More light,helmets too if possible,flouro jackets,cameras,proper formation, colour coding,flag poles on all sides, avoiding dangerous routes,trailers at the back or it aint safe.
Well done to anon people who stopped the idiot drivers in VW outside the royal theatre I was holding others cars back at time, we have to be careful & support each other if they try & run us over, or we are F**hed.Soz no radios, had ready, but weather was wet.
People not sure who we are,if anyone asks me I usually say Iam just a concerned citizen & member of Joe or General Public,
going on holiday if I can, hope next ones good if Iam not there,
I cant accept people being threatened even by minority when they are defending, lets defend each other & not give each other away,
self defence is no offence!,
viva
Joe Public

"I don't think Critical Mass should just be about blocking traffic for the sake of it"

As far as I'm aware we're not. We will inevitably slow traffic (how can you avoid this with 30+ cyclists in the road), and this slowing is aimed at raising drivers' awareness about the cost of their driving, and gives them time to contemplate the alternatives :)

"At the moment the route is unclear. At each junction people in the front of the ride argue and shout at each other and it all just feels like hard work and not really enjoyable."

One of the key features of Critical Mass is that there's no agreed route. It needs to be unpredictable and spontaneous - that's part of the fun. There is a problem with people at the front going for different options, but hardly an unresolvable one. I'd prefer this to having a pre-set route and leaders.

You make some fair points about safety - we should avoid people getting run down by idiots - but it can't be directed or imposed on an event that is not organised or led. Critical Mass will always be dangerous - that's part of the point.

Up the Trogg luddites!
Remember nottingham is the city of Troggs in Sherwood forest. We are leading the way, most people,especially around the royal theatre area love to see us, can I suggest the route goes around slab square mostly at the next one, its safer!
One day everyone can ride around in cycled power solar vehicles, our public transport system is getting better & better with the tram,
fred flintsone,Wilma & barney rubble love us really!
YABADABADOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Joe peblican,

ps I think everyone agrees it works when we take the safest routes & stick together.
Delegating temporary postions like rebel pirates works & is anarchistic as are guidelines for extreme situations like turning off long routes at stages or stopping where we have held traffic up for a long time.This seems to be where motorists get most fustrated, on long ones like outside ice staduim or talbot street & there are few options for them to turn off due to traffic routes.
When we stop we could even do it somewhere strategic & do something merry& inventive as well as have a drink
Maybe we should all dress up in green too, so people know we are following the true code

Critical Mass is chaotic - that's part of the fun; it's dangerous - that's why it has to happen. Lenton Cyclist is right - Critical Mass is best leaderless. I definately agree that we should stick together more and foster a stronger sense of solidarity and mutual aid in the face of intimidation from cars, but the way to go about making these changes isn't to elect leaders and crush spontaneity. I haven't ever noticed people getting aggrovated over the route at each junction, and I don't think the rankled discord of Friday's Critical Mass can be generalised to all Nottingham Critical Masses - especially considering the bizarre destructiveness of the ride. I don't want to condemn it outright, but most people seemed to agree that violence on a Critical Mass, even to property, contradicts its essentially positive, celebrative atmosphere; or, for it not to be contradictory, it needs to be based on a consensus decision. I don't want to get into an argument or offend anyone, I just want to make the point that it was violence (and cold and wet ;) ), not leaderlessness, which made Friday's Critical Mass so depressing.

"The Critical Mass is supposed to be a celebration of cycling and other forms of non-polluting transport. It should be creative, positive, colorful, engaging. There should be music, dance, costumes, flags, banners, sillyness and should be inviting for new people to get involved with. It should be a way for people to get engaged with issues in a creative and positive way. It should be about informing people why we do what we do and make sure we're noticed for that."
I competely agree. This is what we need to work on, these are the things that we need to improve - and things which (by enhancing visibility and contagious cheerfulness) would improve the safety of Critical Mass as well. Spontenaity and leaderlessness are not preclusive to this - on the contrary, they are conducive to it.

