Local bike advocacy is good resistance
My dear fellow bicycle advocates, you're doing exactly the right thing.
My dear fellow bicycle advocates,
I’m writing to tell you that your work is exactly the right thing to be doing right now. Your engagement with neighbors, community leaders, and local elected officials is laying the foundation for the renewed civil society we are going to have to build. That we get to build. So keep building your movement. Know that your power will grow, and that you’ll keep winning.
Renewal is the future, because it’s too late for repair. The authoritarians who have captured the state have only begun to use that power to implement their agenda. Just as Trump illegally attacks immigrants, educational institutions, and disloyal media, he will use federal transportation funding to extort compliance. He has already threatened to withhold federal funding from New York unless they rescind their popular and successful congestion pricing scheme.
With an alienated and under-educated mass movement behind him and a proven willingness to disregard election results, it could be a long time before we overthrow this regime. When we do, if our experience is like that of other countries that have toppled autocratic governments, it will be with a “big tent” coalition including liberals, radicals, libertarians, and conservatives. Likely common ground will be support for a devolution of power. Our divided nation will find unity in a looser union.
That means we’ll rely less on the U.S. government and more on local governments for transportation funding and policies. Here’s the hot take: that’s fine. The federal government hasn’t been good to us, anyway. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that provided unprecedented funding for bike infrastructure also invested more money in automobile infrastructure than ever before. It didn’t change the fundamental reality that federal transportation funding has failed to meet even its own goals, and for our goals it has done more harm than good.
In most communities, federal funding makes up a minority of all transportation funding1 with the balance coming from state and local gas, sales, and property taxes, and we do great with local funding measures! They almost always provide more than the measly 1.5% of the USDOT budget that goes to biking and walking projects. In 2020, Austin voters approved $460 million in bonds dedicated solely to bike and pedestrian infrastructure. Atlanta voters approved a sales tax with 75% of funds going toward biking and walking. In November, Seattle voters approved a $1.5 billion tax package with fully 32% allocated to walking and biking.
Local leaders win these investments because they can easily explain how they help taxpayers by making their everyday lives better: healthier, safer, more economical, more joyful. And they are trusted. While just 32% of Americans say they trust Congress, more than double that proportion (67%) “trust local governments to handle local problems.”
Please, keep building the movement. It’s more important than ever. Work intersectionally. Support more housing. Let’s make our cities safe and affordable and fun, because cities where people are unafraid in crowds of strangers are by nature anti-fascist. We have real conversations among diverse people with different viewpoints. Social media algorithms don’t control who we see in the real world.
I’ll close with a quote from Michael McAfee, the executive director of PolicyLink, who I had the pleasure of meeting last week. He said he tells his team they are “building a nation that doesn’t exist yet.”
We don’t know what it will look like. We don’t know how long it will take. We don’t know how much violence and disruption we’ll experience on the way there. But we know that we have an incredible chance to build a new world. You’re doing it every day you organize for safer streets. Thank you! You’re doing exactly the right thing.
P.S. I grabbed the photo of enthusiastic advocates from this page published by Bike East Bay, honestly my favorite bike advocacy group in the world for their effectiveness as bike advocates and the intersecting issues of deep concern to the residents of Alameda and Contra Costa counties.
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When I say our work is exactly the right thing to be doing right now, I’m under no illusion it’s the most important thing for society. This article is addressed to folks, like me, who love bicycling advocacy. We all must resist in whatever unique way gives us our joy and which we’re good at, without ever failing to ally and support the immigrants and gender-nonconformists and whoever comes next in the long list of “enemies within” the fascists will target.
Thanks so much for the Bike East Bay shoutout Dave, you're the best too!