
(Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
Five years ago today Portland resident Michelle DePass stood up at a meeting for a transportation project on North Williams Avenue and changed the course of local and national cycling politics forever:
“We have an issue of racism and of the history of this neighborhood,” DePass said. “Until we address that history and… the cultural differences we have in terms of respect, we are not going to move very far.”
A Portland blog that covers “gentrification and other problems” has published an article about “bike commuters” that I found interesting and wanted to share.
It also brought up some thoughts of mine on how people tend to lump “bike commuters” into one big, happy group.
In Seeing The Sky; And, The Privilege Of Bike Commuting, the blog’s author shares the “unfortunate truth” that bike commuting is “a privilege, mostly denied to the middle working class (my error)” (emphasis mine):