Critical Mass in Remembrance of Marie Vesco

June's Critical mass saw a slightly different route. As always we met at Southbank and managed to lave 7.15pm.
Following the killing of Marie Vesco on the A23 her friends, rampART and Food Not Bombs asked people to ride to Brixton, where she served free food every Sunday afternoon with Brixton Food Not Bombs.

Leaving Waterloo

Windrush Square, Brixton

Parliament Square, blocking Road whent hey didnt let the sound system through.

Buckingham Palace. laughing at the queen

Approximately 600 cyclists left Waterloo going South via Lambeth North, then Elephant& Castle, going round a few times stopping the traffic. Via the Oval we went to Brixton, where we stopped at Windrush Square. By now there were maybe 300-400 cyclists left (there was a bit of North-London snobbery). Different people spoke about Marie and how they missed her. How she died and why she worked with Brixton FoodNotBombs and how giving out free food was so important to her. There was a minute's silence for her.

Then we cycled North again, police stopped us halfway up towards Stockwell. They had tried to dictate the tempo previously, but rogue cyclists broke through, stopped the traffic ahead of the police line and in that way forced the police to let the Mass go (Health and Safety and all...).
They managed to block Stockwell Road and we didn't quite get the momentum of breaking through. To the coppers' surprise the tip of the Mass turned around, cycling back on themselves and turning off the main road further down (Sidney Road I think). We made our way to the Oval, cycling past the Cricket knobs, some of which were using bad language, when we came in sight. Others were supportive.
Vauxhall Bridge ended up being a bit of a splitter were we lost a few people. Going across the bridge, past Parliament we hit the square, encircling it a couple of times, until something happened with the sound system (as always) not quite sure what. music stopped. Raising bikes, blocking road, we then went to see the queen. The whole ride took about two hours and a bit. Nice atmosphere, good mix of people and bikes and so good to have some music on the way (three sound systems).

rampart person on bike
Homepage: http://www.rampart.co.nr

Additions

Sound system holdup.

28.06.2008 05:27

What happened with the sound system on the North side of Parliament Square was that the police stopped it playing and riders strongly objected to this ban which caused a long traffic holdup.

The cycle police keep on targeting Critical Mass sound systems in the SOCPA zone around Parliament while doing nothing to stop sound systems in cars, buses and lorries. Also the SOCPA legislation is currently under review and other police are tending not to enforce it.

See:

http://www.criticalmasslondon.org.uk/socpasounds.html

Doug