WW4 REPORT readers are aware that the monthly Critical Mass bicycle ride in New York City has been facing a severe police crackdown for the past several months, with hundreds arrested, bicycles confiscated, and now a threatened injunction against the ride’s perceived organizers. Ironically, this crackdoown comes as several have been killed this year in a wave of reckless accidents by city motorists.
Critical Mass is held the last Friday of every month, and this Friday’s ride will be immediately preceded by a free-speech rally in protest of the injunctions the city is seeking, which would restrain activists from promoting the ride under threat of imprisonment. We’ll be meeting at the south side of Union Square Park at 6:00 PM.
While Critical Mass has adopted the slogan “Still We Ride!” since the crackdown, the free-speech rally is being organized under the slogan “Still We Speak!”
WW4 REPORT’s own Bill Weinberg will be among the featured speakers, and will be introducing our officially endorsed candidate for Ground Zero redevelopment czar, Adam Purple.
Union Square Park South
Friday May 27, 6:00 PM
info@stillwespeak.org
An ironic postscript
From The Villager, July 6-12:
Purple p.o.’d:
Adam Purple, community gardening legend and bicycling activist from way back, almost came out of his obscurity recently. He was scheduled to speak at the Still We Speak rally before the March Critical Mass ride. But as Purple was approaching the mike, Bill Weinberg of WBAI, “half in jest,” told him not to say anything negative about City Councilmember Margarita Lopez. Purple freaked, jumped on his bike and headed back down to the Lower East Side. “He was ticked off,” Weinberg said. “He’s never forgiven — and I can understand why — Margarita for her deep complicity in the destruction of the Garden of Eden in 1986.” Weinberg said that since Lopez had spoken at the rally the month before, he assumed she’d be there again. “I was afraid it was going to be bad vibes,” he said. “But she wasn’t even there. And now I’m pissed — the week after, I opened up The Villager, and saw Lopez with her arm around Bloomberg, a Republican mayor, about this whole East River redevelopment,” Weinberg groused.