Lenton cyclist wrote:

'slowing is aimed at raising drivers' awareness about the cost of their driving, and gives them time to contemplate the alternatives'

Well it hardly is. Not everyone in a car understands what it is about. There are no flyers and hardly any banners or any other form of info on what it's about. I'm not sure what it's about myself. Is it do demand better cycling facilities in the city? Is it to make a point about cars and pollution and climate change? Surely if we had an actual issue to raise, than we'd get ourselves together to actually inform people properly about it.

I just found the last ride very agressive, from both sides, which I find takes all the energy and attention away from the actual issues.

I do not want to be involved in anything violent because there is too much of that in the world already, and surely we do this for love?
I don't particularly want to slow traffic down because cars apparently between 15 and 50mph is their most fuel-efficient speed and don't we do this to prevent further pollution of Earth?
I don't want to encourage reckless drivers to make dangerous overtaking manouvers, for obvious reasons.

I do want to help highlight the lunacy of car culture.
I do want to address mankinds destruction of all life on Earth.
I do want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike.

Any one else think we should try to track down that poor guy and foot the bill?

'The Japanese word for crisis, kiki, translates two ways: as "danger occassion," but also "danger opportunity." How you react to the unexpected reveals your true spirit.' Zen Guitar

We have made quite an impression already. We can make it a good one.

For me personally, Friday night really took us back so far, I'm not actually sure how we can return from that point and continue - at least for the moment. Critical Mass is a great idea in principle, but recently we've become something I'm not even sure I want to be a part of any more. I haven't enjoyed the last two times, and was already beginning to have my doubts. November was pretty miserable with a lot of bad vibes that knocked my confidence in what we were doing, and I feel rather like Friday night just confirmed that.

First things first: get some lights, all of you, there's no excuse for it at all! If you're serious about being a cyclist and using your bike regularly, especially in Winter, you require lights - they are not an optional extra! I don't care so much that you're breaking the law - that's your choice - but the fact is, without lights on your bike, you are invisible to motorists. Maybe if you've never been a driver you don't realise just how invisible you are, but I can tell you, on a dark Winter night, even on brightly lit city streets, you could be riding along with a small nuclear explosion taking place on your head and still be relatively invisible from behind a grubby car windscreen. Even with good lights and bright clothing, motorists are very adept at ignoring us and running us off the road. Isn't this half the point we're trying to make, that motorists are oblivious to cyclists? Yet about 3/5 of our riders don't have any lights on their bikes at all!?!? Remind me again why we bother, when we can't even be arsed to make an effort to meet them halfway and give them a fighting chance of seeing us? Yes we're more visible in a larger group, but at the end of the day, people still get spread out and separated at times, and without lights, sooner or later someone IS going to get run over. If not on a Critical Mass then when out on your own. Stop making crap excuses and thinking you'll be OK, and just get some lights - they aren't even expensive!! (Three quid in Wilkos if you're that way inclined - or rather, how much is your life worth to you?) At the moment, we have a nice semi-invisible protest. Some cyclist you'll be when they scrape what's left of your innards off the tarmac. I don't want to lose any of my mates that way - there's not enough good, active people around in the first place for us to be throwing ourselves away for the sake of saving a few quid!

Second thing: what is our message, really? It's all well and good to hold up the cars a bit, but do we really want to force them to tailgate us for extended periods of time (ie. upwards of 15 minutes)? I used to think "yeah, let's piss them off", but you know what, it's getting us nowhere. In the time it takes us to really really anger 50 or so motorists, we've just missed an opportunity to put a positive message across to 500+ motorists who could have driven past us slowly and been inspired to maybe get out of their cars and onto their bikes. Not only that, we've just gained 50 enemies, who will be keen on getting cycles banned from the road. Maybe seriously pissing people off is the point of Critical Mass and I'd just been giving it the benefit of the doubt for too long, but what I remember from my first few rides was a really great party vibe, having an awesome time, everybody smiling, cars often tooting us in support. Where has that been the last two rides? Maybe it's just because it's been dark and cold, but the smiles are gone, the party vibe isn't there, and the motorists would sooner run us all over than even find out what we're protesting about! I believe it is self-evident to just about anyone who was there - we are doing a shit job of putting our message across, and ultimately working against what we're trying to achieve.

