclusion.

Gita Gultanti-Partee, of Open Source Leadership Strategies, framed the issue succinctly. “We’re all hoping to be agents of change, but we’re also units of change,” she said. “How can we embody the change we wish to see?”

We spent the better part of two hours exploring that complex question — and many others. How do decisions get made in your organization? How do resources get distributed? How does someone become a leader? As Maggie Potapchuk, of MP Associates, pointed out “If we’re not intentional or explicit, we’ll constantly go to the default — recreating and embodying the same power dynamics we want to change.”

I can’t share the assessment tool we used because it’s still in development, but I can say the interactive session definitely got me thinking. Check out the resources offered by Potapchuk and Gultantee-Partee to start an inquiry into your organization’s culture and process.

… And stay tuned for more insight from the conference tomorrow!

Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director

Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.

We need your knowledge and expertise to show Congress and the nation that Bicycling Means Business. We’re looking for the very best speakers to present their insight and expertise at the 2013 National Bike Summit.

This year we’re looking for presentations on the following themes:

• Making the economic case for bicycling
• MAP-21 Implementation: Lessons learned
• Making cycling relevant in rural, small town and suburban communities
• Developing an effective strategy for the NEXT transportation bill

We’re also accepting proposals for sessions at the Women Mean Business event, hosted by the League’s new Women Bike program, on March 4 — immediately preceding the start of the Summit.

The Summit has a unique blend of participants from the bicycle advocacy community, the industry, and a wide variety of partners in health, environmental, transportation, and safety organizations. We’re looking for submissions that…

• are relevant to bicycle retailers, elected officials and advocates at the federal, state and local levels
• address equity and diversity in content and speakers
• are creative — thinking outside the box of boring Powerpoints and formulaic panel discussions

If you’re interested in presenting at the 2013 National Bike Summit, please complete this short online application by December 13.

Questions? Contact Katie@bikeleague.org.

Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director

Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.

Before returning to D.C. this fall, I lived — and became a bike advocate — in Atlanta. Late last month, I Megabus-ed 12 hours south to help the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition and Red, Bike and Green-Atlanta (a chapter I helped to co-found) gather support for dedicated bike lanes in one of the oldest African American neighborhoods in the country: Sweet Auburn Avenue.

Atlanta recently broke ground on a Street Car Project that will increase connectivity between downtown and the King National Historic site, a top tourist attraction. While city officials are pushing the project forward, there remains some concern that shuttling tourists from downtown to the historic site would preclude those tourist from spending their dollars with local businesses along the route. Also, as a city crippled by subpar transit, the Street Car provides little benefit to local citizens. So, in order to garner more support for the project the city initially promised to put in bike lanes along the street car route.

After this proposal won the support of local residents and cycling groups the city came back with another proposal that would maintain full bike lanes on one street and leave the other with interrupted bike lanes that are less safe. Well, the street that would be shortchanged is Auburn Avenue.

The mostly black neighborhood has struggled in recent years, while seeing a parallel street become a major bike thoroughfare that has blossomed economically — proving yet again that bikes mean business. Red, Bike and Green — a group focused on encouraging more blacks to bike in their communities — partnered with ABC and SOPO Bicycle Co-Op to host a bicycle tour of Sweet Auburn showcasing this incredible historical gem and gather the support of the community to advocate for complete bike lanes along the street.

Before the tour  though, it was time to get some signatures on our Letter of Support from local businesses and residents. Red, Bike and Green- Atlanta Co-Founder, Zahra Alabanza and I set out walking up and down Auburn Ave for the rest of the afternoon. Auburn Ave is lined with some of the oldest black businesses and buildings in the nation but is in the top 10 most endangered historic places in the country, as well.

The street is no stranger to bike activism either, after a 1890 ordinance segregated the original Street Cars in Atlanta, a group of black citizens and Auburn Ave business owners led a boycott to appeal the law. What was their preferred mode of travel? Bicycles.

Then it was time for the fun part. After gathering more than 40 our new closest friends we headed out from Troy Davis Park to begin Tour de Sweet Auburn: A Community Bike Tour of the Sweet Auburn District.

