Eric, As a short answer to your question - while Critical Mass began as a bike ride about bicycling in the city and the issues affecting city cyclists, "Critical Mass rides" have become an increasingly popular component in many protests and demonstrations. Likewise, many of the traditional Critical Mass rides (bike-issue specific rides held on the last Friday of every month) have become a setting for participants to carry signs and hand out leaflets relating to plenty of other non-bike specific issue. One could argue that these so-called Critical Mass rides are really just protesters and demonstrators on bikes and that only bike-issue-specific rides held on the last Friday of every month are technically Critical Mass rides. Of course once one argues that, everyone starts arguing and really, what's the point in that?
As for the contents of Critical Mass leaflets and the often questionable, and sometimes objectionable, behavior of Critical Mass attendees, this all varies from city to city and even ride to ride. Since the events are very loosely organized with no real leadership (this too varies slightly from city to city) no explanation can be quite so cut and dry. Accuracy issues of wikipedia notwithstanding the wikipedia Critical Mass page offers a cursory overview of Critical Mass in a nutshell. Personally the single most interesting thing to me about Critical Mass in any city is that people generally have a very difficult time operating without something resembling leadership and will often look to someone to provide this, at times assuming, or even forcing, the position of leadership on any attendee who shows the slightest bit of initiative. This is quite a bit off topic however, particularly for the Bikies list. -Martin __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies
