Mark Forscher

Yesterday I went to the Still We Speak rally at Union Square before the monthly Critical Mass ride. (Flickr photoset here) Donna Lieberman, Executive Director of the NYCLU, Norman Siegel, former Executive Director of the NYCLU, City Council Member Margarita Lopez, and others spoke about free speech, free assembly and the city’s crackdown on bicycle riding. Lopez really stood out in particular for her emotionally-charged speech in support of Critical Mass and our rights as citizens of the United States to congregate and ride bicycles without police harassment. The guy on the left with the sunglasses mentioned how he would much rather be at home sitting on his couch watching baseball where he ‘belongs’ but instead, after being arrested twice for riding a bicycle (!!), he’s been busy organizing a legal defense fund for Critical Mass arrestees. Here’s a point that really put things in perspective: Legally cyclists count as traffic. Just imagine if the police arrested people for clogging the streets with cars.

The police presence at Union Square was heavy, including many undercover cops (who stood out like sore thumbs) and a police helicopter. Sadly, at least 18 people were arrested last night during the Critical Mass rides. From the New York Times’ coverage:

In one of the first arrests of the evening, a young woman who was straddling her bike and walking it out of the south end of Union Square Park was seized and personally arrested by Assistant Police Chief Bruce H. Smolka Jr.

“You’re riding your bicycle on the sidewalk,” Chief Smolka said. “You’re under arrest.”

The woman protested that she had done nothing wrong. The chief insisted that she get off her bicycle immediately, and then he tried to pull her off. The woman argued, and then other police officers, some of them wearing plainclothes, joined the chief and forcibly removed the woman from the bike.

Ride participants tried to retrieve the woman’s bike and scuffled with police officers, who then arrested a second woman.

The sight of a senior chief in the Police Department struggling in a crowded public place with the woman roused the gathering of people.

Cries of “Let her go, let her go,” and “fascist state” filled the air, as Chief Smolka and other officers led the woman into a van. A line of 10 motorcycles then sealed the edge of the sidewalk at the intersection of 14th Street and Union Square East. The arrested woman began to give her name in response to a question from a reporter, but only uttered one word – “Lisa” – before she was pushed into the van and the reporter was forced away from her.

Chief Smolka is the police official in charge of southern Manhattan, and oversaw many of the mass arrests made in August before and during the Republican National Convention, including more than 100 arrests of bicyclists at a Critical Mass ride that swelled to include 5,000 riders.

Since then, the mass rides, which were conducted peacefully for several years before that, have become a point of contention with the Police Department.

There’s one image from last night in particular that I can’t get out of my mind. A few hours after the ride started, a group of cyclists passed by Union Square chased by several police cars and at least 3 police vans. As I stood on the corner and watched, a police car moving at high speed swerved in front of a young cyclist who was riding by himself by the side of the road and who was clearly obeying traffic laws. It was an incredibly dangerous and aggressive move by the cop driving the car. Luckily the kid on the bike avoided the car and injury..

Matt Ransford wrote about his experience riding last night here. Also check out Gothamist’s interview with
Matthew Roth a Time’s Up volunteer and bicycle enthusiast.

Here’s a gallery of photos including many of the heavy police presence.

TIME’S UP! , an 18-year old NYC-based bicycling and environmental group and four of its volunteers, are being sued by the City of New York and are facing $30,000 in legal fees. The wording of the city’s lawsuit is such that it “will have a powerful impact on our ability to gather in public, organize political movements, and speak freely about doing so. If successful, this suit could prevent organizations and individuals from participating in or even publicizing any gathering of 20 or more people in a public place without a permit.” From the Time’s Up! website:

On March 22, 2005, The City of New York filed and injunction against TIME’S UP!, an 18-year old, New York-based environmental group, and four of its volunteers, enjoining them and their unnamed associates from participating in and promoting (read: talking about) the Critical Mass bicycle ride, which meets the last Friday of every month in Union Square Park. But this is about a lot more than bike riding. The suit also challenges the rights of 20 or more people to meet in a park without a permit, or talk about doing so.

