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Ride News

Aug 15: Riders are comin' in!! East coasters, the Radish Collective and The PNC is about to kick off and people excited. Watch out for bike gangs!

Aug 17: Come to Troy Gardens around 6pm for a potluck dinner with the riders.

Aug 18:

Report #1: GrassRoutes Caravan Travels From Troy Gardens to Mazomanie

We left Troy Gardens, a community gardening space on the northeast side of Madison, by 9:30 this morning in a mass of approximately 35 riders from all over the country. There are riders from Austin, New York, Chicago, Milwaukee and even from as far reaching as Quito, Ecuador. Clint got a flat tire about ten miles into our ride and was surrounded by helpful riders as he fixed it himself on the side of the road.

The mood is good and the food is delicious. Calico and the Down Home Hospitality Cafe based out of Louisville, Kentucky arrived safely to Madison in their veggie-oil powered Mad-Max-Machine on Friday afternoon just in time for the PNC. They are preparing breakfast, lunch and dinner for the Caravan for the duration of the ride. We ate lunch at Salmo pond where many folks in the caravan took advantage of the swimming and dived in. Three caravanistas, however, emerged transformed into swamp creatures, covered in plants that grow abundantly due to agricultural run-off. They were liberated from the hold of the scary green plants by cries of fear coming from the crowd. Ooooo, they were scary!

Gaby, upon arriving to Mazo and the back of the Iron Horse Gallery, shimmied up one of the wood posts holding up the trellace and monkey-bared back and forth across it. She's our rider from Quito and is pretty bad-ass.

Twelve caravanistas rode approximately three miles to the famous nude beach in Mazo and had a beautiful, respectful, non-creepy experience. Thewater was great! At the moment of writing this report, we are gathered at our home-base behind the Iron Horse Gallery, preparing dinner, getting
ready for the premiere of our pupppet show tomorrow night and just enjoying each others' company.

Report prepared by Agent Tink

August 21:

Report #2: GrassRoutes Caravan Travels from Mezomanie City Center through the Elroy-Sparta Trail

We rolled out of Mazo yesterday in small groups and traveled 30 miles to our lunch spot at White Mounds County Park. It was hilly and gorgeous and off the main highway out in nature. We glided at lightening speeds down the hill to get to the park and groaned when we realized we had to go back up said hill to get back onto the final 10 mile stretch to John Kinsman's farm. But spirits were high due to the scrumptious grub served up by Calico and company and there was a beautiful swimming hole at the park that refreshed our tired bodies.

John Kinsman's dairy farm supplies milk to the Cedar Grove cheese company in Wisconsin and proved to be a peaceful place to set up camp with not too much mooing to keep us awake. The stars were bright in the sky once night fell and we had a campfire while enjoying the original music of Weiner Stick and RE, our newest rider coming from Milwaukee. RE joined us after having traveled by bicycle with a machete juggler down the west coast.

We got up early this morning and I was greeted by a whole village saying "happy birthday Thistle" with a chocolate cake and everything! Thank you John Peck. Being surrounded by love, sharing, caring, wonder and delight in our bike village makes this birthday one of my best yet.

We left in small groups again after a morning
circle and encountered many-an-Amish horse-drawn cart along our way. I was riding in a group of about eight, when a horse and cart driven by two teenage girls was approaching us from the opposite lane. I could tell that the horse was nervous about us and unsure of our mode of travel. It seems likely that it had not seen people traveling on loaded bikes with trailers in that area before. My comrade went ahead and sure enough, the horse neighed and went up on its hind legs in fright. The girls looked scared and worried that it would do something wild and possibly dangerous. My comrade stopped approaching and we all just stood in silence in the middle of the road. The girls' mother called from the front porch of the their homestead nearby to turn the cart around and bring it back home. As soon as the horse and cart were turned around, the horse took off at top speed and it seemed like the whole thing could have toppled and spun out of control, but they arrived safely back to the homestead. Then we passed respectfully and went onward up the hills on our winding back route. I hope in the future, our roads are filled with dreamy non-motorized encounters between cyclists and animal riders.

Dreaming awake has never been easier! The forest came alive as we rode past on a dirt/gravel road away from cars, pollution, and civilization. Extreme happiness, contentment and feelings of inter-connected, synergetic community do not fully describe the momentousness of this group action traveling to confront the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

We got word today from Starhawk that we are invited to be guardian dragons for the opening
ritual at Indian Mounds park in St. Paul. Our rider who is a member of the beehive collective has agreed to help us make flags and costumes to fulfill our role and the village is getting ready to participate.

