Cycle Advocacy: How Police Brutality Killed Portland’s Critical Mass Rides

Aftermass: Bicycling Post Critical Mass in Portland

Directed by Joe Biel (2014)

Film Review

This documentary relates the painful history which has made Portland Oregon the most bike friendly city in the US. Part relates to federal and state enabling legislation, and part to two successful lawsuits filed by Portland residents. However most relates to the massive Critical Mass rides that took place between 1993 and 2008, despite the brutal physical, legal, and psychological harassment by the Portland Police Bureau.

As of 2014, when the film was made, over 6% of Portland residents used bikes to commute to work. At the time, roughly 20,000 bikes crossed Portland’s city center bridges daily.

Enabling Legislation:

• 1971 – Oregon Bicycle Act requires every state and urban roading project allocate 1% of their budget to cycling access.
• 1973 – Oregon Land Conservation and Development Act creates framework to establish urban growth boundaries (to prevent sprawl) and limit construction of big box stores (eg Walmart).*
• 1990 – Clean Air Act amendments sets strict toxic air emissions limits, forcing Portland (which violated the new Act at least twice a week) to reduce vehicle traffic.

Lawsuits

• 1974 – grassroots coalition wins lawsuit blocking construction of Mount Hood Freeway through downtown Portland. Funds allocated for the freeway are invested in Portland’s light rail network.
• 1995 – Portland’s Bicycle Transportation Alliance (BLA) wins lawsuit against city for failing to include designated bike lanes in their roading projects.

The majority of this film consists of footage of Portland’s Critical Mass bike rides held the last Friday of every month between 1993 and 2008. Critical Mass first started in San Francisco and quickly spread around the world among activists seeking to promote cycling as a carbon neutral alternative to fossil fuel vehicles (our local bike advocacy group has organized them here in New Plymouth).

They spread to Portland in 1993. The ultimate dream of early participants was to pressure the city to build a cycling infrastructure, comparable to those found in Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and other European cities, to safely separate them from motor vehicles. In survey after survey, prospective cyclists consistently identify the risk of injury (or death) from motor vehicles as the primary obstacle to using bicycles as their primary form of transportation.**

For most of us, the best part of Critical Mass rides is they allow cyclists to ride in total safety for the few hours a month they take over the streets from cars.

As depicted in this film, the extreme brutality Portland police subjected Critical Mass cyclists to (extensively documented in this film) is truly horrifying. In addition to being clubbed and manacled by cops, they had their cameras confiscated and were subject to repeated arrest. Although courts dismissed most of the charges, being summoned to court monthly seriously disrupted work and other obligations.

The rides were also infiltrated by police informants (which was illegal at the time), who repeatedly urged other cyclists to break windows or bash cars and who lied in court about other cyclists alleged criminal activities.

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*Preventing sprawl is essential to developing cost effective public transport networks, and blocking box box stores helps preserve neighborhood businesses that residents can access via bicycle or on foot.

**Because cycling is so safe in Amsterdam that one third of all trips are made by bicycle.

Anyone with a public library card can view the full film free at Kanopy. Type Kanopy and the name of your library into you search engine.

 

 

Brazilian App Records Police Homicides and Brutality

A Bigger Brother – Rebel Geeks

Al Jazeera (2015)

Film Review

This documentary if about Coletivo Papo Reto, a Brazilian copwatch group that developed an Open Source phone app to make videos of police killings and brutality of sufficient quality to be used in court. Courts in many countries disallow smartphone video evidence because it’s hard to document exactly when and where it’s been recorded and that it hasn’t been altered.

The new app has been programmed to embed specific metadata into the pixels of the video. Most smartphones already capture specific metadata as such as GPS, local time and proximity to specific cellphone towers and WiFi networks.

Thanks to support from the Guardian Project, the new app has also been adopted by copwatch programs in Brooklyn and Ferguson.

According to Amnesty International, Brazilian police kill more than 400 unarmed civilians a year.

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*The Guardian Project is a global collective of software developers, designers, advocates, activists and trainers who develop open-source mobile security software and operating system enhancements.

 

Black Liberation: How Obama Abandoned the Black Community

The following is a presentation by Keehanga-Yamahtta Taylor about her book from #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. The main focus of the talk is the total abandonment of the black community by America’s first black president Barack Obama.

African Americans have double the unemployment rate of other US workers, 40% of African American children live in poverty, 55% of black workers earn under $55 and police shoot and kill an average of 900 African Americans a year.*

What Taylor finds even more galling is that Obama persistently blames African Americans for their own living conditions. When most of the world Wall Street for the economic cataclysm visited on white working class in 2008, Obama proclaimed there was “no excuse” for African Americans living in poverty.

Taylor  goes on to discuss the disproportionate shut down of public services (schools, libraries, hospitals, etc) and safety net programs in black communities.

She also points out the total disconnect between policing and crime, which is declining. She gives the example of New York and other cities that use their police force to help meet budget targets, New York City, for example, generates $10 million a year from parking tickets and $1 billion from court fines (derived disproportionately from African American neighborhoods because New York police deliberately target them).

She also cites the problem of overt police racism, as evidenced by the texts cops send each other – with racist messages such as “white power”, “niggers must be killed” and “niggers must be spayed.”

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*This number is an underestimate as only 1,000 out of 18,000 urban police departments report police killings to the Department of Justice.