The New York City Police Department, with its 35,000 officers, has in recent years been on the front lines of the citywide decline in serious crime. It has protected visiting dignitaries like Pope Benedict XVI at events that drew thousands of people, and it has posted officers in foreign capitals to gather information on terrorism and trends that could threaten New York.

But the Police Department continues to be flummoxed by bicyclists riding together once a month.

Politics & Society

Bicycle Activists Take to the Freeways in L.A.

The Bryant Park Project, June 12, 2008 · People tend to think of Los Angeles as the natural habitat of the automobile, a land where giant on ramps and multilane freeways determine the course of life.

But for three cyclists in Santa Monica, Los Angeles is a bikers' world. Morgan Strauss grew up riding bikes around L.A. Alex Cantarero grew up riding local buses, even celebrating childhood birthdays aboard, before making the move to pedal power. Rich Totheie moved from New York City a few years back, having never much used a bike for transportation.

In November, the three bicycle activists began dreaming up ways to make their point — that two-wheelers deserve a place in the transportation network. They say they'd grown tired of playing cat-and-mouse with Santa Monica police at monthly Critical Mass rides. Instead, their group, the Crimanimalz, began protests like bottling intersections with endless, lawful rounds of Crosswalk Craps.

June 12, 2008 Koreans use Laser Tag for FTA protests.

smart use of GRL's laser tag for protest purposes

Chinatown rezoning call keeps resounding at C.B. 3

By Heather Murray

Although Community Board 3 Chairperson David McWater has said the board won't ask the Department of Planning to expand a 114-block East Village/Lower East Side rezoning plan to include the Bowery and Chinatown, a coalition determined to expand the rezoning's area is working to mobilize the community.

The Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side was formed earlier this year to promote rezoning all of Community Board 3. The umbrella organization includes the Chinese Staff and Workers Association, National Mobilization Against Sweatshops, Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, Two Bridges Neighborhood Housing Council, the Sixth Street Community Center, Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Chinese Restaurant Alliance and the Community Coalition Against the Business Improvement District.
The original rezoning study that jumpstarted the plan was brought to the community board in 2005 by the East Village Community Coalition. The coalition was formed in 2004 to fight Gregg Singer's high-rise dormitory plan on the site of the old P.S. 64 on E. Ninth St.

...

C.S.W.A.’s Lee is worried that if the areas surrounding Chinatown are rezoned, it would entice developers to buy up property on the Bowery and in Chinatown. She feels for this reason it’s the Chinatown developers who are pushing for the redevelopment plan, not the working class.

“The community board, too, has a role to represent the entire community, not to draw a circle around where the leaders live,” Lee said. “They also need to represent the community, instead of pushing the government’s racist agenda upon the people, instead of becoming the mouthpiece for the developers in this community.”
Hoon Kim first spoke on behalf of the National Mobilization Against Sweatshops at C.B. 3’s January meeting.

Since then, his organization and others in the coalition have been spreading the word about their opposition to the rezoning. Within the past couple of weeks, he has disseminated information and gathered petition signatures at several intersections in the area, including Avenue B and Sixth St. and Delancey and Pitt Sts., and visited local churches, senior centers and small businesses. The coalition has gathered more than 5,000 petition signatures thus far. Speaking last week, Kim said he knew of another 100 people in the past few previous days alone who had signed on to the coalition’s cause.

 

Atillah Springer is a journalist, activist and blogger from Trinidad and Tobago and a member of a protest movement which, earlier this year, succeeded in driving the aluminium industry giant Alcoa out of a community in rural Trinidad where they had proposed to establish a smelter under somewhat dubious circumstances.

In this podcast I talk with Atillah about the movement's use of the Internet in their organising activities.

 

A direct action network for global and local social-ecological revolution(s) to transcend hierarchical and authoritarian society, (capitalism included), and still be home in time for tea... Welcome to the cyber-streets of RTSLondon.

July 1, 2007
A Pretend Preacher, a Real Arrest and a Debate About Free Speech
By ETHAN WILENSKY-LANFORD

A satirist dressed as a preacher and protesting what he called the Disneyfication of New York City was arrested Friday for harassing police in Union Square before the start of a monthly bicycle rally that the Bloomberg administration has been trying to rein in.

