#active trans

Join me for a Vision Zero Chicago live social media Q&A video/text chat today, Thursday, August 31 from 10:30am-11:30am CT (11:30am-12:30pm ET).

This live video/text chat will serve as an opportunity for us to all collectively reflect and debrief from our experiences over the past few weeks regarding Vision Zero Chicago and the now cancelled Active Transportation Alliance VZ summit.

We will also use this live video chat as an opportunity to answer questions and share lessons learned during the process.

We will be live, simultaneously, on the following 3 platforms...

Periscope:  https://www.pscp.tv/theycallmeOboi/follow Instagram Live: https://www.instagram.com/theycallmeoboi/ Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/live/theycallmeOboi Follow Slow Roll Chicago (@slowrollchicago), Olatunji Oboi Reed (@theycallmeOboi) and our website blog (slowrollchicago.org/blog) for up to the minute details as our video/text chat approaches. 

Also, text me at 773-916-6264 or email me at [email protected]. Thanks, let's go...

Join me for a Vision Zero Chicago live social media Q&A video/text chat on Thursday, August 31 from 10:30am-11:30am CT.

This live video/text chat will serve as an opportunity for us to all collectively reflect and debrief from our experiences over the past few weeks regarding Vision Zero Chicago and the now cancelled Active Transportation Alliance VZ summit.

We will also use this live video chat as an opportunity to answer questions and share lessons learned during the process.

We will be live, simultaneously, on the following 3 platforms...

Periscope:  https://www.pscp.tv/theycallmeOboi/follow Instagram Live: https://www.instagram.com/theycallmeoboi/ Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/live/theycallmeOboi Follow Slow Roll Chicago (@slowrollchicago), Olatunji Oboi Reed (@theycallmeOboi) and our website blog (slowrollchicago.org/blog) for up to the minute details as our video/text chat approaches. 

Also, text/call me at 773-916-6264 or email me at [email protected]. Thanks, let's go...

"This is a matter of life or death."  -- Charles Brown, MPA, Senior Researcher & Adjunct Professor, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

I recently spoke via phone with Rutgers University Senior Researcher and Adjunct Professor Charles Brown regarding Vision Zero Chicago and Slow Roll Chicago's Bicycle Equity Statement of Principle document (draft version). During our conversation, Mr. Brown made a clear, forceful case for the Vision Zero Chicago Action Plan being a matter of life or death. He explained that the process of developing, as well as implementing, Chicago's Vision Zero (VZ) policy and plan will determine the degree to which VZ will have an adverse or beneficial impact on low- to moderate-income (LMI) communities of color on the South and West sides of Chicago. Mr. Brown described the City of Chicago's commitment, or lack thereof, to justice and equity as key factors in VZ taking more Black and Brown lives than it saves.

The Slow Roll Chicago community, sadly, knows all too well the life or death nature of reckless driving behaviors in Chicago. In January of 2016, we lost our beloved Slow Roll Chicago family member and dear sister Marian Hayes to a fatal car crash, while she was walking near the intersection of 87th Street and Kedzie Avenue in the Ashburn neighborhood on the Southwest side of Chicago. After riding with us for the first time, Marian immediately embraced me and our movement. She always brought her beautiful smile, warm energy and helpful spirit to our rides and our work. Marian inspired us to prioritize the role of history, culture, style and art in our rides. I personally dedicated our 2016 ride season to my friend and sister Marian Hayes. The fatal traffic crash that took Marian away from her family and away from our movement continues to reverberate through our organization, nearly two years later.

As a grassroots bicycle movement, born from Chicago's marginalized, LMI communities of color, myself and my Slow Roll Chicago co-founder Jamal Julien, as well as many of our members, have either directly experienced or witnessed over-policing, police abuse or worse, all at the hands of the Chicago Police Department (CPD). Many of you reading this article right now have seen the videos and read the articles documenting CPD's horrible track record of unjust murders, civil rights abuses and rampant corruption. Earlier this year, the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ) announced their findings of its investigation into the Chicago Police Department and publicly released its accompanying investigation report. Even with the new United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions in office, there is a real possibility that CPD will come under a federal court-enforceable consent decree with the USDOJ. In 2016, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and, in 2017, CPD Superintendent Eddie Johnson both publicly acknowledged the existence of racism within the Chicago Police Department, City Hall and other city agencies.

