Two items of horror have come to my attention recently.

1. Eric Ng, a biker and Times Up! volunteer, was riding on the west side greenway - considered by many to be the safest place to bike in the city, set apart from automobile traffic except for a handful of intersections. Eugenio Cidron, drunkenly driving his BMW from a Canon Corporation holiday party to his home in the East Village, drove for over a mile along the bike path and killed Eric Ng. I'm tired of reading and thinking about this. Gothamist has the story, and Bikeforums.net has the sad reactions of some in the bicycling community.

2. Jennifer Stark, a nineteen year old girl with an already length history of being an asshole behind the wheel of an automobile, was convicted of "improper lane usage" and fined $1000 for an incident wherein she, while downloading ringtones for her cell phone, drove off the road and into a cyclist named Matt Wilhelm, killing him. Bikeforums has some links and some of the outrage.

Some people use incidents like this to call for the incarceration of automobile drivers who are involved in the death of a cyclist. Noteworthy is Kill A Cyclist, Get Ten Years, which is linked to the Fixed Gear Gallery." But as one poster on bikeforums said, it's a tragedy, not a crime. The underlying issue here is not that drivers have a willful disregard for life, but rather that our economy's development of the automobile as an omnipresent part of life, and our cities' construction around the transmission of people via the automobile (combined with general irresponsibility, senses of entitlement, and extreme reluctance to accept anything less than the pinacle of comfort) constitute a willful disregard for life. We accept a world where people are killed by cars every day, and yet streets are built wider, freeways faster, pedestrian spaces fewer. If ever there was an example of diminishing returns, this is it. All we get is more traffic, more deaths, more pollution, more petroleum reliance - all this much to the detriment of other parts of our lives. Streetsblog has continuing coverage of the movement for a safer, more liveable New York City, and Transportation Alternatives is on top of advocacy for a sensible transportation strategy in NYC; Time's Up! takes care of the bicycling advocacy and community gardens.

I'm really saddened by a lot of the bullshit gets thrown around around this subject, so I want to make some things clear to anybody reading these words:
*This should not dissuade you from riding your bike any more than the omnipresent threat of auto accidents dissuade you from driving or walking on sidewalks.
*Bikers need safe, bike-specific infrastructure.
*Automobile traffic needs to be reduced.
*Promoting pedestrian spaces increases economic activity, happiness, and decreases pollution.

This morning I got hit by a car. The clarity of the slow-motion pre-impact: it's u-turning. I can't stop in time. It's coming closer. The hood is getting larger. I recall people using the phrase, "going up onto the hood of a car" to talk about accidents. I'm about to roll on to the hood. I'm airborn. My helmeted head hits the pavement. Then, of course, everything stops and re-starts and accelerates and before I know it I pick myself up and am sitting on the curb shaking myself off, inspecting myself, trying to clear my head and figure out what I need to do.

Two cops walk over from where they were chilling across the street. Oh good, I think, sometimes cops can be really useful. "Are you okay?" one asks. I answer, "Yeah, I think so." "Good," he said, "Now: what the fuck were you doing in the middle of the road?" I give him the dumbfounded, you-gotta-be-kidding-me look. I drop a couple of sentences about how there are cars, cargo trucks, and pedestrians between the beams of the elevated train and the curb, and how I was riding in the lane safetly. He tells me he saw me riding on the yellow line all the way down the street, and then he challenges me to call him a liar. The rest of the interaction proceeds like this.

After making my peace with the driver - who was in tears and very grateful that I wasn't hurt - and verifying that my bike was fine (surprisingly! front wheel in true, fork undamaged, frame unhurt! go figure!), I take my leave of the obnoxious cops and the rest of the situation, which pissed me off. My leave-taking, that is.

I should have gotten the driver's information, but I didn't. The cop led me to believe that I could file an accident report but that was the only thing I could do, and he wouldn't tell me what would happen if i filed a report. Due process bullshit - I was in a situation where I was shaken and not thinking and planning well, and I'm completely unaware of my rights and options and the repercussions of my choices.

Part of my thinking was about the driver. I felt no ill will toward him and did not want to unleash a world of bureaucratic bullshit for this nice guy who hugged me when he realized I was okay. In the back of my mind, also, was - what if he's got outstanding warrants, or undocumented residency, or something? What's the worst possible scenario? I wasn't pleased with the options, so I let it drop. I was fine, my bike was fine. I seriously did not want the state involved.

Not pleased with being unaware of the processes of accident follow-up as they pertain to police, the law, accident reports, and insurance dealings (what if my bike was damaged?), I'm doing a little bit of research to put together a "What If I'm Hit" document that can be stored between the spokes of just about anybody's wheels, so that they'll be readily available for consult when it's most necessary.

In other news, the South Bronx Greenway Plan is going to happen. The city is finally taking action to address the many environmental justice and public-space concerns that are regularly raised by residents and community groups in the South Bronx. Included in the plan is 12 acres of waterfront space, 8 miles of green streets, greenways, bike paths, jogging paths... this is pretty rad. Finally.

This post by Rick got me thinking about some things that I've been thinking about. I used to be involved in a lot of activism, organizing, and radical-style community building and education. In fact, I almost dropped out of school because there were other projects that I spent more time on... anti-war organizing, medic organizing, Food Not Bombs, traveling to protests, organizing health trainings, this, that, and et cetera.

I burned out, a little bit. Then I graduated, took a job at a teensy tiny community-oriented non profit organization in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and sort of stepped back from a lot of organizing, and stepped back from my connection and involvement in a lot of projects that meant a lot to me, that I had put a lot of energy in to. To some extent, I felt that some of them had run their course. I stopped being vegan and started cooking really good meals with yogurt and cheese in them.

A year and a half after getting my diploma, I'm settling into a life that I might occupy for an indefinite time period. I'm feeling really settle-y. I might have this current job for several years, I want to pay off debts, save money, and importantly, I want to live somewhere where I don't have a move-out date in mind. Except for my eleven months in Bridgeport, I haven't lived somewhere uninterrupted for more than three or four months at a time since I was seventeen and moved out of my parents' house when I went to school.

And now as I'm getting kind of settled and Growing Up just a little bit, I'm wondering how I want to re-insert myself into movements for change; how I want to participate in valuable work and projects. Because, really, while it's nice to have a Real Job, it is *not* the thing in my life that I want to take the highest priority. Being employed is a priority. Job = Life is not an equation I'm interested. I want to be a part of a larger community and I want my participation to be defined by doing positive work.

And I am feeling that defining that participation in Change - standing for something larger than myself, as Rick phrased the question - is a long, long way away from how I defined it three or four years ago, when I was all to willing to scream things at the top of my lungs while cops were arresting me. It's a long way away from two or three years ago, when I was interested in teaching people how to be healthy and safe so that they can scream things at the top of their lungs while cops were arresting them.

There's so much room to build infrastructure to ensure that radical communities can support radical change-oriented projects. The question is, how? And, now that I'm in New York City, where do I start? That's something I'm working on.