The City of New York is using Critical Mass to methodically chip away at our rights to free speech and free assembly. “The ramifications of this lawsuit are very troubling. Under the City’s view, advocates should not be able to advertise or promote protest activity, (which is) a prior restraint and a violation of the First Amendment. It’s clearly unconstitutional,” said civil rights attorney Norman Siegel, who is representing the defendants. “Under these circumstances the successful organizing of the civil rights and labor movements would never have been possible, the march to Montgomery, the Greensboro sit ins, the bus boycotts, the Union Square labor rallies, all would have been illegal before they even took place.”

As members of the creative community we are particularly vulnerable to these kinds of discretionary rulings, which are selectively enforced by various agencies. For those of us who strive to represent the truth in all its complexity, this lawsuit is a disaster and we should all be seriously concerned about its outcome.

Oppose the City in its attempt to curtail our constitutional rights by getting the word out about the case and by supporting the TIME’S UP! defendants and Critical Mass. A few things you can do:

+ Send letters of opposition to Mayor Bloomberg, Police Chief Kelly, City Council members and newspaper editorial boards. This is an election year.

+ Inform your community board of the issue and ask them to resolve against it.

+ Throw a benefit event or house party to help pay for legal fees.

+ Donate goods or services to TIME’S UP!

+ Use your creative skills to draw attention to this issue.

+ Enlist your friends, family and colleagues to do the same.

To allow tax-deductible donations, TIME’S UP! has established the TIME’S UP! Bike Legal Defense Fund. Legal fees alone, already highly discounted, may exceed $100,000. Even small donations help. In-kind donations are also very welcome.

The suit against TIME’S UP! is being used as a test case, so it’s very important to get the word out about its far-reaching implication. Please, if you do nothing else, talk about this situation where and whenever you can. Put free speech and assembly on the agenda in the media, the courts and your neighborhood, Make your basic constitutional rights an electoral issue in this election year. If you have any questions or would like additional information, please feel free to contact timesup@panix.com.

This lawsuit is very disturbing.. please spread the word and do what you can to support Time’s Up! and our constitutional rights.

Update: The following is an email I received this morning from Time’s Up! with more information:

As you may have heard, four TIMES’S UP! volunteers—and TIMES’S UP! itself—are being sued by the City of New York. Why are the City of New York and the New York City Parks Department suing a group of Environmentalists? For riding bikes, talking about riding bikes to the press, and encouraging other people to use this sustainable, environmentally-sound form of transportation.

If you care about your right to free speech and free assembly, you should be incredibly concerned. The suit against us has major ramifications on First Amendment activity nationwide. That’s why it’s so important that we win—and to win, we need your help. TIMES’S UP! is currently facing $30,000 in legal fees. Please visit http://www.times-up.org/legal_newswire.php today and make a donation to the TIMES’S UP! Bike Legal Defense Fund.

Many of you may have ridden in the Critical Mass bike ride, or at least heard of it. Started in San Francisco in 1992, Critical Mass rides take place monthly in almost 400 cities on six continents. New York’s Critical Mass is now under attack–and the four of us and TIMES’S UP! are being singled out in that attack.

In New York, August 27, 2004, was the date of a massive police crackdown on this peaceful community event. Two days before the start of the Republic National Convention (RNC), some 5,000 cyclists gathered together to ride their bikes through the city. By the end of the night, 264 were cuffed and sent to jail—for riding bikes. They’ve been charged with disorderly conduct and parading without a permit, the criminal equivalent of a speeding ticket. (To date, more than 80% of those charges have been dismissed or thrown out for lack of evidence.)

So what does this have to do with us? As Critical Mass participants, we—and many, many others—spoke out against the police’s egregious behavior. We spoke to the press. We’ve been quoted in the New York Times, the BBC World News, USA Today, as well as many smaller community papers, and we’ve been regularly featured on network news and radio. Because we spoke out, we have been targeted. Our names and titles as listed in the lawsuit come directly from descriptions of us in the papers.