"We are in a time where we know that the practice of over-penalizing people for traffic offences does little to deter people from repeating chargeable driving behaviors. Any law that targets poor people for profit is unjust and unconscionable. The end result is further mass incarceration of an already marginalized people. This only further harms communities in a vulnerable position. Specifically, low- to moderate-income, working class, Black and Brown communities become the most susceptible to egregious, racist police interactions, that lead to a greater inequity in arrests and convictions, further breaking apart disenfranchised families. When poor communities, already struggling economically, are targeted for increased traffic enforcement, this will likely reduce people's physical and social mobility, further perpetuating the concentration of poverty and violence."  -- Kofi Ademola, Organizer, Black Lives Matter Chicago

Yes, The Slow Roll Chicago Bicycle Movement entirely agrees with Professor Brown. Vision Zero Chicago, especially its police traffic enforcement strategy, and the City of Chicago's commitment to equity and justice are all matters of life or death here in Chicago.

Approximately two weeks ago, on August 7, the Active Transportation Alliance (Active Trans) here in Chicago announced their Vision Zero Chicago summit via email and on its website. The summit's roll out strategy was fundamentally flawed because it was not sincerely, deliberately inclusive of the very people VZ is targeting at the neighborhood level. Active Trans did not engage people of color (POC), LMI residents, community-based organizations and other stakeholders who live or work in the VZ-targeted neighborhoods in the development and the planning of the summit, prior to its public announcement. In addition, the summit included several elements which served as significant barriers (cost, time, day, location and marketing) for POC and LMI people in the VZ-targeted neighborhoods from fully participating in the summit.

"Active Trans is making a positive step towards equity in postponing their planned Vision Zero summit in order to get more input from advocates representing communities of color and low-to-moderate income communities. It's critically important that the communities who will be most affected by Vision Zero efforts be represented at every step of the way in creating and implementing the details of this program. It's also essential to make extensive efforts to get community participation in public meetings once those meetings happen."  -- Anne Alt, President of the Friends of the Major Taylor Trail, President of Chicago Cycling Club and Former Board Member of the Active Transportation Alliance

After the summit's original announcement and my public statements challenging the summit's lack of inclusion, I immediately called for Active Trans to cancel their planned summit. I requested that Active Trans go back to the drawing board to create an event that would be more inclusive and accessible. Next, I wrote an article on our website, detailing the inherent flaws in the Active Trans summit and the multiple reasons why we were calling for the summit to be canceled. Days later, there was a growing chorus of local and national advocates, organizers and concerned citizens who vocally supported our position on the summit and explicitly supported our call for Active Trans to cancel the summit. Nearly a week and a half after the original announcement of the VZ summit, the Active Transportation Alliance formally, publicly announced, via email and their website blog, that they were officially cancelling the summit. 

We readily acknowledge Active Trans Executive Director Ron Burke and their senior management team for doing the right thing here by canceling the summit. We recognize this fundraising event was logistically difficult to cancel due to a meeting room being reserved, attendees purchasing registrations, sponsorships having been sold and having high-level policymakers confirmed to speak at the summit.

However, this summit should have never went forward in the first place without the ownership and investment of people who live and work in the VZ-targeted neighborhoods. POC and LMI residents should have been engaged, from the beginning, in developing and planning a summit which respects, elevates and responds to their needs, concerns and voices. While the Active Trans VZ summit has now been canceled, a systemic blind spot and pervasive bias still persists within the organization. Its leadership was willing to move forward with the summit, even after we called for the summit to be canceled and pointed out the dangerous flaws within their lack of inclusion. For these reasons and more, we advocate for a transformative restructuring at Active Trans, where an authentic commitment to equity is explicit, deliberate and public. Further, we advocate for Active Trans to sincerely and dutifully operationalize its commitment to equity from the board level to the staff level, from inclusive community engagement practices to staffing diversity, from priority projects to policies around how resources are distributed and from the removal of implicit bias to the dismantling of a dismissive culture toward LMI communities of color from within the organization. 

