Tonight, just like every night, I biked through the intersection where four years ago I was hit by a car. It is on my commute home, and I’ve developed a Pavlovian “look over my shoulder” at N Thompson and Interstate to make sure I don’t again take out the sideview mirror of a visiting Seattlite’s Honda, which sent me flying over the hood of his car.

I was fine. I shook the guy’s hand, exchanged phone numbers while shivering in the rain and listening to his traumatized four year old scream from the backseat. I called my girlfriend and texted my mom, wiped the blood off my legs and still made it to the Timbers match that night thanks to a generous dude driving behind the crash who saw the whole thing and noticed my scarf. (I saw him at playoff matches this year. Nice guy.)

I’m admittedly a pretty lucky guy if the scariest thing I do every day is navigate traffic on a bicycle. But it remains the scariest thing I do every day, and I’ve learned a lot over the years about how that allotment of scary is distributed across neighborhoods and communities. The City of Portland is thirty years behind on maintenance to our streets, the public right-of-way that occupies something like one-fifth (citation needed) of Portland’s land mass. Potholes abound, and you can guess which communities, by geography and by demography, they impact the most. The way we’ve built and outgrown our public infrastructure hasn’t been that great, either. We’ve insisted people who don’t own automobiles somehow try and cross ODOT-managed highways on foot, dodging massive puddles and speeding cars trying to catch a TriMet bus that doesn’t run frequently enough to allow somebody the luxury to wait in the rain for fear of losing their service industry job. I’ve spent years of my life thinking about sidewalks, urban form, it’s implications in race/class/gender, it’s uneven relationship to politics. Ask any canvasser who knocks on thousands of doors, any person who rides a bicycle to work whether for exercise or for economic necessity, or any of the people I’ve met who have lost loved ones because we hadn’t invested every buck we could on a rapid flashing beacon on that busy road between the affordable housing complex and the bus stop.

And you know what’s scary? Portland’s famous for being pretty *good* at building streets for people who want to live car-free. We’ve been stalling a bit lately compared to some other cities in the country, but our town has entire subcultures thriving (and surviving) because historically it’s been easier to live in Portland without a car than any similar sized in North America. That’s why it’s so shocking to me to read about that 81 year old woman in a mobility device who died after being hit by a car while crossing SE Division and 158th last week. It’s the third fatality at that intersection in the last four years. I used to teach a SUN program at David Douglas High School, and I think about crossing SE Stark with students wearing heels and burquas as cars came barreling down the street towards us.

We all know the overlapping reasons we got here — the combination of austerity politics, American’s requited love of the automobile and gasoline (and their well-funded lobbies), decades of racial and socioeconomic redlining and malfeasance, stunning frustration with our political process that seems to not be moving urban policy as fast as climate advocates, affordable housing advocates, social justice advocates, public health advocates, working labor union advocates, and even business groups are down with. Not to mention the fact that the folks in the cars aren’t any happier — they’re stressed, likely commuting in traffic jams to a suburb where they can afford rent, shuttling their children to crosstown daycare, stuck in traffic thanks to our local economic boom that provides extra time to look at all those big new buildings. Everyone agrees it’s time to shake things up a bit, and we’ve got a plan (pending the wisdom of our City Council on Wednesday) on the table to prove to ourselves that the City of Portland is ready to reclaim some swagger.

This is it! No matter what you wish to see more of in Portland — thoughtful investment in public infrastructure, affordable housing, stronger government programming , — elected officials *have* to see that Portlanders are willing to tax themselves for a moderately progressive tax measure that will invest resources in taking care of our public streets like we want to care of ourselves.

It’s a question about the kind of city we want to live in. I think we’re ready. I’ve met a lot of people who will likely read this — bike advocates, urban planners, social justice organizers, political hacks, city officials, people who walk and drive in Portland and tweet about it — many of whom have wished for decades to orchestrate a public vote of affirmation that yes, there’s a case to be made for economic development and transportation justice. It’s especially grating since we’re the city that pioneered all this stuff back in the day and we haven’t kept pace.

The city’s gonna try and raise over sixty million bucks, with almost half of it going to building sidewalks and safer streets around schools, and it needs your help, activist and civic steward of our greater good. We gotta get everyone turned out to vote in May, and that’s gonna take a lot of volunteering, and a lot of energy. If you’re still reading this, you obviously care about this stuff, and it’d be great to have you come volunteer with me in the weeks and months ahead. Let’s demonstrate that people are willing to make phone calls for safer streets. Whether you think this doesn’t go big enough, progressive enough, or is a somewhat imperfect tax structure, I encourage you to remember that winning this is so, so crucial for long term success of Portland’s attempts at winning bigger and better victory at the ballot for Portland’s active transportation advocacy wing. It’s the *perfect* first step for to demonstrate to our leaders that there’s support for the version of Portland that you want to live in.

I’m the new Campaign Manager for the Fix Our Streets Portland campaign.

Swing by Portland City Hall around 2pm this Wednesday to show your support.

We’ll have signs.