Carmageddon Day Is Coming!

Bikes are red, Bikes are blue,
Bikes are light, and agile too.
Cars suck.
The end.

Across the world “critical mass” bike rides have been staged to promote clean transportation and make bicycle use safer by slowing down traffic during the evening commute.

It looks as if 1995 is the year of Critical Mass, (as well as being the year of everything else NVDA related). All you need is a bike, some other people, and a road where there would otherwise be four wheeled metallic monsters. Tonnes of critical masses on the horizon, including Aberdeen, Cambridge, Cardiff, Lancaster, London, Edinburgh, Manchester & York. (See diary for details).

So whether you’ve got a Chopper, a Grifter or a 50 gear mountain bike, make sure you’re on it. Pedal the news to everyone you can. Critical Masses are based around the idea of CHARM (Cyclists Have A Right to Move. Sounds charming!)

Also happening is Carmageddon 1995, an international day of action against the car and car culture. It is following the lead of a group of European anti-car activists who in the spring of 1993 put out a call for an international action to be called Carmageddon. The actions were very creative and instigated a debate on car- related issues. Carmageddon 1995 is being planned in the same spirit. Carmageddon will be the day after Earth Day, 1995 - the 25th anniversary of Earth Day.

While in many cities these rides are very successful, they are limited by their narrow focus. It is time to take the next step. Carmageddon’s discussion of car culture brings out the connections between the damage done by cars and other issues of urban ecology. Being more than a bike demo allows it to connect with activists working on related urban environmental issues.

Carmageddon is being planned for the day after Earth Day to attract the most attention possible to our message, while making sure our events don’t get co-opted into being just another part of the feel-good corporate-sponsored Earth Day celebration.

For more info, write to Carmageddon, PO Box 20208, New York, NY 10009; e-mail carmagedon@aol.com.