The group at Auburn Research library

The tour took us to several major historical spots along Auburn Ave. including Dr. Martin Luther King’s birth home; the headquarters of the Southern Christian Leadership Coalition (group founded in part by Dr. King); the oldest black barbershop in America; the Peacock nightclub, which, at one point, was the sole venue where black acts could perform; and some major black historical churches Big Bethel, Old Wheat Street and Ebenezer. Zahra provided some history about the area while Atlanta Bicycle Coalition ED Rebecca Serna pointed out the parts of Auburn that would have gotten bike lanes in the original proposal and explained the importance of connectivity to the rest of the city.

RBG-ATL Co-Founder Zahra Alabanza

ABC ED Rebecca Serna

An old ad using stereotypical depictions of black children still on the walls

Street art honoring Civil Rights Hero John Lewis

Community activist Mtamanika Youngblood, CEO at Historic District Development Corporation educating riders about keeping the community affordable for its original residents

After all that riding and learning it was time to refuel and talk about what we’d seen. As part of our outreach efforts a local restaurant welcomed us to dine with them at a nice discount. Oh and DINE we did at Mangoes Caribbean Restaurant! After devouring a delicious dinner it was off to more merriment at the historic Pal’s Lounge. The owner at Pal’s not only committed to having a bike rack installed when he saw all the bikers swarming into his spot, but he also had a drink ready for us in anticipation. If you visit Atlanta and end up at Pal’s make sure you order “The Spoke” and tell them RBG sent you.

Of course, the Sweet Auburn Ride was just my first stop back in Atlanta. Stay tuned for my next post about the Georgia-lina Bike Summit!

Hamzat Sani
Equity and Outreach Fellow

Hamzat joined the League in September 2012 after working with the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition. Before working in biking, Hamzat worked with Martin Luther King Jr.’s son as a Program Associate at The King Center in Atlanta. A founder of the Red, Bike and Green chapter in Atlanta, Hamzat sees biking as a hub for change on the communal level.

On Tuesday, I sat down with more than 20 active-transportation professionals and allies at the Moving Millennials workshop hosted by Transportation for America. The aim of the full-day session: Learn about trends in transportation for 18-35 year-olds — and figure out how to turn the decreased interest in driving into an increased energy around bicycling.

For those of you who attended the 2012 National Bike Summit, the subject may sound a bit familiar. We had a compelling keynote by Jason Ryan Dorsey, The Gen Y guy, who highlighted the distinguishing factors of this generation; many of which point to increased interest in active transportation.

The conversation was kicked-off by Phineas Baxandall, Senior Analyst at U.S. PIRG, who gave a great run-down of transportation trends across the board. A recent report from his organization, Transportation and the New Generation, put some compelling data behind what we already know: Millennials are driving less than the generations before them.

The chart Baxandall returned to again and again showed a 6 percent downturn in vehicle miles traveled since 2007 (below). “This is not a blip” he said.

So what’s the cause of the decline in driving? A lot of it stems from the millennials.

The under-35 age group is 25 percent of the transport population, and there was a 23 percent decline in VMT in that age group between 2001 and 2009. During that same span, biking rates shot up 25 percent, and walking rates rose 16 percent.

David Metz, a partner at the public policy research group Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates (FM3), shared some helpful insights into millennials’ values. Instead of donating time or effort, he said, millennials are more likely to support causes through monetary contributions. FM3′s research demonstrated that millennials value social ties and interconnectedness. They rated “success” not by how much money or material possessions they own, but by personal relationships such as a happy marriage, supportive friends, and strong family ties.

Between data, inspiring speakers, and insightful discussions, a question emerged: How do we get millennials engaged in bike advocacy? Of course, a question this big couldn’t be answered during a one-day workshop — but the conversation was energizing. Here at the League, we’re trying to get more youth involved through a consistent Facebook and attentive Twitter presence, as well as youth-rate memberships and a reduced registration fee for the National Bike Summit. We’re also planning a Club Leadership webinar focused on getting millenials involved in bike clubs.