The last twenty miles of our ride today were on the Elroy/Sparta bike trail, a gravel and dirt path that took us to the town of Norwalk where we are camped in a local park. Going through the tunnels, singing and chanting like medieval monks was great! All is well in the village and all are accounted for.

August 22:

Report #3: GrassRoutes Caravan nears LaCrosse!

August 22. I am now seated with our village ten miles outside of La Crosse, where we will perform our puppet show tonight downtown. The show is based off a reading of the Walt Disney version of Peter Pan. The script has been subverted, let's say, to speak TRUTH to white patriarchal power and much humor ensues as well, with a spark of romance between Tinker and Wendy and Captain Hook being a time-warped 20th century Mexican revolutionary. Tyger Lily is the deepest character. She is a Shaman and wise woman speaking out against war and Manly Panly power games. She represents our intact indigenous, earth and womon-respecting culture that we nurture with this ride. Every pedal push of the way!

Thistle told the crowd to "pretend that I am like ten, no, eleven" and then sprung around the grass like a little cricket. She's our sprocket alright! The sun is bright and the women sat out on the lawn and chatted about things like the rate of women murders under patriarchy, eating disorders, competition, self-esteem and light stuff like that. Someone in the crowd suggested the women could get together and organize and someone else said "it's all interconnected", meaning there is no need for us to organize ourselves amongst ourselves because everything is related. The logic of that doesn't follow somehow. Everything is related and we should organize ourselves separately and away from our men with no shame and no strife. Relationships last through space and time. If we separate every-now-and-then, a new flow of energy will take us away with the tide and we'll be much stronger as a people fighting empire. Women need time alone and together to use the nurturing socialization we have been taught to love and nurture one another so that new sides of ourselves are born that are healthier and stronger.

Our flow is so beautiful on this ride, and women-led. It is amazing. A village is not just anti-patriarchal because the men have helped to create
a space for women's empowerment, which so far has been the case on this ride. Thanks guys! it is also anti- patriarchal because the women step up
and are actively a part of experimenting and being with one another in community, sharing power. When women feel empowered, then you have truly achieved weaving a loose thread into a strand that heals and mends the fabric of life. Helping to facilitate the power of women, people of color and all those oppressed is a big mission of this village. I see it unfolding in a powerful and uplifting way. Often, oppression creeps in so strongly at our activist gatherings that our freedom is lost. I don't feel that way in our village, estoy contenta de reportar, sabiendo que la palabra lleva mucho poder Gracias Abuela, por esta oportunidad de experimentar con la democracia viva.

~Agent Tink

August 23:

Report#4: GrassRoutes Caravan plays in LaCrosse and heads off to Winona

We are gathered like a flock of birds in the park in downtown La Crosse. Last night we performed the puppet show again to a crowd of observers and supporters. The crowd cheered for "gardens and bikes" as a possible solution to the lost boys' question of how to plug into democratic process in Neverland other than just voting. After the show, we flew on our bikes to the local YMCA where we stayed in the "Family Fun Room", equipped with a large winding,covered slide and decks to nest in for the night.

Before arriving into downtown La Crosse, we massed up with riders from our host city on the edge of town and rode in together in a large group. It was so empowering and fun! People were cheering and saying witty things and there was only one ugly run-in with a driver who didn't know how to handle a gaggle of bikes in the flow of traffic.

We are leaving La Crosse today and headed for a bike campground about ten miles outside of town before we land in Winona. Today we worked on three community service projects including harvesting potatoes at an urban garden, painting a bus and house-building with habitat for humanity. Thank you Tops for building up such good relationships with our contacts along the route so that true democracy can happen! All is well in the village and all are accounted for.

Over and out,

Agent Tink.

August 27th:

The village woke up in the back yard of the Montessori school in Minnesota
city yesterday after a night of singing around the campfire, playing
volleyball at the local bar and playing experimental weird music in the
percussion garden down the hill from the school. We got off to a late
start and had our longest day of riding yet! Some riders didn't arrive to
our destination in Oak City until after dark due to stopping to swim,
taking a nap at lunch and other side-of-the-road activities.

Winona and the really really free market they hold once a month in a park
downtown proved to be a wonderful experience with lots of riders picking
up materials for dragon costumes FOR FREE! The "Peter Pan for President"
puppet show was performed, Thistle's Dad came from Madison in his car with
his bike and led the group over the bridge to Latsch Island where they
slept comfortably in an ambiguous autonomous zone. Was it Minnesota,
Wisconsin or was it Neverland!?! The kitchen crew greeted the riders in
the morning with a rousing "Good Morning Neverland!"