"For Vision Zero to work, all members of the affected communities must have a voice in the entire planning and implementation process. Active Trans has correctly canceled their previously scheduled Vision Zero Summit, now recognizing as much. They are to be applauded for continuing to be a great, mature organization that cares deeply for all people that bike."  -- Brendan H. Kevenides, Attorney at Freeman Kevenides Law Firm and Member of the Active Transportation Alliance Board of Advisors

In my phone call with Professor Brown, he discussed two primary problems with the mainstream, European approach to executing Vision Zero strategies in US cities:

Lack of Focus on the Root Cause of Injustice: The root cause of injustice in US society is structural racism. Many local and state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) and mainstream Vision Zero advocates are solely focused on the symptoms produced as a result of the root cause instead of focusing on the root cause of structural racism itself. Structural racism causes communities of color to be marginalized and disenfranchised. Structural racism causes communities of color to be disproportionately, adversely impacted by a poor quality of life, interpersonal violence, healthcare disparities, unemployment, poverty, mass incarceration, access to affordable housing, access to healthy foods, access to quality education and access to physical and social mobility. All of these symptoms contribute to the relatively high rate of fatal car crashes in LMI communities of color and all of these symptoms are caused by structural racism in our society.

Lack of Authentic, Sincere Community Engagement: The difficult truth is that many transportation professionals, mainstream VZ advocates and DOTs simply don't value or respect the voices of POC and LMI residents in communities of color where VZ is being implemented. This is what led Active Trans to announce a VZ summit mostly impacting LMI communities of color with no prior engagement on planning the summit with the VZ-targeted neighborhoods. This is also what led the City of Chicago to release a VZ policy and plan without a preceding, comprehensive community engagement process to help develop and implement the plan together in concert with the community. The same is largely true for many cities across the US, implementing VZ at the neighborhood level. We are largely considered the consumers of the VZ product. In fact, we should be the owners and deliverers of the VZ product in our neighborhoods. We are the proper experts on what is needed in our communities in order for us to feel safe and be safe. No DOT and no advocacy organization should ever begin the process of developing or implementing a VZ plan without an authentic community engagement process where residents and stakeholders invest in the plan and take ownership of its execution. Anything less is dismissive, disrespectful and potentially deadly.

Where do we as a local and national VZ, equity and justice community go from here? What are our next steps to ensuring the City of Chicago implements VZ in a manner in our neighborhoods that does more good than it does harm.

Here are our tentative, initial next steps:

I will host a live social media Q&A video/text chat on Thursday, August 31 from 10:30-11:30am CT. This video/text chat will serve as an opportunity for us to all collectively reflect and debrief over the past two weeks. I will also use this opportunity to answer questions and offer lessons learned that were gleaned during this process. Please follow us via our website blog and on social media to receive the up to the minute details for our video/text chat.

Slow Roll Chicago, Go Bronzeville, transportation advocates of color, and other stakeholders in the VZ-targeted neighborhoods will explore the potential of convening a broader, community-based VZ forum to receive feedback and input on the VZ plan directly from neighborhood residents, in partnership with the City of Chicago and other potential community partners. 

Slow Roll Chicago, Go Bronzeville, transportation advocates of color, and other stakeholders in the VZ-targeted neighborhoods will explore the potential of engaging with the City of Chicago Mayor's Office, Chicago Department of Transportation, Chicago Police Department, Chicago Department of Public Health and other city agencies to take ownership of VZ's development and implementation in LMI communities of color on the South and West sides of Chicago.

Slow Roll Chicago will facilitate a comprehensive Vision Zero and transportation equity data analysis, research project, led by Rutgers Senior Researcher and Professor Charles Brown. This project will utilize both data analysis and surveys to better understand the root cause of transportation-related inequities and injustices experienced by POC and LMI residents in communities of color on the South and West sides of Chicago.

How may you continue to help support our advocacy work and our next steps with regards to VZ and transportation equity here in Chicago?

Here's our Call to Action:

Share this article via your website, email newsletter and with your internal and external networks.

Share this article on social media, tagging "Slow Roll Chicago" (@slowrollchicago) and "Olatunji Oboi Reed" (@theycallmeOboi). Slow Roll Chicago has a social media presence on Facebook (Page & Group), Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and YouTube.