Bill Talen, who performs under the name Reverend Billy, said that he was arrested after trying to defend the cyclists' rights by reading the First Amendment to the police - through a bullhorn. The authorities said that he was arrested after repeatedly being told to stop.

Mr. Talen was charged with two counts of second-degree harassment. He was released without bail pending a court date in August.

"We were full of the holy spirit of the First Amendment," said Mr. Talen, who is in his mid-50s and was dressed like a big-tent evangelist, with a white suit and a dyed-blond pompadour. He sometimes spreads his message with the help of the Church of Stop-Shopping Gospel Choir.

In an interview yesterday, Mr. Talen defended his performance art. "New York City won't exist if we won't let creativity happen in public space," he said.

Mr. Talen said he was at Union Square to support the cyclists taking part in Critical Mass, a monthly ride aimed at promoting nonpolluting forms of transportation. Critical Mass riders gather the last Friday of every month at Union Square.

1997 Super 8 footage of New York City... 1997 Super 8 footage of New York City's illegal demolition of 537-539 East 5th Street. People's belongings and pets were still inside, as was resident Brad Will...who emerged atop the building as the wrecking claw began destruction.

The black church has been at the forefront of black leadership and social protest in America. In fact, Abyssinian Baptist Church was founded out of protest.
A video with Rev. Calvin Butts.  The conversation discusses the change from efforts focusing on protest to community and economic development within the Abyssinian Baptist Church.

Holla Back NYC empowers New Yorkers to Holla Back at street harassers. Whether you're commuting, lunching, partying, dancing, walking, chilling, drinking, or sunning, you have the right to feel safe, confident, and sexy, without being the object of some turd's fantasy. So stop walkin' on and Holla Back: Send us pics of street harassers!

notes from May critical mass ride. snipet below...

9:50pm :
Got a report that around 40th and Broadway a woman was doored by a cop car while in motion. She was in the bike lane. She face planted and broke her colar bone. There is credible evidence that entire incident was witnessed.

----------------------------------------- CRIMINAL MASS ( documentary )-------------------

- A journey through the Critical Mass Bicycle Ride and America’s right to assemble. Filmmaker Christopher J. Ryan ( Warriors: the Bike Race, Still We Ride, Team Spider Television ) has spent the last 18 months tracking his personal experiences as a Critical Mass bike rider, as well as his subsequent journey through the New York State Criminal Court system. The colorful, poignant, and often funny story is told through video footage that includes video diaries, bicycle chase scenes, paddy wagon interviews shot by Chris’ handcuffed hands , voyeuristic NYPD helicopter footage, as well as daring video exposing the presence of NYPD’s previously denied undercover agents ( recently used as the basis of a recent New York Times cover story ). Throughout his extensive journey, Chris tries to juggle his time- consuming legal battles and courtroom appearances, with his day-job working, ironically, on television’s “Law and Order” where he lights the large courtroom sets that are used to pretend to prosecute the city’s real crimes. His misadventures are intertwined with a colorful cast of characters, including:

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-His fellow arrestees, who form a legal aid group known as FREEWHEELS, as they become unwilling participants in the cat & mouse style police chases and exhaustive legal battles. -Chris’ VIDEO CAMERA, a character unto itself as the beaten and bruised little camcorder is repeatedly smashed to pieces and miraculously brought back to life by a sympathetic television news technician named “FLIP”. -Chris’ Father, KEVIN, a military officer and Vietnam veteran, who, horrified at the recent treatment of Cindy Sheahan, becomes heavily involved in his son’s legal battles. -Dozens of unlikely “criminals” such as 8-year old JENNA, who can’t understand “why the police arrest bicyclists” and SHARON, who, at seven months pregnant, when sent to jail for standing on the sidewalk with her bike the night of a Critical Mass ride. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -----------------------------

- Criminal Mass examines the erosion of the American people’s personal freedoms, privacies, and the right to assemble, while celebrating the unexpected positive effects, communities and friendships forged in the face of injustice.