Post in Major Incident at Critical Mass bike rally

2007 Sep 01 01:49 UTC

I just spoke with my brother via cell phone, apparently there has been a major
incident at the Critical Mass bike rally, where a large group of bike riders,
100 to 200 strong, rides the city streets.  This incident seems to have been
sparked when a biker strayed across the yellow line and the police arrested
him.  I don't know the details yet, but there were dozens of police involved,
people were maced, cuffed, and force was used to subdue individuals, and there
were apparently several arrests.  It seems there were some anarchists in the
crowd, and the police may have been provoked, and there was a large
overreaction in both the crowd and by the police.  This is extremely
unfortunate.

I think the city government needs to react to this immediately.  Up until now
Critical Mass has largely been free of incidents and has gone on for many years
peacefully.  I have only been a bystander to these events and always found them
amusing, and good natured as the bikers take an equal footing to automobiles on
our city streets.  These types of events happen frequently in the biking
community, and there is the potential for long term escalation if steps are not
taken to diffuse the situation due to the nature of the incident.

If there are policy makers reading this, or members of the Peace Community, now
would be a good time to step in and try to defuse the situation.  At the next
critical mass event, it would be good to see members of the peace community
there, as well as people who can negotiate with the police in order to deal
with disturbances, and to avoid misunderstandings.  The last thing Minneapolis
needs at this point is a Seattle style riot in the lead up to the GOP
convention, and this has all the earmarks for creating an environment that is
going to bring out a severe backlash.  Also our police are overworked, working
60 hour weeks in some cases.  We don't need to waste our resources on this.