Final thing that absolutely ruined Friday night: the violent / destructive actions and attitude of certain individuals. There's a time and a place for that kind of thing, and Critical Mass is neither the time nor the place. If you want to go around smashing people's car windows, fine, go ahead and be a common-or-garden vandal - but don't drag others (or the movement as a whole) into it. At the very least, you aren't going to win any friends for our cause, but you've certainly done a great job of making everyone look like a gang of mindless hooligans on bikes. What if it gets in the local sensationalist Daily-Mail-sponsored rag? We're all going to look like a bunch of wankers because of you, and our "bikes are good" message is going to be completely lost alongside the headlines about a gang of thugs riding through the city, smashing up people's vehicles. We might as well not bother any more, if that's going to be what happens. "Cars are a weapon" is a totally bullshit excuse - you came on the ride tooled up from the beginning! What the fuck were you doing bringing several metal poles along if you weren't intending to use them? Leave your weapons at home next time, or don't bother coming - it really is that simple. Next time I notice objects of a dubious nature at the beginning of the ride, I'm just going to go home and leave you to it, because I'm screwed if I'm going to be a part of that kind of thing. You may be happy with the whole of Nottingham viewing you as a major twat leading a rowdy collective of twats, but I am not, and I am not going to be a part of that. It's counter to just about everything I stand for, and it's seriously counterproductive to our cause. Being sponsored by Shell would do our message less damage than you managed to achieve on Friday, so well done you.

I may give it one last chance next month (or possibly the month after next), but if this kind of shit happens again, I think my days of Critical Mass are over.

What we decide to do about all this depends if we actually ever want to get anywhere with our message and make a difference to the planet (and the vehicle ratio of the streets we ride on), or if we just want to be seen as a fringe group of violent nutters to be feared, loathed and ignored?

I would like to remind people that posting articles or comments on Indymedia will mean it is read by police and other journalists in Nottingham. Please be careful about what you say. Comments that breach the Editorial Guidelines may be hidden:

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/static/editorial

Dear IMC, if most of you really care you should take off all these comments know, its getting silly,
self defence is no offence!
United we stand,divided we fall!
Joanne Public

I'm not sure what happened, I wasn't there, and the report here is pretty naff... but if some motorist was causing aggro and got his windows smashed, and no-one got caught doing it, what's the big deal? So someone had a pole for self-defence - so what? Doesn't mean they intended anything, just that they were prepared for the worst.

What we've got here, is a failure to disidentify with the system's standards, an attachment to the "decent majority" norms of social conformism which is being imported into activism and which functions in fact as a divide-and-rule device for the bosses. When we bicker about these kinds of things, the system wins.

BTW the Critical Mass doesn't seem to have made the local press, so fears of a media backlash, while not unfounded, were not realised in this case (the Evening Post being a shitty little rag full of crime-bashing bullshit, but apparently too busy with resistance to the curfew/tagging scheme to come after us at the mo).

quoting somebody:

'I'm not sure what happened, I wasn't there, and the report here is pretty naff... but if some motorist was causing aggro and got his windows smashed, and no-one got caught doing it, what's the big deal? So someone had a pole for self-defence - so what? Doesn't mean they intended anything, just that they were prepared for the worst.'

i was there and this was not a case of self-defence. this was a person doing something and jeopardising what the whole thing is about. if a group decides to do something, that's one thing, but if one individual goes off on their own thing and pulling everyone into it unwillingly....

critcal mass is non-violent. everybody knows that.

"I'm not sure what happened, I wasn't there" - exactly.

This had nothing to do with self defense. The motorist in question was not causing aggro. I didn't speak to him myself, but according to those who did, he actually pretty much supported our cause, had no problem with us beforehand, and had no idea why his window got smashed.