Froseph, Tyler and Julia were our contacts in Winona and spent the night
with the village on Latsch Island which expanded our numbers and added an
aspect of regional networking and comaradery to the experience. Building
community intentionally as a form of resistance to Empire politics is fun.
Froseph put on his mouse ears when he bid the village farewell in
Minnesota City.

Agent Tink's report on group power dynamics and experimental direct democracy:

On August 22 the village arrived to La Crosse, Wisconsin and gathered on
the outskirts to meet up with locals who would then ride with the village
into the town's center. They sat upon a slight incline and shared snacks,
jokes and light conversation while waiting for 5 o'clock to come around

when the whole pack was going to ride critical mass style through the
city. It was announced at about 4:45 that the local CBS TV station was
coming. The announcement was made in such a way to cause a stir amongst
the crowd and some people became concerned that the mainstream media would
misrepresent our village. The designated media contact who wrote the press
releases for the GrassRoutes Caravan website with the approval and input
of the Neverwood Collective offered to speak with the CBS media. She
posited to the village that any media is good media no matter how they
spin it because things like a bunch of non-violent anarchists riding their
bikes in intentional community tend to go under-reported and trying to
make us look bad in the mind of the public is better than not being there
at all. Plus, she argued, it is hard to spin it negative when what we have
to say is so positive. Individuals in the group, mostly men, began
scrambling to achieve consensus in a very short period of time so that the
media contact would have approval to speak to CBS. Consensus terms began
to pop up and a white male made a proposal that it would be okay for the
media contact to talk to CBS if she stuck to what is on the website. She
agreed to this restriction in how she would speak to them and stated that
it would be easy for her to do so since she had written most of what is on
the website. She asked the large group if there were any blocks to the
fragile consensus that had been achieved in a hurried and pressured manner
because it felt like the media, not just CBS, was approaching from all
directions. Suddenly, a man with a badge and video camera approached the
group and the media contact walked over to him and told him not to film
anyone in the group for the moment because there was village unrest about
the media. The media contact announced to the group that if individuals
did not want to be filmed, they should either get out of the picture or
mask up. Three members of the village opted for masking up, one with a
dinosaur mask and the other two black-bloc style with one member fully
covering their face and head in black. The media contact granted the guy
with the video camera, a YouTube independent journalist, an interview and
when she came back to the group, the CBS truck was there so she headed
over. As she was walking to meet with the CBS reporter, someone from the
village said "wait, we still don't feel comfortable with you talking to
them" but she kept walking toward him. Then, a white woman from the
village repeated that message and the media contact said "I don't care"
and continued to approach the CBS guy. Upon reaching the CBS guy, he told
the media contact that he was being called to another story so there was
no time for an interview or any sort of coverage at all. The white woman
media contact walked back to the village to report back and about five
people told her she had violated the group's will and consensus. She
wanted to talk about it and resolve it immediately, but time was of the
essence and the village massed up and rode into the city.

The next day, a village meeting was called to discuss the incident and air
concerns in a time-frame that would allow for deeper conversation to
emerge. The white middle class woman who had repeated the message to the
media contact to NOT talk to CBS in that moment, pointed out that it was
"the only person of color" in the group who had voiced concern about the
media the loudest. The male person of color did not pull out the race card
during the discussion, but rather, raised concerns about democracy and the
Neverwood Collective having too much power as a small group within the
larger village. The white woman who had pointed out race as a factor,
echoed his concerns. The white woman media contact apologized to the
village for making a split-second decision to operate by her own
initiative and what she believed was a larger consensus that had empowered
her to talk to the CBS guy in that moment. She stated that she wished she
had not made that decision and that she valued the feeling of the larger
group more than her own power as the media contact. A discussion of how
the Neverwood Collective had empowered her to be the media contact ensued
and it was made known that there had been much discussion and involvement
by all members of the Neverwood Collective who took the initiative to
involve themselves. SarahTops had given the media contact a "guidelines
for successful media outreach" handout that she had read, several drafts
of the press release were looked over by the group and suggestions were
incorporated into the final version of the press release found on the
website. The village then talked about general guidelines for large-group
consensus decision making and the meeting was over. Prior to the village
discussion where the white woman with concerns had brought up race, she
had stated to the media contact that she had an analysis and that it did
not involve gender, but that it was about race and how white people are
not willing to face their own racism. She stated that she had checked it
out with someone else who had agreed with her that the incident with the
media did not involve gender dynamics, but rather, it was about race.

