Post-June 2010 CM Discussion

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Doug Haynes on July 1, 2010 at 7:44pm

I'm Dug, and I approve this CCM message.

Jerry said:

Hello Guys,
For whatever it's worth, here are a few thoughts from me:

1. I think mapmakers need to be a little more conscious of where they direct the ride. Any time we go East of Michigan, there are risks. Going East of Michigan at Grant Park during a major event like Taste of Chicago is the biggest risk of all. You can take this in one of two ways: (1) if you want a peaceful ride, it's best to just avoid the anxiety at the Lakefront, or (2) if you are determined to make trouble, you're really fucking stupid if you decide to make it in a place where half the police department is deployed. Whoever decided to take the ride on to LSD picked the worst possible place to do it. He drove right into a huge concentration of anxious cops -- what an idiot. I wonder whether it was that idiot who paid with his liberty, or whether some innocent schlub who didn't know any better, and just followed the idiot's lead, paid the price instead. The idiot who steered on to LSD was using the rest of the riders as human shields. I consider that incredibly irresponsible behavior. The police are seriously edgy about Grant Park now. They canceled the July 3 fireworks because they couldn't handle it, and they are even approving overtime for Lakefront duty because things are getting really hairy there. They are short-handed, and under tremendous pressure. Growing up on the South Side, I learned to steer clear of anxious cops -- it kept me out of jail (usually.) It's wise to give anxious cops a wide berth.

2. Perhaps we need to educate people about how to behave when a police officer puts his hands on you? It's hard to swallow for some but, the fact is, once the police put their hands on you, it's best to submit. Now, I am no fan of submission, and that's putting it mildly, but doing otherwise is guaranteed to get you hurt. Police officers are trained to keep a subject under control by escalating one level above wherever the subject is. If you resist, they escalate, and the more you resist, the more they escalate. It doesn't take a genius to realize that you can't win that one, since you don't have pepper spray, batons, or pistols. You will always lose a physical struggle with a police officer. Always. With the WNBR, the handbills tell people to comply with orders from police officers, and people pay attention to that, and we don't get arrests at WNBR as a result (the use of force begins with physical presence, then moves to verbal direction, then escalates to empty hand control -- best to cut that process off before it gets physical.) It was very painful for me to watch that video on the CM site of the guy getting pepper sprayed. He didn't get the basic proposition that you don't resist, and he suffered horribly as a result. Watching that video, I just kept thinking: "Oh my God -- I hope they don't bring out the tasers." Yes, it could have been worse.

3. We should try, really hard, to take charge of the front of the ride next time, and keep it massed. Let the cowboys do whatever they like with themselves (that's their choice, and they will suffer the consequences), but we should not let them lead innocent people into trouble. We shouldn't let them use innocent people as human shields.

4. We should also figure out a way to warn people that the police are likely to be loaded for bear next time, so they should definitely avoid things like open consumption of booze. This is another area where resistance is counter-productive. At a ride a couple of years ago, they were ticketing for booze. But, if a rider squawked about the ticket, they were rewarded with an arrest instead. The police do have the discretion to choose between an administrative citation and an arrest. It's kind of dumb to provoke that sort of escalation. Put a sock on it, fool!

Do we ride to ride? Or do we ride to fight the police? If it's the former, it's better to defuse encounters with law enforcement. If it's the latter, then maybe you should go off on your own ride, so the rest of us can enjoy ourselves -- please don't use the rest of us as human shields.

These are just my suggestions -- you can take them, or leave them.

Permalink Reply by Davo on July 2, 2010 at 10:05am

Amen I have a huge issue with people who yell "Fuck the cops" in the video and on rides. Most of them seem to be self rightious assholes who think that we live in a fascist country. Guess what dumb fucks if it was a fascist counrty we would be allowed to do critical mass at all. The fact that the police let us do it at all, and help out, is amazing. I choose to drink on the ride (but not at stupid times) but if I am ever busted I will acknowledge that I am in violation of the law and comply with the police and give them no reason for them to use force on me.

Permalink Reply by Jerry on July 13, 2010 at 2:43pm

OK. I exchanged emails with CPD, and explained the problem with preventing mass-ups. I think they get it. There are places where they will encourage us to move along, not just for the sake of moving along, but rather to keep intersections and streets open for emergency vehicles (e.g., by Northwestern Hospital, the Medical District, and other hospitals.) We should consider that concern with route planning, mass-ups and round-ups -- keep ambulance paths open, and get past them quickly.

