About/FAQ

What is Intergalactic Critical Mass?

Intergalactic Critical Mass will be a weekend long series of bike rides and events in the spirit of Critical Mass. ICM is happening for the first time in Boston, September 30th-October 2nd. Globally, similar events happen such as Critical Mass Interplanetaria in Rome and Velorution in Paris, as well as anniversary rides in San Francisco.

 ICM Boston will coincide with HONK Festival, making the weekend a full blown “Reclaim the Streets” extravaganza. The weekend will include at least two massive Critical Mass bike rides, games, workshops, parties, participation in the HONK Parade and more. We hope to link the event to various social and environmental projects in the area by asking for various groups to set up Critical Mass related events (panels, film screenings, bike rides, races, workshops etc.). We hope these events will draw attention to the intersectionality of social and environmental issues and be a tool for building power between local movements.

In this way we hope to re-expose the radical roots of Critical Mass as a social movement and not just another ride.

What is Critical Mass?

Critical Mass is a monthly bicycle ride to celebrate cycling and to assert cyclists’ right to the road. The idea started in San Francisco in September 1992 and quickly spread to cities all over the world.  In over 300 cities globally, on the last Friday of every month, hundreds of thousands of cyclists take to the streets in major cities on an unpermitted and ride with no predetermined route. From meet up to end Critical Mass uses its own size and power to create streets for bikes only, at least temporarily.  Next year is the twentieth anniversary of the movement and itis growing each year.

But what’s it all about?

There has been a lot of debate about whether Critical Mass is a protest or a celebration. We hope to present it as both and neither.

While a protest sets its sights on a future goal by representing opposition, Critical Mass seeks to actualize that vision by creating streets for bikes only, if only for a couple hours once a month. Critical Mass is prefigurative politics. The means prefigure the end, we create, by doing, a vision of the future in the reality of the present.

Celebration suggests that something has been won, and while we are excited about the increasing number of bikes that hit the streets every year and all of the great collective projects  popping up to make biking safer and easier, we seek to manifest an image of a future really worth celebrating. One in which cyclists and pedestrians aren’t killed regularly by motorized vehicles. One in which we can trust in the air we’re breathing while riding. One that seeks to replace an unsustainable and unsafe culture and environment with one that is sustainable, fun and egalitarian.

For us the affordability of bikes and the level of self-reliance and self-empowerment a cycling culture structured around community needs and mutual aid is capable of providing, link the desire for a robust and militant bike movement to struggles for social and environmental justice in our communities. Car culture is dependent on and perpetuates a global reliance on fossil fuels, linked inextricably to the colonization of poor nations and the exploitation of land and resources. At home it pollutes our air and makes our streets unsafe for cyclists and pedestrians. Mechanical complexity builds a reliance on a class of profit driven salespeople and “experts.”  The beautiful simplicity of the bicycle makes it perfect for egalitarian vehicle. No only is it self-powered, sustainable and efficient, but repair and maintenance is a significantly simpler endeavor and one that can be taught and shared on a community level.

For these reasons and many more Intergalactic Critical Mass espouses the following values:

– We strive towards a city which is free of personal use automobiles. This means we want a city for bikes and public transportation only. We don’t believe that the number of deaths and the amount of pollution caused by car culture locally and our fossil fuel economy globally, can be justified in a city where a whole array of cleaner and safer transportation alternatives exist.

– Behind this demand is a deeper demand for social and environmental justice.Those who choose more responsible forms of transportations, or cannot afford to drive, are  much more often the victims of motor vehicle violence and pollution. Similarly, those in the Global South and in poor communities of the Global North, who have the least access to the luxuries provided by a fossil fuel economy, suffer disproportionately from the displacement, pollution and exploitative labor needed to keep such an economy running.

– We believe that the tactic of reclaiming the streets, at once militant and fun, is both empowering in the immediate and inspiring in our re-envisioning of a safer and more just city. We believe in the power of direct action and prefigurative politics. This means we strive to represent the our vision of the future with our actions in the present.

– Critical Mass is organized along decentralized and non-hierarchical lines. This extends from the organizing of Intergalactic Critical Mass to the rides themselves. Like all aspects of critical mass, its horizontal nature gestures towards a social ideal.

– We want present a critical analysis of public and private space. We are skeptical of ownership in both he literal sense and the sense in which cars “own” the streets through their sheer ability to inflict physical harm on those who would seek to assert their right to that space.

– Critical Mass is unpermitted and unprotected. Because we seek to build an egalitarian culture of self-reliance and mutual aid we don’t ask the state for permission to have the street or protection from angry drivers. We recognize that the state does and will always defend the dominant culture (and thus, car culture) and to negotiate or work with them is to slouch towards the dissolution of our strongest tools: autonomy and self-reliance. We take the streets because we deserve them and we organize among ourselves ways to de-escalate potentially dangerous situations.

– Critical Mass is a FUN AND CELEBRATORY way to show our love for bikes and our right to the streets!