Sign up for the Slow Roll Chicago Email Newsletter to stay updated about our rides, events and advocacy work.

Sign up to volunteer with Slow Roll Chicago. 

Volunteer to join Professor Charles Brown's Vision Zero and transportation equity data analysis, research project team.

Assist with identifying and securing funding for Slow Roll Chicago's comprehensive Vision Zero and transportation equity data analysis, research project, led by Rutgers Senior Researcher and Professor Charles Brown. Please contact me directly to discuss this particular Call to Action in more detail. 

Join me, Slow Roll Chicago and equity advocates from around the world at the PolicyLink Equity Summit 2018 here in Chicago from April 11-13, 2018.

Donate to Slow Roll Chicago, financially supporting our work to create a diverse, inclusive and equitable bicycle culture in Chicago. Slow Roll Chicago is intensely focused on the role of bicycles, as a form of effective transportation, contributing to reducing violence, improving health, creating jobs and ultimately making our neighborhoods more liveable. Your financial support helps us push forward, within a challenging local context, our mission, vision and priorities. 

A heartfelt thank you and proud salute to all of the local and national advocates who supported our call for Active Trans to cancel their VZ summit. Our collective voices are powerful and together we accomplished what many said was impossible. I also want to thank the PolicyLink Transportation Equity Caucus and the National Bike Equity Network for raising your voices together with ours to shift how mainstream transportation organizations engage with communities of color. I especially want to thank my dear sister Tamika L. Butler (Executive Director at the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust) and my good brother Ronnie Matthew Harris (Visionary Lead with Go Bronzeville) for their relentless strategizing, advocacy and late night phone calls. While Active Trans cancelling their VZ summit is a relatively small step in the right direction, it is something we accomplished together and we should all be proud of the work that brought us here to this moment. 

Slow Roll Chicago is a bicycle movement.

We ride bicycles to make our neighborhoods better.

This is why we exist. This is why we ride.

Mount up and let's ride for equity, justice and freedom...

Warmly,

This is Oboi Reed, Co-Founder of the Slow Roll Chicago bicycle movement, writing here. To learn more about Slow Roll Chicago and our position on equity, please check out the Our Story section of the website and our Bicycle Equity Statement of Principle (draft version) document.

I am writing now with regards to Vision Zero here in Chicago and the Active Transportation Alliance's (Active Trans) recently announced Vision Zero Summit here in Chicago. A recent Streetsblog Chicago article shares some insight into our position on Vision Zero in general and, specifically, our concerns with Active Transportation Alliance's flawed strategy in rolling out their upcoming summit. 

Our specific concerns with the summit are as follows:

According to the recently released City of Chicago's Vision Zero Chicago Action Plan, nearly all of the targeted Vision Zero (VZ) neighborhoods are low- to moderate-income (LMI) communities of color on the Southside and Westside of Chicago. 

The City of Chicago's Vision Zero policy and plan does in fact include the component of Enforcement, in addition to Education and Engineering, as part of its comprehensive VZ strategy.

Active Trans is including in their VZ summit's agenda the topic of "Fair & Effective Enforcement". 

Active Trans did not engage with any people of color (POC), LMI residents, community-based organizations, community leaders or other stakeholders who live and work in the VZ targeted neighborhoods in the process of developing and planning their VZ summit.

The VZ summit is being hosted in downtown Chicago on a weekday from 8am to 12pm, with attendance registration costing an exorbitant $50. These factors clearly pose as significant barriers to LMI/POC fully participating in the summit.

With the original email invite for the Active Trans VZ summit there was no mention of the availability of scholarships for LMI/POC. Shortly after the original email invite, Active Trans did send an email offering scholarships to a select list of their community partners. However, the vast majority of LMI/POC in the VZ-targeted neighborhoods are not aware of the summit nor aware of the availability of scholarships.