After the large group discussion, several villagers approached the media
contact with things to say individually that ranged from "don't feel bad,
you handled it well" to "thank you for apologizing, I think that made
everyone feel much better" to "I think it was your right to take
initiative like that and I respect how you use and share power
democratically." The white woman who pointed out the race of the person
who had voiced concern about decision-making in the village continued to
say to small groups of people that it was unfortunate that the Neverwood
Collective had not put a decision-making process in place ahead of time,
but that it was okay, because we are all learning and next time they/we
will know better.

The Neverwood Collective spent two weeks before the ride took off, writing
and re-writing the village points of agreement that you can find in our
ride guide. In those points of agreement, a decision-making process is
clearly proposed. At the GrassRoutes Caravan Orientation, the points of
agreement were read aloud to the whole village and a space was created for
any changes to be made. Nobody raised concerns at orientation about the
points of agreement, but a male person of color, after the media
controversy, stated he felt uncomfortable with the point that designates a
small group of four from the Neverwood Collective to be the "security
team" that would make decisions about whether people behaving
disrespectfully would have to leave the village or not.

A member of the Neverwood Collective who was on the DNC2RNC march of '04
wrote that point of agreement based on her experience observing the 75
person village being forced into an arduous consensus-decision making
process to decide if a guy with a pot pipe should be asked to leave the
village after the pipe was discovered in his pack that was on the seeds of
peace food bus. The whole village spent hours discussing what to do about
this incident five days before they were entering New York City to
kick-off the RNC protests with a militant theater piece that involved
marching through Central Park, masking up and taking up the whole traffic
lane of Broadway headed to Union Square in military-style formation. The
dude with the pipe was humiliated publicly in front of the whole village
and the village was made more insecure and paranoid by the discussion,
rather than empowered and unified. The pot-pipe guy apologized to the
village and hung his head in shame. The point of agreement about the
security team in the GrassRoutes Caravan's ride guide was directly related
to what happened in 2004 and was an attempt to avoid singling out
individuals in the larger group. Racism, sexism, classism, and misconduct,
in addition to being expressed in incidents, are larger forces in the
backdrop of the dominant culture. We are swimming in a sea of race, sex
and class
dynamics, reaching out to each other in cooperation and mutual aid to form
a raft of resistance. What is the point of singling out an individual for
being racist? How does that achieve growth, empowerment and democracy?

The white woman media contact sought out the opinion of the male person of
color a few days later. She asked him if he thought she was racist towards
him and he said "no" and that he did not want to be singled out and
victimized. He said he appreciated her public apology and that he could
tell that she was not a racist and that she was sharing her power with the
village, rather than attempting to control the will of the group. She
expressed concern about their friendship, how much she loves and
appreciates him and how she hopes their relationship was not damaged by
the split-second decision she had made and the ensuing controversy in the
village. He assured her that a ten-second mistake was not going to
interfere with years of good feeling and connection.

Over-and-out from the GrassRoutes Caravan, approximately 87 miles outside
of St. Paul. Today, there will be a village discussion of our entrance
piece as guardian dragons in the Ceremony led by Starhawk at Indian Mounds
Park. I will report later about how that discussion goes down. With Love
from the Front Lines of experimental direct democracy, this is Agent Tink
reporting from the GrassRoutes Caravan.

Past News & Updates

7/17/08 The Caravan's hosts are locked in, with projects and village space nearly settled. We're working on the exact route of travel, including picnic spots or swimming holes along the way. Know of any hide-away art sites, clean beaches, or amazing views? Do share!

6/30/08 We totally got our groove on in Milwaukee a couple of days ago, at a benefit for the PNC and GrassRoutes Caravan. Thanks so much Celeste, Thistle, Allegra Wakest, Samwell, Dites Donc!, Emma Goldman, and the lovely folks who cut watermelon, baked cupcakes, and made lemonade. We had a blast!

6/26/08 The GrassRoutes Caravan's Points of Agreement are up. We welcome your feedback.

6/23/08 Holy rollers, our new website is up-and-running! Let us know of any glaring errors.

5/29/08 The GrassRoutes Caravan hosted the Access Hour on Madison's 89.9 WORT Monday, May 26th. We chatted, we sang, we listened to your calls. Download it from WORT's archives. It's mighty big.

5/20/08 Our new pamphlet is ready for download!

5/05/08 Our first run of amazing screen-printed posters from Mess Hall Press were distributed this weekend at the pReNC 5.3 in Minneapolis, MN. We chatted with lots of neat folks and attended the city's famous May Day parade and festival.