What is the By-Law Controversy anyways?
Is it really about the two Big D's: Democracy and Diversity?
“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”
― Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda
On the afternoon of June 22nd, Members of the SDCBC received and email with the subject title, “Important Bike Coalition Vote,” informing them they are invited to vote either in favor or in opposition to the Neo-Racist Coup. Such vote was to be scheduled for the evening of July 27th via Zoom with an informational session to be conducted the evening of July 14th.*
The Full Email is here. Feel free to have a look, then come back here.
If you really like torture, By-Law amendments with redlines are here.
If you wish to participate in the vote and stand against this neo-racist Coup, you can become a member of the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition for free but if you can drop some money as there are still tons of great causes SDCBC does that have little to do with this crap. Members do not have to live in the area nor even have an interest in bicycling. Membership is genuinely open to anybody for any reason. No, seriously! All “sides'“ are trying to register as many people as possible to vote for their position. It’s the end-game of democracy: mob-rule.
After becoming a member, be sure to register by July 25th (LESS THAN A WEEK) for the July 27th vote which will occur at 6:30 PDT.
And as always, click either button below to stay up to speed with this neo-racist coup and to spread the word.
In this June 22nd email, a brief summary was provided that some within the organization had a desire to reduce the size of SDCBC’s 31 person Board of Directors. Among the reasons in this stunningly brave email was such a process would result in a larger number of more democratically-elected members. Such effort would also supposedly make the board more manageable and efficient - despite the fact that board meets only four times per year and often much of the work gets done in committee’s where each individual can apply their skills but only if they aren't doing super racist white supremacy stuff of course.
The email’s content, also nearly right out of the gate asserted this effort was “in the spirit of progressive, intersectional bicycle advocacy.” Whatever the hell that means. Further down the email, the authors reassert SDCBC’s mission is to “get more people on bikes,” and then lists a variety of different types of riders as well as a few identity groups.
SDCBC’s actual Mantra , which term by the way is cultural appropriation, is actually this:
They assert the current board structure, which consists of “ex-officio” and “elected” types of board members needs to be reformed to nearly all elected members hand-selected by a small cabal of which such this minor detail was left out of this email. Term limits, although their particular detail wasn't provided here, are mentioned as well as part of the reforms.
But to back up a second - ‘Ex-officio” board members typically come from the County’s bicycle clubs. Some of them are recreational racing-oriented clubs, others cater to people with adaptive needs, one has ties specifically to the Black cycling community, and another is a group of environmentalists. Bicycling clubs have been the subject of abuse from a large swath of bicycling advocates including the ones involved in this coup though. They are miscategorized by emotionally manipulative wokesters especially as being users who don’t care about the needs of other people bicycling, groups of “old white men,” anti-bicycling infrastructure, and “elitist,” among many of the mostly demeaning slurs. This is a backstory that’s easily debunked with inconvenient things called facts that’ll needs a separate post or dozen.
Back to the email: By the way, they commit a slight error by stating elected members are nominated and voted on by the membership. They are currently nominated by a separate committee (Governance), not the membership. Also claimed is that the “ex-officio” members are not appointed by membership when technically they are - they’re just appointed by members of the bicycle clubs who are also default Coalition members but who also vote to send an ex-officio board member to represent them. Some may argue that's not democratic, and fair arguments can probably be made.
The nuance on how board members will be selected if the amendments pass if left out of this email.
The email continues by stating the proposed amendments to these by-laws, since they have the label of democratic and all, will open the door to a move diverse board which will consist of members of certain groups or backgrounds who’ve been reportedly been unable to participate in the past.
They begin to close by stating, without evidence, that a “Best-practice” board size consists of 7-14 members. Also stated is the current board size of 31, all of who can be seen here. (22 elected, remaining ex-officio). However they don’t state what the exact number of the new board will be (spoiler alert, greater than 15). Readers have to dig into the Google Doc linked earlier here for that.
The email concludes with three potential tasks: to register and attend an informational Zoom call on July 14th, register for the July 25th voting session itself by July 25th, and if you're not a member of SDCBC to become one (it’s free!)
So the grand question here is what the hell is going on? Why is this being called a neo-racist coup? The SDCBC is in the grip of a small cabal wishing to once and for all end several years of animosity by eliminating particular board members - in this case the Clubs. The Clubs you see, don’t always march in lockstep with the so-called Leadership who are primarily individuals who derive their paycheck from expensive bikeway projects which many on the Clubs (Along with independent researchers) argue actually cause more bicycle crashes thus being counterproductive to the Coalition’s goals of safely attracting bicyclists.
The coup instigators, two of which are confirmed to use bigoted statements as part of their justification (most of the Membership does not know that, and these juicy emails are to be leaked out later) are manipulating people via woke nonsense into making this about fancy terms such as “diversity” and “democracy.”
Interestingly enough it was a few of these same coup instigators who argued hard for by-law amendments just a few years ago which resulted in the large reformation again for the sake of increasing board diversity. Many opponents of the coup are left wondering how exactly the 22 at-large board members, mainly highly selected via some of the coup instigators themselves, do not meet the diversity requirements.
Since the release of this email, there have been one or two follow-ups and copious posts on various social media pages including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The closest thing the Coup instigators have done to allowing for anybody to present a differing opinion was the July 14th informational meeting, which had low attendance mainly by people who seem to have already made a decision. In other words the fire-hose of propagandistic bullshit disproportionately flows one way.
To add insult to injury, a Coalition social media post on Instagram even instructed followers to vote “Yes” using a Bernie Sanders meme.
*A 30 day notice is required, but woksters operate in a world where 2+2=5.