Let the comments flow like a river of cyclists...we do have a police response in this piece. http://www.skywaynews.net/display/inn_news/news02.txt
David - thanks for posting this article to the list. I felt like it was about the best mainstream news coverage of this that I've seen. I urge you at the Skyway News -- and others in the Minneapolis News media to follow this story relentlessly. I do not mean only covering CM closely in the future, and covering the MPDs response to bike riders. There is a third fundamental issue here -- which was most recently referenced by Rep. Phyllis Kahn quoting from Illich's "Energy and Equity." This is the issue of violence and transportation. We do terrible violence to ourselves, one another, and our children and future generations through the violence inherent the way we move through space. Our current transportation paradigm is violent: we pollute, we do social violence through excess speed, we destroy neighborhoods with car-bound infrastructure. Ironically, I see drivers enslaved by speed every day -- racing like Hell to be first in line at the next red light, jockeying to get around someone else, juggling cell phones while driving, and looking very stressed and very inhumane while doing so. We are paying so dearly to become more obese, hypertensive, asthmatic, depressed, anxious, and otherwise seriously ill, when we could be saving huge amounts of money to invest in cleaner energy technologies, regional eco-entrepreneurial businesses, and improving our health. Rather than being stuck in this futile "traffic jam" of paying-to-poison-us while paying-to-try-to-get-well again, we could be investing in giving our children a terrific start to a life worth living. Rather than paying to degrade our children's environment, we could be paying to give them a city worth staying in -- and one they might have a chance of living a healthy life within. All right, I'll only nag this once more: remember to check out and report on the World Health Organization's take on urban transportation. It really helps to make sense of the transportation issues we face in this town! I believe that the local news media has a responsibility to explore the issue of transportation in depth. I believe that our imaginations are largely bound regarding this issue, and that the media can play a significant role in liberating us to envision and embrace a new, peaceful paradigm of urban transportation. I encourage you and other editors and reporters to follow this line of investigation as diligently as you cover the crisis events which provide only a brief glimpse of these deeper currents, which are also news. One way to follow this up would be to do an in-depth, unblinking series on the history of transportation in Minneapolis, with special attention given to the ways the relatively violent and technically mediocre "car-culture" has been brought to us. Does any paper, radio, or TV news department have the courage to do honest and in-depth reporting about this? Reporting this history alongside new ways of seeing transportation may be one of the most important "scoops" of the first part of this millennium in Minneapolis! -Thanks! -Gary Hoover Kingfield Ward 10...still? _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
