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The demand for bicycle education is growing rapidly and, across the country, there are more than 3,700 League Cycling Instructors with the classroom knowledge and street skills to get folks…
Read More →It’s only October, but we’re already planning the 2013 National Bike Summit — and it’s going to be big! Be one of the first and register for the Summit today!…
Read More →Thanks to an Advocacy Advance Rapid Response Grant, advocates at Bike Delaware are going to find out. As you may have read in our Election Guide released last month, Bike…
Read More →The latest release of data from the American Community Survey proves what we already know: more people ride in communities that make strategic investments in bicycling. So it’s no surprise…
Read More →After months of emails and phone calls, I finally met Robin Bylenga in person at Interbike. A whirlwind of energy and passion, Bylenga wasn’t just there as the owner of…
Read More →For a short time on Sunday, streets were liberated from automobiles in Los Angeles and Atlanta — and thousands of residents flooded into their reclaimed public space. CicLAvia, photo by…
Read More →Maria Boustead doesn’t call herself a cyclist — despite the fact that she rides 15+ miles per day. In fact, she started her company, Po Campo, because she recognized a…
Read More →Safe, diverse, accessible and fun. For Mia Kohout those are the four pillars in messaging bicycling to women. At the National Women’s Bicycling Summit, the publisher of Momentum magazine was…
Read More →You may know Kimberly-Clark Corporation for its iconic products like Kleenex and Huggies, but K-C played a central role in the creation of a new brand known by bicyclists across…
Read More →In the July/August issue of our magazine American Bicyclist, advocates at the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition gave us an inside look at their work with Spanish-speaking day laborers to create a new PSA campaign.
Continuing our effort to share insight and best practices from innovative campaigns nationwide, our latest issue includes an article that delves into the efforts of Local Spokes, a neighborhood-based bicycle coalition in New York City aimed at creating a “new model for inclusive and sustainable bike planning.”
Unfortunately, we had to condense the story to fit the print edition; here’s the full article!
Local Spokes Youth Ambassadors create models of the East River GreenwayNew Leaders
Pedaling the bike advocacy movement toward transformative change
By Pasqualina Azzarello and Caroline Samponaro
Within the national bicycle advocacy movement, we often speak of a desire for diversity without tangible outcomes. This conversation, when paired with the absence of accountability, makes transformative change improbable. To redirect the culture of a national movement requires intention, effort, communication, resources, and a willingness to take an honest, collective look inside. By investing in the development of new leaders on a local level through outreach, education, and empowerment, transformative change becomes possible.
What is Local Spokes?
Local Spokes is a neighborhood-based bicycle coalition comprised of nine community-based organizations that came together in 2010 to create a new model for inclusive and sustainable bike planning. Local Spokes, which focuses solely on the Lower East Side and Chinatown neighborhoods of Manhattan, was founded to focus on bicycling, but is intentionally comprised of both bicycling and non-bicycling groups, as a means to further the goals of inclusive and multi perspective planning around bicycle programming and street designs.
Our primary aim is to engage local residents to envision the future of bicycling in our diverse neighborhoods. We seek to engage and understand the community’s various perspectives through multilingual outreach and a Youth Ambassadors program. This participatory process has led to the in the development of a neighborhood action plan that will result in additional resources to address potential barriers and increase accessibility to bicycling.
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