Despite police threats, we keep riding every single month. And the police keep arresting. At every Critical Mass since the RNC—except for December—the police have arrested bike riders. In March alone, 37 people were arrested simply for riding bikes in a group.

But cuffing cyclists wasn’t enough. In September and in March, the NYPD illegally seized dozens of bikes. Many of these were chained to public property (such as parking signs and light poles) near where the arrests were taking place. The police used their most sophisticated machinery and highly trained Emergency Service Unit forces to cut bike locks! The owners of the bikes–many of whom were not even Critical Mass participants–were charged with no crime. They simply had their bikes stolen by the cops. They knew they were in the right, and five cyclists sued the police in Federal Court. Their victory on December 23, 2004, was a victory for everyone who cares about Critical Mass and our right to due process.

After this clear win, we assumed the harassment would end. But in March, the City of New York, the NYPD, and the Parks Department took the next step. Now they’re suing us. They have requested an injunction, which, if granted, would make it illegal for us to talk about or participate in the Critical Mass bike ride. In fact, it would also make it illegal for YOU to talk about or participate in Critical Mass.

This suit is an obvious limitation of our first amendment rights. We’ve amassed an incredible legal team, including renowned civil rights attorney Norman Siegel, to defend us and prove that we’re right and that this time the city has gone too far. But our defense costs money. Although our attorneys will defend us pro bono, we must raise a significant amount of money to pay for legal expenses. The bottom line: we have until May 5 to raise $30,000. Here’s where you come in.

If you’ve ever ridden in Critical Mass–or even ridden a bike–if you care about the environment, if you care about citizens’ right to use public space, or if you believe in protecting free speech, then please make a donation to our legal fund today. You can visit http://www.times-up.org/legal_newswire.php to make a donation and read a copy of the lawsuit. Or write a check to the “TIMES’S UP! Bike Legal Defense Fund” and send it to P.O. Box 2030, New York, NY 10009. All donations are 100% tax-deductible.

We thank you for your time and your generosity, and we encourage you to get involved. Stay tuned to www.times-up.org for the latest information on our case. Please do not hesitate to contact Leah or Matthew for more information.

Sincerely,
Bill DiPaola
Brandon Neubauer
Leah Rorvig [email: leahrorvig@gmail.com, phone: (646) 831-6802]
Matthew Roth [email: almonroth@yahoo.com, phone: (917) 825-3027]
defendants: New York City v. Time’s Up! et. al.

In the Press
(http://www.times-up.org/press.php)
Big Pack of Bikes Piques Police
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-11-15-bikes-new-york_x.htm
After Court Loss, Police Crack Down on Time’s Up!
http://www.times-up.org/press_view.php?article=050330_villager_with_lawsuit
New York Times Editorial Suggesting Police Use Restraint on Rides:
http://www.times-up.org/press_view.php?article=041205_nyt_cm_editorial
Defendant Matthew Roth and Attorney Norman Siegel Discuss Case on Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/28/1434209
Civil Rights Attorney Norman Siegel Statement on continued harassment:
http://www.times-up.org/press_view.php?release=050327_norman_siegel

Speaking of solutions, check out the Swap-O-Matic a project by Lina Fenequito. The Swap-O-Matic is a sustainable design project: one part art installation, one part functional vending machine prototype for (yup) swapping stuff within a local community:

The Swap-O-Matic will attempt to promote the recycling of objects through the interface of a vending machine, which features used rather than new products. Participation with the system will allow users to rethink spending patterns, view consumption with a different perspective, and explore issues of material possessions and American consumption through a public installation. The Swap-O-Matic is intended to be both a solution and critical response to the gluttonous culture that we live in today: its core function to support the reuse and recycling of consumer products through swapping among participants. The project’s form, a vending machine, not only supports the function of an automated, self-contained system for swapping, but also frames the interaction in the problematic cultural context which it comments, insinuating notions of the immediacy, instant-gratification, and convenience, values often associated with vending machines.

A prototype currently lives at the Lower East Side Girls Club in New York City with an opening tonight from 5-8pm. Love that retro style!

