🚀 go-pugleaf

Joe Buck (jbuck@synopsys.com) wrote:
> ms@gf.org writes:
>>I've been reading, with great delight, some of the deranged
>>frothing from motorists in the wake of last week's Critical
>>Mass battle in San Francisco. All the usual elements of
>>Monoxide Machismo are richly present: bloodthirsty reveries
>>of murder and mayhem, low-risk long-distance chest-beating,
>>etc.
> 
>>I can't stress too much how important it is for cyclists and other
>>transportation activists _not_ to be upset by this.
> 
> Now, imagine this alternative: a mass ride is staged in a way that
> does *not* appreciably disrupt traffic: e.g. four-lane or wider
> roads are chosen, everyone rides in the right lane so emergency
> vehicles and traffic can still get by, traffic laws are obeyed,

Nobody would even notice its presence, particularly the media. Such
protests are not about getting a few hundred motorists to notice you along
the route; they are about getting your 30 second sound bite on the 6:00 TV
newscast seem by hundreds of thousands of people. The exercise is
pointless if you don't get this exposure.

It's the George Steinbrenner school of PR thought: It doesn't matter if
they're saying good things about you, or bad things. The important thing
is that they are always talking about you.

--
####    |\^/|     Colin R. Leech     ag414 or crleech@freenet.carleton.ca
#### _|\|   |/|_  Civil engineer by training, transport planner by choice.
#### >         <  Opinions are my own. You may consider them shareware.
####  >_./|\._<   "If you can't return a favour, pass it on." - A.L. Brown