This was "self defence" in the way the Iraq war was "self defence" - a preemptive strike against a non-threatening target, by someone looking to cause trouble for the sake of it.

There were several times in the evening where self defence could have been justified (the boy racers who tried to run several of us over by the Cornerhouse, if you want a prime candidate who was really asking for it and actively threatening the group) but this poor guy in his average "student-ish" car is probably faced with a write-off now (assuming his car is worth £500 or less and the replacement rear window costs £250 or so), and for what?

You don't need an iron bar for self defence, and while it may seem that I'm a fundamentalist pacifist, nothing could be further from the truth - I spent years learning how to fight, in order to be able to recognise situations where I should, and situations where I shouldn't.

What my "hysteria" is about is because I object to some loose cannon who comes tooled up from the start, then smashes up some average guy's non-executive, non-threatening car at what is supposed to be a non-violent "celebration / party"-style protest.

Then there's also that the guy doing the smashing and proclaiming "cars are a weapon" does himself own and drive a car! Puhlease... if cars are a weapon, stop being such a hypocrite and get rid of your own, or accept that just maybe, if a hardened cyclist such as yourself still needs a car now and then, that other people do too. Personally, I *DID* get rid of my car - so what's your excuse for your double standards?

The whole point of CM is to reclaim that space once a month, have fun and inform and empower people in a positive way to change the way they think about cars and climate change. Surely just pissing off motorist by blocking their way for sometimes up to half hour and thus getting them really angry, is not really supporting our cause. These motorists are our target. Not to smash up their cars, but to inform, educate and empower to make positive change in the way they use their cars, the way the drive them and the way they should feel climate change needs them to take action too. That is the challenge. Not cycling around being 'middle class', 'rebellious' and doing stupid things like smashing up cars when you drive them yourself. That's indeed called 'hypocritical'.

I was there last Friday and I have been on many Critical Masses before. I guess I would be concidered an 'experienced' activist and I know the person in question that got a bit carried away with his wooden pole. This wasn't self-defence. This was someone preparing weapons beforehand. As 'somebody else' said before: 'critcal mass is non-violent. everybody knows that'

You don't take weapons. Full stop.

This discussion has been carrying on on various email lists, including here:
 https://lists.riseup.net/www/arc/nottinghamdissent/2006-01/

On reflection, I'm starting to accept J's position a little. I'm not adverse to putting the boot in (as in the shoe, on the end of my leg) if aggro car drivers try and kill us, but I still object to the carrying of items intended to be used as weapons on Critical Mass, if only because one false move could get us a media backlash from the sensationalist local newspaper which would ruin our message. Regardless of the reality, try explaining away "self defence" in the papers when it's a fact that you took a "weapon" (even if only a wooden pole, though I thought the other one you were carrying was metal) along. If that were to happen, I think we'd be screwed, or at least, our supposedly positive message to the public would suffer a major setback in Nottingham for a considerable period of time.

Imagine the difference between "Peaceful bike protestor knocked off by speeding motorist" and "Armed bike hoodlums smash terrified driver's car"... see what I'm saying? Both could arise from almost the same reality - indeed, from Friday night - but I know which one would sell more newspapers, and if you've seen the kind of pap (ASBO article excepted) that gets into said paper, they'd have no qualms about printing it.

Self defence is no offence - fine, but true self defence should be spontaneous through necessity, not premeditated. Premeditated makes it revenge, not self defence, surely? Unless you were forced to lash out on the spur of the moment in order to prevent this car running yourself or someone else over, how can it honestly be called self defence? If it had been going fast enough and really being dangerous, smashing the window would have made no difference anyway because of momentum.

I had noticed the car revving (hardly unusual), but had not seen it speeding towards our group - I actually thought it was quite slow moving or even stationary at the point when it's window was broken, though I wasn't looking behind me at the precise moment of the breakage. If J says it was speeding towards us, then I accept that, though still don't accept that this was a necessary act of self defence. If almost everybody else had moved on, how was the car threatening the group? Did you really *need* to smash it's window, or did you just do it because you could?