Permalink Reply by Barbra Mann on July 13, 2010 at 2:47pm

Got it...

Jerry said:

OK. I exchanged emails with CPD, and explained the problem with preventing mass-ups. I think they get it. There are places where they will encourage us to move along, not just for the sake of moving along, but rather to keep intersections and streets open for emergency vehicles (e.g., by Northwestern Hospital, the Medical District, and other hospitals.) We should consider that concern with route planning, mass-ups and round-ups -- keep ambulance paths open, and get past them quickly.

Permalink Reply by h' Zerocats on July 13, 2010 at 8:48pm

The problems we've had come when they won't let the mass stop at red lights at the very beginning of the ride, even on southbound Clark where there's almost no traffic. I can't tell if they really are getting it or if this is becoming a game of telephone, but there's definitely some apples and oranges here . . .

Jerry, I don't know if you're aware-- traditionally the head of the mass would stop at a red light if it came to one that was red. The police for about the past two years have off-and-on jumped out into the intersection on a red and forced cross-traffic to stop to let the front of the mass speed ahead (it looks totally reckless and dangerous to watch, and smacks of assumptions that people on bikes don't have the judgment to not to ride into cross-traffic) ; myself and a few others (but for whatever reason nobody participating in this thread) have had frustrating encounters with them trying to explain to them why we don't want to do it this way.

It's not really that they're preventing mass-ups, but they're possibly unwittingly not respecting the way we do things-- again, we do not want them to stop cross-traffic for the head of the mass.

Also, there is no centralized governing body that plans route maps, and there shouldn't be (unless we're looking to contain investment to the same handful of people)-- the responsibility is on the folks who are willing to make sure they're at the front and helping to keep things smooth (not sure if we actually had any commitments to do so last night) regardless of what's on the chosen map. Which includes getting a route correction or detour to happen if a mistake or problem is noticed on the map.

Jerry said:

OK. I exchanged emails with CPD, and explained the problem with preventing mass-ups. I think they get it. There are places where they will encourage us to move along, not just for the sake of moving along, but rather to keep intersections and streets open for emergency vehicles (e.g., by Northwestern Hospital, the Medical District, and other hospitals.) We should consider that concern with route planning, mass-ups and round-ups -- keep ambulance paths open, and get past them quickly.

Permalink Reply by Jerry on July 13, 2010 at 9:18pm

I'll stick to the front of the ride, and run interference with the police. If Howard and/or others can give me a heads-up on problems, I'll try to explain them to the police detail they put on the ride.

CPD is a vertical, hierarchical organization, so it doesn't really know what to make of a horizontally distributed egalitarian social organization like CM -- it would very much prefer to deal with someone in charge. But nobody is in charge.

On the other hand, they are used to dealing with lawyers as intermediaries and recognize that, although the lawyer isn't in charge, he's at least a line of communication with the clients. Normally, police don't like it when clients lawyer up. But when they're not sure who the client is, I think they actually appreciate the lawyer. It fulfills their basic human need to have someone they can at least talk to.

Let me know when the police get in the way, and I'll do my best to figure out a polite, but effective, way to get the information to them, and keep the heat off you and the ride.

Permalink Reply by h' Zerocats on July 13, 2010 at 9:37pm

When you have 2 or 3 experienced folks "helping" at the front of the ride, there is someone in charge, and we let the police know that. That "no-one wanting to appear to be a leader" thing you referred to yesterday (in reference to the August '07 ride) is not what typically happens at the front of the Chicago mass; we typically have at least a small group of folks willing to put themselves out there. When the police see that we have our own leadership they tend to back off.
I think we took our eye off the ball a bit at yesterday's meeting-- the most critical things to work out IMO are:
-where does one need to be in order to be at the front of the ride at the start?
-who is willing to =commit= to being there, and ready and available to work together with the others, before the riders hit the street?


Jerry said:

I'll stick to the front of the ride, and run interference with the police. If Howard and/or others can give me a heads-up on problems, I'll try to explain them to the police detail they put on the ride.
CPD is a vertical, hierarchical organization, so it doesn't really know what to make of a horizontally distributed egalitarian social organization like CM -- it would very much prefer to deal with someone in charge. But nobody is in charge. On the other hand, they are used to dealing with lawyers as intermediaries and recognize that, although the lawyer isn't in charge, he's at least a line of communication with the clients. Normally, police don't like it when clients lawyer up. But when they're not sure who the client is, I think they actually appreciate the lawyer. It fulfills their basic human need to have someone they can at least talk to.

