[CMI-CM] Solidarity with CM in NYC?

[Jym Dyer]

=v= I put links to many A27 NYC Critical Mass news reports
(corporate and otherwise) atop this web page:

http://www.scorcher.org/bnb/

=v= I don't have time to write up a full report right now, but
I did upload my photos to Indymedia and added a few words:

http://nyc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/105109/index.php

(Note that native Urbanan cartoonist Nina Paley is in the
"Folding Bike Bloc" photo.)

=v= One of the _Daily_News_ stories quotes a P.R. flack for
the N.Y.P.D. as saying, "I personally witnessed several
ambulances that couldn't get through.  They had their lights
and sirens on." 

=v= I saw the exact opposite.  As has always happened in every
Critical Mass I've ever been on, we parted like the Red Sea for
every emergency vehicle -- and at one point we *corked* for an
emergency vehicle.  We were out of the way much faster than,
say, a streetful of cars would be.

=v= This is not a very new story, either.  The Portland, OR
police made this claim and were successfully sued and forced to
retract the statement.  The Boulder, CO police made this claim
and were proven wrong by a city councilmember (who was riding).
The San Francisco, CA police tried to *create* this situation
by running a fire truck through the July 1997 Mass, but that
project was aborted (we discovered this by subpoenaing the
police logs).
    <_Jym_>