(This note is from Carl Kurz, Bikes Not Bombs' founder, which Carl
had sent directly to Jonathan at SLC in response to question about
whether we started as a traditional nonprofit or chose that direction
later. I'm now posting to the whole list in case it is interesting/
useful. -Arik)
We are honored, to be sure, to think that there are groups out there
that could glean info from our experience. Its interesting to note
that Bikes Not Bombs had very anarchistic, affinity group style roots
that had evolved out of the organizing strategies of the Anti Nuclear
movement in the late 1970's. We didn't start as an institution or a
501 c 3 organization. From there it was my intention to spread our
mission wide and include and involve as many people that would be
interested in rejecting the Reagan Admin onslaught against Central
American movements for self determination. I was looking for a way
to involve the environmentalists, the cycling community, the nascent
recycling movement into something that was, frankly anti-
imperialist. During my work in the Anti Nuclear movement I had begun
to realize that the US nuclear weapons industry was very much part of
an imperialist arm of the US military and corporate strategy for
global hegemony. It sounds sort of dogmatic the way I'm phrasing it
here but it was a very intimate realization to me at the time and I
was seeking a way to go beyond my comfort zone with circles of white
anti-nuclear activists and venture into the world of solidarity. In
meeting activists and Nicaraguan representatives at the Survival
Gathering hosted by the American Indian Movement in South Dakota in
1979 and again in 1980 I knew that I wanted to do something and
involve as many people as possible. It wasn't until early 1984 that
I found the right folks and strategy to start to formulate Bikes Not
Bombs and then I took off for Nicaragua to see what more Nicaraguans
thought about the idea of developing a tangible aid-based bicycle
collecting US solidarity organization. Of course I was an
environmentalist, a bicycle racer, a bike mechanic and had some of my
own agenda in addition to the solidarity aspect of helping the
popular Sandinista Revolution. Throughout that process and later in
El Salvador, Guatemala, Cuba, Mexico and Haiti I gained a huge amount
of respect for people that were struggling for a more just world in
their third world realities. And now after returning last week from
Tanzania and South Africa I have been enriched by meeting activists
and connecting with communities in those cultures as well. In 1985
we did begin to have leadership in Washington DC that formed a 501 c
3 non-profit to house a number of projects that were collecting bikes
and shipping them overseas. That entity was called the Institute for
Transportation and Development Policy. The ITDP still exists and they
are doing great things in the international scene re transportation
policy in developing countries.
Even though we had an organizational base, and the ITDP was acting as
an umbrella for projects such as Bikes not Bombs to Mozambique, and
efforts to send bikes to Haiti, our main group, Bikes Not Bombs,
was focused on solidarity and development in Nicaragua and that
effort was taking shape more as part of a movement and not as an
organization (if that makes any sense to you as you read this.) In
other words the last thing on my mind was to patent any logo or
create a set of guidelines that were proprietary, I was trying to
show the injustice in the US foreign policy and encourage people to
join a movement through a practical step of collecting and sending
bikes to a country that was redistributing wealth and opportunities
to its people in a profound manner. And I was appealing to the
environmental aspect of the use of bicycles as a potentially
beneficial and transformative power in society. I do subscribe to
some degree in EP Thomson's concepts of technological determinism.
The BNB idea has always been to keep it tangible and yet connected to
something bigger, not shying away at all from politics but not
wallowing in political theory and diatribes - make it concrete. Soon
we had Bikes Not Bombs chapters in DC, Minn, Texas., SF and
Berkeley, LA, Oregon, Seattle, Vancouver, Edmonton, Montreal,
Toronto, New Hampshire, Boston, Denver, Bristol England, and even
Karlsruhe Germany, to name the more prominent groups. It really was
more like being part of a movement than part of an organization and
the backdrop was the Central American Solidarity Movement.
We really began to change in terms of growth and maturity when we
began to change the nature of our work from solidarity to a broader
yet still radical concept of "sustainable development". We also
added a youth component to our work in Boston believing that it was
even more critical to change the US transportation policy as the
worlds largest per capita energy consumer society and that we had to
start with people that were least invested in the system. ie Youth!
In hindsight, it was a naive political analysis because even though
youth are not very engaged in the system economically and have less
to lose by rejecting some of its status quo icons, we underestimated
the ubiquitous impact of the Auto-crats marketing monster and its
never-ending production of consumer ideology and cultural imaging
that transforms the individual into a fan base for idolizing the auto
regardless of any rational critique one could put forth. That's
changed with time as new paradigms have emerged and as we have become
better and more patient at working with and listening to youth and
presenting information and bike culture in a way more engaging to youth.
The chaos of a movement-centered strategy ended up being a bit too
much for the ITDP, and BNB was split off and we started our own 501 c
3 in Boston in 1990. Then Nicaragua changed, the election was
basically bought with American money and threats and some Sandinista
mistakes as well. Then BNB went through another huge
transformation, while still fomenting a radical agenda around
sustainable development and shipping bikes to community partners in
other countries, we began to become a bonafide community-based
organization in the Boston inner city. We did not form another top-
down white activist bike advocacy group, although we maintain great
ties with orgs that are based on that model and we also embrace city
wide bike advocacy, but our focus was on advocacy at the community
level, school by school, community by community and person by
person. We have made a unique marriage out of building our community
base in Boston and reaching out to the communities that we work with
in other countries and our anti-militarist stance re US foreign
policy. We reject the idea that the US is rich enough and should
pursue a strategy of " bike lanes and bombs" "guns and butter" so to
speak. We flatly reject that, it is the nemesis of the spiritual
regeneration and technical evolution that America has to come to
someday on a pathway towards peace and responsible environmental
stewardship. Were not saying, don't build bike infrastructure and
bike culture until peace is secured, but on the other hand we will
not delude ourselves or anyone else into thinking that investing 700
billion dollars a year in the Department of Defense budget and the
execution of two wars isn't completely destroying the core of our
economy and our culture. That's why we're still Bikes Not Bombs.
Carl Kurz Bikes Not Bombs www.bikesnotbombs.org
On Oct 8, 2008, at 5:08 PM, Jonathan Morrison wrote:
There is no question there is a tremendous amount of information
that the 130+ organizations on this list could use from well
established groups like Bikes not Bombs and the Community Cycling
Center. The question is, what do we have to offer them?At a minimum it would be good to interview some of the longer
standing members of each of these organizations and figure out what
hard decisions they had to make and what the out come was.One thing I have observed with some of the larger organizations is
that they went more in the direction of a traditional non-profit.
I would be curious to find out if it started out that way, or if
that was an active choice.-- Sincerely,
Jonathan Morrison Executive Director Salt Lake City Bicycle Collective 2312 S. West Temple Salt Lake City, UT 84115 w: 801-328-2453 c: 801-688-0183 f: 801-466-3856 www.slcbikecollective.org
Get Addicted to Crank! http://www.slcbikecollective.org/crank/
The mission of the Salt Lake City Bicycle Collective is to promote
cycling as an effective and sustainable form of transportation and
as a cornerstone of a cleaner, healthier, and safer society. The
Bicycle Collective provides refurbished bicycles and educational
programs to the community, focusing on children and lower income
households.On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 2:08 PM, Rich Points rich@richpoints.com
wrote:So, BNB, are you out there? Lemme know. I'm curious why BNB isn't present on the Think Tank or at Bike
Bike! I can think of some other groups like the Community Cycling
Center in Portland. These are groups that are way more established
than most of us and have a lot to offer. I think the
communications we have here and at Bike Bike are what makes us a
movement and these more established groups should be part of our
conversations/discussions.How can we get these groups involved?
Rich Community Cycles