Hi Robert,
I thought this would be a long comment to your Facebook post, so I'm putting it here instead.
I was so very sorry to hear about your daughter.
I completely agree with you about approaching the family first for any event regarding the death of their family member. A lady called Margaret Lowdon, who was regularly seen by many on her bike, was killed here in Bridgend, Perth just over three years ago, in July 2018. I had recently read an article about a guy called Geoffrey Bercarich in Canada who sadly had organised a lot of [memorial] ghost bikes. Another bike activist and I had thought about doing a ghost bike for this lady. I contacted Geoffrey to ask for advice. His first point was “ask the family”. In the case of bike accidents, the family may not want to go past a daily reminder of their loved one’s passing still less when it was in such a violent way. So I wrote to Mrs Lowdon's widower to ask and it was not an easy letter. He didn’t reply. I took that as a sign that he didn’t want it and dropped the idea immediately.
I don’t know the groups or individuals you mention and have no interest in getting involved. But things you mention sounded familiar: e.g. misdescription of a non-criminal act and censorship. I’m not on Facebook much because I have found the level of debate depressing. But censorship on e.g. blogs is absolutely the norm in my experience. The other norm is that censorship is usually not to prevent the abuse that tends to be its justification. It is simply because the blog owners don’t want to appear wrong. Why not let people make up their own minds about things that are said? Non-censorship can be very revealing. Equally, so can censorship - of the censor! Censorship asks the question: why doesn't someone want people to make up their own minds?
The pernicious thing about censorship is that you can't highlight it to the readership - unless you know the same people in another setting. You can only find out the extent of it by asking others who you suspect may have been censored. This can be difficult or at least time-consuming. I know because I've done it Ultimately it doesn't really matter because even one example of censorship is revealing enough of the perpetrator to you. And, if they do it once they probably do it often and to many people. This is what I discovered some years after I first wrote about censorship. Curiously, the same post also refers to people not using their own name, something you mention too. They are not unrelated. There were other posts on censorship I never did get round to publishing. It becomes a rabbit hole.
Both misdescription and censorship in my experience often go hand in hand with things like control. Sometimes people try to control a group for power's own sake, or for status. Sometimes it's tied to not wanting to appear wrong, as with censorship. Often it’s linked to commercial exploitation.
I agree people who don’t use their own names are trying to hide something and one has to ask why. Such people feel untrustworthy. It goes along with various forms of word-dodging and word-twisting and hiding, or sneaking about, generally. The same people often edit e.g. Facebook posts retrospectively to make someone who has already commented look wrong or what they have said, misrelated. It's another reason Facebook is such a cesspit of idiocy & dishonesty. Those exercising these vices are best ignored but sometimes, especially when they target you, as they sometimes will, you just have to call it out. Ultimately, various forms of deceit are at the root of all these behaviours. Again, it is usually about hiding something. One wants to ask hide what? And why? I think below the need to hide is fear and compassion is ultimately the only response to that.
Personally I think bike lanes are the way forward but this is another story.
I don’t see this view as incompatible with Critical Mass. If there were enough cyclists on the road then we wouldn’t need lanes because we would be the traffic. But we’re not right now and I won’t be putting my kids back on Perth’s roads any time soon the way they are. I might write (again) to the council though telling them all the places we can’t cycle safely because there are no bike lanes / traffic free routes. It's not just that we feel unsafe. It is unsafe. We have been driven at directly many times, never mind all the people who just don't see you. Better yet, I might do another survey of the city asking people between where and where they would like to cycle if only they felt safer. It would be interesting to see what the most requested journeys are.
Why do that? Because the only thing I've found that even slightly interests politicians or organisations like councils is majority opinion. What is motivating the mob, the council and the politicians is short termism and self-interest. So you wonder, why bother trying to change a system from within in which these are the drivers? Why not opt out, do something different? That's one reason I like CM. It shows how things could be different. I like that there are officially no leaders, no set route, that people step in to keep others safe. I especially like that it's all free, that it's a celebration, that it can be actually, whatever you want, that it is no one thing. I loved the tunes on my first CM - thanks for those, and for taking us on a route with so much variety. I love that so many people loved what we were doing. Most of all I love the fact that people power acting freely can change, even if only for a few moments, the dynamics of society, in this case, how a road system works and for whom.
I don’t think driver behaviour will change on the grand scale without changes to the physical infrastructure. I think more drivers becoming cyclists will help which will only happen when people who don't currently feel safe, feel safe enough to cycle. More prosecution of drivers putting cyclists lives at risk may also help change driver behaviour though on this I am more sceptical.
I have found. and God knows, I've had practice, confronting people doesn’t change their behaviour. If anything it entrenches it. I’ve had more success planting a seed in possibly fertile ground and leaving it, often for a long time. But there’s a lot of stony ground. Reading Mark Boyle's "The Moneyless Man" last night he says the same thing about trying to change people:
"The apsect of the year [of moneyless living] that I have felt happiest about was my parents' reaction. It's been interesting for me to watch them to go on their journey since I started on my path. At the beginning I'd ranted on, telling them how everything they were doing was wrong, how my opinion was right and how they needed to change. Understandabley this erected walls, defences, through which none of us could properly communicate. But it was I who needed to change. What made my opinion more correct than theirs? Or anyone else's for that matter? I stopped my pestering. (It seems children's pester power only works if they're trying to get their parents to buy more, not less.) After about six months after my decision to leave them in peace, I noticed small changes. One time, my mum phoned to tell me she and dad had decided to go vegetarian. Another, she rang to say she was going to stop buying so much stuff. Just by me providing information with no judgement or claim to rightness, my folks started to question things themselves. Not because I was telling them to, because they wanted to. Eventually, they got right behind my moneyless plans and life. There's no sign they're going to join me on the path but they are constantly questioning how they live their lives and are making little changes almost weekly. "
Best wishes,
Felicity
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