But we also know there are miles to go before we sleep, and there’s a lot of work to be done to get millennials involved in making biking better. But the future is certainly bright. As Marc Gorton, founder of OpenPlans said in his speech: If millennials keep decreasing their VMT, “we’ll need to change the way we think about transportation.”

Do you have any insights or stories to share?

Katie Omberg
Events and Outreach Manager

Katie joined the League in April of 2010. For the two years prior, she worked at the Corcoran College of Art + Design as a programs coordinator. Katie has a BA in Religion from Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass. She enjoys biking to work.

Pat Cunnane

Getting more women to ride and elevating female leaders within the bicycle movement isn’t the work of one gender. While women are certainly leading the way — bringing new energy, ideas and perspectives to the table — we know that men are equally invested in closing the gender gap.

Because women’s voices historically have been under-represented at the podiums of major conferences, we were eager to feature female presenters at the National Women’s Bicycling Summit. But we were also excited to see leaders like Dave Snyder (California Bicycle Coalition), Dorian Grilley (Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota), and Scott Bricker (BikePittsburgh) in the audience. As we move toward the roll-out of Women Bike programming, we know we have countless allies among women and men.

Pat Cunnane, president of Advanced Sports International., is certainly one. Just a week after the Women’s Summit, I saw him speak at Interbike as the keynote of the Outdoor Industry Women’s Coalition awards program. In his speech, Mind the Gap, he explained the importance — and economic imperative — of addressing diversity within the bicycle industry.

“We’ve inherited this gap; it’s real,” he said. “And I think it’s something that can have a really incredible effect on the future of bike industry… If we really want our business to grow, to compete and attract a new generation of talent, we need to take a hard look at how focusing on gender, racial and other differences among our workforce population can help get the bike industry to another level. We shouldn’t pass this gap on to the next generation.”

So what steps can industry take? Cunnane came up with six ideas. His speech starts at 26:00 in the video below.

UPDATE: Cunnane’s six ways to close the gap:

1. Be open-minded about entry level positions: At ASI, Cunnane pointed out, only three of 15 women employees and 1 of the 16 non-white employees had prior bicycle industry experience, but 70 percent of white male employees did.
2. Encourage more women to join the industry: Plenty of female leaders have already proven that there’s no ability gap; women need to be encouraged to gain the experience the industry is looking for — and industry has to put women in positions (mechanical, hard goods) that position them to move up the ranks.
3. Sponsor women athletes: Female racers are a relatively untapped market and athletes have many of the qualities needed to succeed in business, too.
4. Put policies in place that allow flexible work options: Help ensure that people stay engaged during periods of their lives that might challenge the traditional 9-5. Give management the flexibility to do what’s right for the business and the employee.
5. Put mentorship programs in place: It’s not enough to attract more women into the industry — they must be given the opportunity to lead.
6. Pay the same wage for the same work: Companies should and must compensate employees fairly.

Thanks to the OIWC for a great event — and sharing the video! Read more about OIWC’s 2012 award winners — Nichole Perrin of Specialized and Milay Galvez at ASI.

Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director

Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.

Maria Boustead doesn’t call herself a cyclist — despite the fact that she rides 15+ miles per day. In fact, she started her company, Po Campo, because she recognized a growing market of women just like her; women who want to ride their bikes without the obvious baggage of being a cyclist.

The Chicago-based entrepreneur described her experience as a daily rider and business owner on the “Who’s Selling Cycling to Women” panel at the National Women’s Bicycling Summit last month. Like Elly Blue, she echoed the power of imagery and how women are portrayed in the context of bicycling. And, like Mia Kohout, she emphasized the prominence of urban commuting as an entry for new female riders.

But, most of all she underlined the desire among women to seamlessly integrate cycling into their lives — without having to look the part. As she described to the crowd:

During college, I began biking regularly around my quaint Midwestern university town because everyone did it and it was an easy way to get around. Moving to Chicago to finish up school, I continued to bike a lot, largely because it was now so normal to me. Plus, I was so poor that even public transportation seemed like a splurge. But even after getting a job and having disposable income, I continued to bike instead of taking the train or driving because, well, I liked it.

