It’s Bigger Than the Bike Lobby

They call us the All-Powerful Bike Lobby.

The term was coined in 2013 by an editorial board member of the Wall Street Journal named Dorothy Rabinowitz, during a now-infamous televised rant. Rabinowitz railed against the new public bike share program, Citi Bike, the new green protected bike lanes, and the annoying, upstart visionaries responsible for making those innovations a reality. (That’s us.)

On both sides of the aisle, the name stuck. For our opponents, the tag became a begrudging way to say that we are more effective than they would like. For those on our side, All-Powerful Bike Lobby became proud taxonomy. We may be much smaller and less flush than the Actually-Powerful Car Lobby, but thanks to a sterling vision, unrelenting passion, and real dedication to our lofty goals, we have an outsize effect on the transportation landscape.

Yet I’ve always thought that All-Powerful Bike Lobby was a misnomer. Don’t get me wrong — we are without a doubt all-powerful. If we weren’t, then we could not have successfully fought for a lower citywide speed limit, car-free parks in two boroughs, an overhaul of Park Slope’s 9th Street, and new protected bike lanes to meet the challenge of the L train shutdown. And we could not have convinced the mayor to override a woefully out-of-touch community board in Sunnyside and approve the protected bike lanes on 43rd and Skillman avenues.

So, sure — we are all-powerful. But our invincibility is not because we lobby for bikes or demand respect for the rights of bicyclists, but because we stand in solidarity, every day, with those among us who have lost the most to unsafe streets.

To explain, let me introduce a TransAlt member named Brian Howald.

This summer, while riding his bike to a community board meeting, Brian had a run-in with a powerful state senator named Marty Golden after Golden’s personal driver parked the senator’s car in a bike lane. Instead of just letting a driver bully him out of the lane — a surrender so many of us are forced into every day — Brian documented the incident, including Golden’s impersonation of a police officer, and followed up, uncovering Senator Golden’s atrocious driving record. His doggedness led to an avalanche of press coverage that cast the senator’s opposition to the speed safety camera program in a very unflattering light, and launched a thousand tweets about why Senator Golden and his Republican cronies were on the wrong side of history.

Brian’s public heroism was a key step in the campaign to save the speed camera program. But this summer, I also witnessed Brian doing something much more heroic. It was a small act — but it spoke to the true power of Transportation Alternatives’ membership, and why our influence stretches far beyond the All-Powerful Bike Lobby. I saw Brian give a bottle of cold water to a member of Families for Safe Streets on the hottest day of the summer.

In June, when the Republican-led State Senate dismantled New York City’s speed safety camera program, hundreds of bicycle-loving Transportation Alternatives members spoke out in disgust. But some folks, like Brian, did more than just their usual speaking out. They showed up to support our most powerful allies: Families for Safe Streets, the New Yorkers who have lost loved ones to traffic violence.

When Families for Safe Streets members were arrested for blocking traffic outside Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office in Manhattan and outside Senator Golden’s office in Brooklyn, TransAlt members were there to boo when the cuffs went on. When Families for Safe Streets members told the stories of their loved ones killed on dangerous streets in testimony at the City Council — moving Council Speaker Corey Johnson to tears, and then to action — TransAlt members were there to cheer from the wings. And when Families for Safe Streets members walked a marathon around Senator Golden’s office on the hottest day of the summer, TransAlt members were striding alongside on every lap.

Thanks to Families for Safe Streets, and to the TransAlt members who stand behind them, our city’s lifesaving speed cameras were turned back on before my kids went back to school. It was a feat that required cowing the State Senate Republicans who held a renewal bill hostage, some serious legal jiu jitsu, and the miracle of getting Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Cuomo to agree for the first time in years. That political choreography alone is testament to what we can do together, and why what we do is so much bigger than the All-Powerful Bike Lobby.

Those parents, children, spouses, and siblings who make up Families for Safe Streets often refer to themselves as members of a club that no one wants to join. The bar to become a Transportation Alternatives member is very different — you just need to be ready, willing, and able to back up those who have lost the most to our dysfunctional streets. Are you ready to stand up and stand by, to offer a bottle of water and walk alongside? Your TransAlt membership makes you an unflinching ally in this fight.

We are much more than just a bike lobby. We are a community. And as the past six months attests, to protect one another other, we won’t ever back down.