Several high level policy-makers (CDOT Commissioner, IDOT COO, National Safety Council & AAA reps, etc.) are confirmed to attend and speak at the summit. The summit is clearly targeting for attendance the professional transportation sector and the mainstream bicycle advocacy community, nearly all of whom are White, middle- to upper-income and do not live or work in the VZ targeted neighborhoods. The potential result of this flawed strategy is that the high level policymakers in attendance will not hear directly from LMI/POC who live and work in VZ targeted neighborhoods regarding their concerns for VZ implementation, especially VZ's enforcement component. The Active Trans priority from the beginning should have been squarely focused on engaging, respecting, elevating and responding to LMI/POC voices and concerns - not those of planners, engineers, designers, consultants and other transportation professionals.

Both the City of Chicago and the mainstream bicycle advocacy community here in Chicago are not at all immune to the ravages and impact of structural racism. In fact, racism is deeply ingrained in how our City operates. Recently, Mayor Emanuel publicly acknowledged that racism is a problem within Chicago's police force and other City Hall departments and city agencies. In addition, recently, Chicago Police Department Superintendent Eddie Johnson also publicly, and on video, admitted there is racism within the Chicago Police Department. 

Given this context and the backdrop of Chicago Police Department's over-policing, its horrible record of civil rights abuses and the potential for a USDOJ consent decree, we believe the Active Trans roll out strategy for its VZ summit was fundamentally flawed at best. 

At worst, it was potentially a deliberate, disrespectful attempt to exclude LMI/POC from the summit, continuing the harmful pattern of top-down policymaking, while also marginalizing our lives and our voices.

The end result of all of this, both the City of Chicago's VZ policy/plan and the Active Trans VZ summit, is the real possibility that VZ in Chicago may do more harm than good in LMI communities of color.

For these reasons and more, I am calling for the Active Transportation Alliance to cancel their planned VZ summit and return to the drawing board to, from the beginning, engage LMI/POC residents, community leaders and other stakeholder in the VZ targeted neighborhoods in a full partnership to develop and plan a VZ summit with the same high-level policymakers where our voices and concerns are respected, heard and responded to.

I am writing to respectfully ask for your assistance in elevating this matter to a national level. Specifically, please consider the following as your contribution to helping to move Active Trans to cancel the summit:

Read the Streetsblog Chicago article and please participate in the comments section of the article.

Share the Streetsblog Chicago article and any of my notes above with your respective internal and external networks.

Push the Streetsblog Chicago article and any of my notes above on your respective social media platforms. Please tag Slow Roll Chicago (@slowrollchicago) and Olatunji Oboi Reed (@theycallmeOboi) and we will be sure to amplify your social media posts.

Share our position and any of my notes above with your national media contacts for a potential national media story. 

In the event anyone has experience with VZ in your respective cities, please contact me to share lessons learned and potential strategies we may execute here in Chicago going forward.

Thank you in advance for your time, consideration and effort on this matter. 

Let's ride,

 Do you dig biking and graphic design? Got an idea for an MB Financial Bank Bike the Drive T-shirt? If so, here’s your chance to show off your stellar graphic design skills and get your design on thousands of T-shirts this summer.

We’re launching our second annual T-shirt design contest for MB Financial Bank Bike the Drive—the classic Chicago biking event on the Sunday before Memorial Day that closes Lake Shore Drive to cars and opens it to thousands of people on bikes.

Active Trans is looking for original illustrations that celebrate this special day of biking bliss. Up to five finalists will receive two free registrations for the event, and the final winner will have her or his T-shirt design worn by many thousands of participants during the event and afterwards.

T-shirt design submissions are due February 11 by 11:59 p.m. Active Trans will choose up to five of the best designs, and then open the final decision to an online vote February 24 through March 7 11:59 p.m.

The winner will be announced right here on our blog later in March. Learn more about how to enter the contest at www.bikethedrive.org/tshirtcontest.

For the 3rd year running Blue Island is participating in Active Transportation Alliance's annual Bike Commuter Challenge.

A friendly competition to see who's the bikin'est town around, Blue Island residents always have plenty of reasons to ride. To celebrate our south 'burb bike mecca, Active Trans is hosting another "Bike Away From Work" ride in BI on Friday, June 15. Riders can cruise up from the Vermont Street Metra Station to Uptown Park at York & Western where we'll meet for grub before heading out on a History-n-Hollywood ride of Blue Island.