Saturday, December 17, 2011

Building a Bicycle Revolution

Posted by Anonymous







In 2009 during the COP15 UN summit protests in Copenhagen, Denmark an idea for a bike bloc was created from the The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination.

From their laboratories came many ideas including the idea of a mass bike swarm. The mass bike swarming held many pedal powered protesting ideas including a sound swarm in which several bicycles were equipped with bicycle PA systems.

The event happened, the protest occurred and the site which held the information, funbetweenyourlegs.info ceased to be.

Until 2011 when it evolved to the United States.



In November, it was announced that the Occupy Portland encampment was to be shutdown according to park camping laws in Portland, Oregon.

The PDX Bike Swarm was created out of a need to create a buffer zone between the encampment and any police action.(read more on this event here.)

It worked well and followed other bike swarming actions while picking up press on outlets such as treehugger.com and eventually spread to other cities.

Could the Salt Lake City Swarm be next?

4 comments:

  1. Tom Millar (Author / Publisher)18 December, 2011 10:44

    This is a great, brief, and well-written article. Good job Zed. How would we know where to swarm? Where is Occupy SLC these days? Gallivan?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous18 December, 2011 15:49

    Thanks.

    Here is a idea among millions:
    http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=18469168

    Basically, our Bike Swarm will swarm most protest that demand equal rights, but ultimately, it is decided by a consensus vote at the meetings which actions to swarm. There is no single leader, the swarm is the leader.

    I would follow @OccupySLC on twitter for Occupy-Related actions, but by no means would I suggest you limit a Bike Swarm to Occupy alone.

    Dream big,
    act bigger.

    z.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous20 December, 2011 13:40

    Great post Z.

    If anyone is interested in work-shopping this idea with Occupy SLC, we meet Mondays and Thursdays at the City Library from 7-9pm. You can also go down to Gallivan and chat with the people holding space down there. I'll be out of town for Xmas but I'd love to be a part of this conversation when I get back.

    BTW, The new OccupySLC website is really cool. Maybe you could cross-post this blog.

    deb

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous27 December, 2011 01:29

    Thanks d.

    Its on your city to spread this idea further, I only provide the matches.

    Your Salt cycling crew needs to ignite it. :)

    peace + hugs,

    z.

    ReplyDelete

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