There are lots of things to like about biking to work (more to come on that). My least favorite part was entering my office carrying so much more stuff then everyone else, with my bags inside of bags and helmet and lights… I felt like I was being forced to choose between riding a bike and looking normal. Why do those things have to mutually exclusive? Why can’t I have a bag that does what I need it to do and still feels like something I’d want to actually own?

As I continued to think about being forced to choose between biking and looking normal, I realized that with cities improving their bicycle infrastructure, I knew there were going to be a lot more woman like me, in this predicament, wanting to add a new form of transportation into her options of how to get from A to B, but doing so would force her to buy a bag specific to this new form of transportation. I think this problem, like many other issues, are unique to women so it is our job to solve them…

Read more from Boustead’s presentation on the Po Campo blog. And click here for past posts about the Women’s Bicycling Summit.

Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director

Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.

Safe, diverse, accessible and fun. For Mia Kohout those are the four pillars in messaging bicycling to women.

At the National Women’s Bicycling Summit, the publisher of Momentum magazine was part of a panel discussion focused on “Who’s Selling Cycling to Women?” Like Elly Blue — who presented a new tool to evaluate images of women in bicycling — Kohout emphasized the importance of framing and imagery in marketing the cycling lifestyle to American women.

“The most important thing in creating a successful marketing campaign is understanding and addressing the fact that women need to see themselves in the context of what they are looking at, and we first need to acknowledge and understand that this is different for everyone,” she said. “Imagery is key. Messaging in any marketing campaign should be that cycling is safe, diverse, accessible and fun.”

She also made another interesting point: bicycle manufacturers need to better showcase and embrace transportation cycling, not just racing and performance riding.

So who is selling cycling lifestyle to women? Let’s start with who is not: the big brands of the bicycle industry. What message are we getting? Cycling is a sport for men. The messaging does not say that cycling is for women and that cycling is a means of transportation. Women-specific marketing campaigns created by the bike industry are not reaching the masses and the mainstream. But they should. Professionally, I have spent the past five years advising the bike industry that:

1. Cycling for transportation is actually a thing.

2. If they want more women to engage in cycling for transportation and buy their products they have to start speaking to us.

Read Kohout’s full remarks here.

Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director

Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.

In the July/August issue of our magazine American Bicyclist, advocates at the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition gave us an inside look at their work with Spanish-speaking day laborers to create a new PSA campaign.

Continuing our effort to share insight and best practices from innovative campaigns nationwide, our latest issue includes an article that delves into the efforts of Local Spokes, a neighborhood-based bicycle coalition in New York City aimed at creating a “new model for inclusive and sustainable bike planning.”

Unfortunately, we had to condense the story to fit the print edition; here’s the full article!

Local Spokes Youth Ambassadors create models of the East River Greenway

New Leaders
Pedaling the bike advocacy movement toward transformative change
By Pasqualina Azzarello and Caroline Samponaro

Within the national bicycle advocacy movement, we often speak of a desire for diversity without tangible outcomes. This conversation, when paired with the absence of accountability, makes transformative change improbable. To redirect the culture of a national movement requires intention, effort, communication, resources, and a willingness to take an honest, collective look inside. By investing in the development of new leaders on a local level through outreach, education, and empowerment, transformative change becomes possible.

What is Local Spokes?

Local Spokes is a neighborhood-based bicycle coalition comprised of nine community-based organizations that came together in 2010 to create a new model for inclusive and sustainable bike planning. Local Spokes, which focuses solely on the Lower East Side and Chinatown neighborhoods of Manhattan, was founded to focus on bicycling, but is intentionally comprised of both bicycling and non-bicycling groups, as a means to further the goals of inclusive and multi perspective planning around bicycle programming and street designs.

Our primary aim is to engage local residents to envision the future of bicycling in our diverse neighborhoods. We seek to engage and understand the community’s various perspectives through multilingual outreach and a Youth Ambassadors program. This participatory process has led to the in the development of a neighborhood action plan that will result in additional resources to address potential barriers and increase accessibility to bicycling.

(more…)

Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director

Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.