Let me know when the police get in the way, and I'll do my best to figure out a polite, but effective, way to get the information to them, and keep the heat off you and the ride.

Permalink Reply by Jerry on July 14, 2010 at 11:18am

As the lawyer, I can't be in charge, but I'll support whoever is. And I'll do whatever is necessary to stay at the front. I can usually wangle my way to the front.

H3N3 said:

When you have 2 or 3 experienced folks "helping" at the front of the ride, there is someone in charge, and we let the police know that. That "no-one wanting to appear to be a leader" thing you referred to yesterday (in reference to the August '07 ride) is not what typically happens at the front of the Chicago mass; we typically have at least a small group of folks willing to put themselves out there. When the police see that we have our own leadership they tend to back off.
I think we took our eye off the ball a bit at yesterday's meeting-- the most critical things to work out IMO are:
-where does one need to be in order to be at the front of the ride at the start?
-who is willing to =commit= to being there, and ready and available to work together with the others, before the riders hit the street?


Jerry said:

I'll stick to the front of the ride, and run interference with the police. If Howard and/or others can give me a heads-up on problems, I'll try to explain them to the police detail they put on the ride.
CPD is a vertical, hierarchical organization, so it doesn't really know what to make of a horizontally distributed egalitarian social organization like CM -- it would very much prefer to deal with someone in charge. But nobody is in charge. On the other hand, they are used to dealing with lawyers as intermediaries and recognize that, although the lawyer isn't in charge, he's at least a line of communication with the clients. Normally, police don't like it when clients lawyer up. But when they're not sure who the client is, I think they actually appreciate the lawyer. It fulfills their basic human need to have someone they can at least talk to.

Let me know when the police get in the way, and I'll do my best to figure out a polite, but effective, way to get the information to them, and keep the heat off you and the ride.

Permalink Reply by Spencer "Thunderball" Thayer! on July 14, 2010 at 2:18pm

Hey everyone. There was a problem with the notes. My battery died in the middle of taking them and the file was corrupt. I just not go around to re-building it. It's what I get for using OpenOffice. Here are the notes! http://bit.ly/cpWouc

Permalink Reply by Jason W on July 14, 2010 at 2:59pm

I think the leaders need to be wait at the corner we are taking off from (like Clark and Washington if we are starting off south on clark).

Let me thrown out an idea. I remember one time last year Steven had a big peace sign on top of a pole on the back of his bike. Let's say he is the map maker and trying to lead one month. It would be good to put that symbol prominently on the map and on the sign on the back of his bike. That way the leader, or leaders match the map. Let's face it, people aren't that bright, and if we can give them obvious visual clues to make the leader more easily recognizable, it may help.

H3N3 said:

-where does one need to be in order to be at the front of the ride at the start?
-who is willing to =commit= to being there, and ready and available to work together with the others, before the riders hit the street?

Permalink Reply by Spencer "Thunderball" Thayer! on July 14, 2010 at 3:05pm

The most effective tactic we came up with appears to be collecting 3 volunteers to wait at each corner of daily before the ride takes off just waiting. When the rides starts to circle they get in front of the intersection to keep the ride from going in that direction. They may have a sign or something which directs the mass in the direction they should go. Then when the ride is ready to leave whatever intersection that the map has stated will be the departure point is then "let free" and lead accordingly by the ride leaders who have already established themselves in the front. While downtown the leaders should remember to keep the mass slow so it can catch up with itself and and mass often.

Permalink Reply by h' Zerocats on July 15, 2010 at 1:29am

If people want to do this I won't stand in the way, but the idea of putting people at every corner is way beyond overkill IMO, and I'm not sure I understand your particular adaptation of Barbara's suggestion;
are you suggesting you station people to =block= starts in other directions?
Seems a bit (well, a good deal more than a bit really) heavy handed to me-- people have the right to take off in whichever direction they want regardless of who distributed a map, and a map is never more than a suggestion.

Spencer "Thunderball" Thayer! said:

The most effective tactic we came up with appears to be collecting 3 volunteers to wait at each corner of daily before the ride takes off just waiting. When the rides starts to circle they get in front of the intersection to keep the ride from going in that direction. They may have a sign or something which directs the mass in the direction they should go. Then when the ride is ready to leave whatever intersection that the map has stated will be the departure point is then "let free" and lead accordingly by the ride leaders who have already established themselves in the front. While downtown the leaders should remember to keep the mass slow so it can catch up with itself and and mass often.

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