Then there's still the "cars are a weapon" mantra from one who is a car driver. I'm absolutely not saying get rid of your car and be a bike purist, I'm just saying that it's slightly hypocritical to say something like that when you do in fact own and drive a car yourself. If you need your car, then accept that others do too. If they have no idea why we're blocking the road and not letting them through, they understandably get a bit annoyed with us. As far as I was aware, this particular driver had not posed us any threat other than revving his engine a bit.

In all, I wish to retract my outright condemnation of this episode, but just say that given the circumstances, I still think it was unnecessary and over the top. Most of the group had moved on, and the item used for self defence (if it was indeed true self defence) should have been a foot or a fist, not a pole.

If I was mistaken about the car threatening the group, I apologise. However, what I don't apologise for is saying that we shouldn't take weapons of any sort (even a dual-purpose flag pole) on Critical Mass, because the risk of a situation going horribly wrong is far increased for everyone if people are tooled up.

It's for the same reason I don't walk around with a set of nunchaku or a telescopic baton in my jacket, as much as I'd love to carry them "just in case", and know I would never use them unless forced to by some bastard trying to mug me. It's just a bad idea, and puts you on questionable ground from the beginning - makes it appear that you set out to cause trouble at a peaceful event, even if you didn't.

If Critical Mass is a public awareness campaign, we shouldn't go making enemies of the very people we're trying to influence. Perhaps if you'd chucked a boxload of Critical Mass flyers through his window instead...? :-)

Anyway, not another word on that matter from me.

You'll notice there were two other points on my original posting: people being invisible due to lack of lights, and the way we put our message accross effectively.

I believe both of those are far more important issues to resolve, and if we get better at those two, hopefully there will be less pissed off drivers to deal with and no need for self defence anyway.

Let's spam the bastards with flyers! Perhaps if there's a way we could have a high-speed wallpaper paste roller of sorts, in order to quickly (and non-permanently) glue Critical Mass flyers to the cars of the tossers who try and run us over? At least they'd get a chance to read all about it while cleaning it off, and any damage done would be annoying but non-permanent.

Maybe even some kind of bumper-sticker dispenser gun (or just reels of stickers on our handlebars), to allow for super-fast and discrete non-permanent tagging of aggro cars when we get them cornered.

"Idiot drivers like me kill over 1000 UK cyclists a year" or something, or the more abstract "Even though raping the Earth turns me on, I still needed this penis extension to do it!", and not forgetting "My oil addiction funds Middle Eastern terrorism!"... how about some kind of en-route sticker campaign anyway, regardless of counter-aggro requirements?

If we must damage cars, lets damage them with a definite message attached to our actions, eh?

(Apologies for continuing to discuss this here, but I appreciate the relative anonymity provided by discussing it on Indymedia.)

boy on bike:

' Self defence is no offence - fine, but true self defence should be spontaneous through necessity, not premeditated. Premeditated makes it revenge, not self defence, surely? Unless you were forced to lash out on the spur of the moment in order to prevent this car running yourself or someone else over, how can it honestly be called self defence? If it had been going fast enough and really being dangerous, smashing the window would have made no difference anyway because of momentum. '

He wasn't forced to lash out on the spur of the moment. He was intending on this to happen way before the critical mass happened. He is a liability and unpredictable person. Those of you that haven't known him for that long, maybe you should talk with people who have.

Unless everyone agrees on no weapons taken to a critical mass, me and many others I spoke to today will not be going anymore.

Some comments have been hidden for the reason that they 'are flame baits made with the intention of provoking argument and/or limiting constructive dialog', which is set out in our Editorial Guidelines:

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/static/editorial

Comments that breach the Editorial Guidelines may be hidden in the future.

hello each

Piccys of the Critical Mass last friday, can now be seen at:

 http://indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2006/02/332729.html

The photographers appologies for the delay, I an my computer are doing our best

Chinese new year pictures to follow shortly ........