Yesterday I was reading my new favorite blog World Changing. Alex Steffen’s words really resonated with me:

But here’s the great thing: while spending too much time thinking about all the ways the world can end will make you depressed, mean and non-rational, thinking about what the world would be like if a given set of problems were solved tends to make you (or at least me) happier, more energized, and more creative. And I personally find this to be more true, the more real the possibility of actually solving those problems is. Pragmatic optimism (and the creative will to express it) is, I think, not only the antidote for what ails us in contemporary society, but may be the best path forward for tackling these gigantic species-level challenges, these looming disasters, as well. [ World Changing ]

On a related note, I’m almost ready to launch a beta of a big big big project I’ve been working on since December. I’m psyched but I still have some sleepless nights ahead of me before it’s ready for the first users. More info (and less cryptic announcements) soon..

The Downhill Battle crew, through their Participatory Culture Foundation, have just announced a new project, Internet Tv, and released the sourcecode for developers.

The project is a a free, open source set of software tools for watching and distributing high quality, full screen videos over the internet at almost no cost to the publisher (BitTorrent, baby). For viewers, this means you can elegantly and simply subscribe to your friends’ channels, a channel for your zipcode, or organizations and watch a truckload of videos that you can’t get on regular TV. For videomakers, you’ll finally have a publishing tool for all your videos – it will be as easy as blogging– just upload your files and you have a channel. Anyone can find out about your channel and start subscribing to it, just like anyone can find out about your blog or your favorite blog.

This is really exciting stuff… launching in June.

Update: Listen in on Tim’s podcast interview with David Moore over at EchoRadio. It’s a good breakdown of what it’s all about.

On Saturday, worldwide protests marking the two year anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq drew hundreds of thousands of people. In New York City alone several thousand people marched from Harlem to Central Park in protest. Yet the U.S. mainstream media continues to downplay worldwide dissent.

For those not paying attention, here’s a brief recap pulled from articles I’ve del.icio.us-ed:

Since the United States invaded Iraq 21,100-39,300 Iraqi civilians and 1,511 U.S. troops were killed. (At least 108 people have died in U.S. custody in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, with only a quarter of the cases have been investigated as possible U.S. abuse.) At lowest estimates, U.S. taxpayers have spent $200 billion dollars ($9 billion of which the Iraqi Coalition Provisional Authority cannot account for) on the illegal, immoral and unjustified war in Iraq. No Weapons of Mass destruction were found in Iraq. Halliburton overcharged the government and reaped the benefit of no-bid contracts.

Not surprisingly, as Greg Palast recently discovered, before the war there were two competing Secret US Plans for Iraq’s Oil, one crafted “within weeks” of Bush’s first taking office in 2001 (even before the September 11th attacks). Yet Bush asserted that there is no need to hold any of his officials accountable for mistakes or misjudgments in pre-war planning or managing the aftermath because U.S. voters have vindicated his decisions based on the results of presidential elections tainted by widespread minority disenfranchisement, lack of adequate voting machines, and questionable and unverifiable electronic voting results.

Will Joe American see any of this when he watches Fox news (or CBS, NBC, CNN, etc.) tonight? I doubt it. To learn some of what is actually happening in Iraq, check out Baghdad Burning, the weblog of a twenty-something Iraqi woman.

Greenpeace has a bunch of great little flash games on their site to “help Greenpeace save the planet.” The unsubstantiated rumor is that some of the recent ones were made by Future Farmers which wouldn’t surprise me given that Future Farmers is a progressive and very environmentally conscious design firm.

Many of the Greenpeace games are small and quick loading, with fun pixel graphics. But they really work because of their scope. These aren’t all encompassing games to ‘save the world’ in every sense. The game play and concept revolve around small and direct local actions on specific issues, mirroring effective activism. Game concepts include: “Move your tiny inflatable craft in front of the harpoon to save the whale!”, “Save the planet from your desktop! Battle poachers and evil submarines to rescue endangered species,” and “Guide your Greenpeace submersible to block the discharge pipe of the La Hague nuclear plant.”

Nice work Greenpeace.. Now if only these games were better promoted and not tucked deeply within your site.