🚀 go-pugleaf

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. It is not a bad
thing. On the contrary: it shows that the CM folks (hats off to them)
have finally succeeded in penetrating the cloud of obliviousness
in which most people's minds are deeply plunged on all issues
relating to transportation.

Of course the folks don't get it; of course they don't have a clue
what we want, or why we're so pissed off; of course their initial
reactions are going to run the gamut from puzzlement to rabies.
That's only to be expected. It's a long and toilsome process to
widen the opening thus created, to follow up the initial attention-
getting shock with discourse that will enlighten and persuade.

But it can be done. And the kind of nuttiness that's been pouring
out on the newsgroups and mailing lists merely demonstrates that
the first, necessary step has been taken.

--Michael Smith
  ms@gf.org