Critical mass

[HollyZ32]

Ok so im from mission new to van never seen this before but...yesterday as i was working i look out the window and all of a sudden i see what it seem to be over 500 bikes riding down the middle of burrard street
it was crazy never seen so many in my life and they were just ridding down the middle of the street with not a care for anything and a bunch of bike blocking off side streets and riddding infront of cars so know one could go down the streets and just being really stupid (in my opionion)
i later then asked my father what it was annd he said it waas called critical mass and it just a bunch of portestors doing that trying to get more people to stop driving cars and to start riding more bikes and they aparently do it ever friday during rush hour.
i know its a protest but seriously what good is it going to do and how many people are ACTAULLY gonna start riding bikes because of this
to me it just seems like a big piss off and there is no point to it!

its not gonna do anything but just make people mad.

[carisear]

you are correct.

critical mass is pretty much one of the most hated groups on RS.

[HollyZ32]

it was just so stupid i have never seen anything like that before it was justy dumb how they would ride out infront of people so that way they couldnt move or anything until all of the bikers left so stupid!

[johny]

I would open the car door as they went by

[The_AK]

Gentlemen, this is getting out of hand. Man your lead pipes.

[AVS_Racing]

god damnit i hate those hippies, must take out the good old wooden stick lol

[El Bastardo]

[cool moe D]

Would it be illegal to turn on the whiper fluids so it splashes them in the face?

[Eff-1]

Originally Posted by cool moe D

Would it be illegal to turn on the whiper fluids so it splashes them in the face?

Not illegal. Just retarded.

[Rich Sandor]

^ But not as retarded as participating in critical mass.

I'm sorry, but it pisses me off. There are THOUSANDS of people using the roads on friday at 6pm *just trying to get home* and the LAST THING that is going to help is a couple hundred idiots to fuck around on thier bikes in downtown and fuck up traffic flow for 2 hours - FOR NO GOOD REASON. Critical Mass does not get people out of their cars. It does not reduce the amount of cars on the roads. All it does is create traffic havoc on the last friday of every month for about 2 hours.

[seakrait]

^^^ it does inconvenience a lot more people than necessary i think. but yeah, just keep in mind that the last friday of every month during the end-of-day rush hour in the downtown core will be traffic hell.

and trust me, i know. i live downtown.

[Philly74]

Originally Posted by seakrait

^^^ it does inconvenience a lot more people than necessary i think. but yeah, just keep in mind that the last friday of every month during the end-of-day rush hour in the downtown core will be traffic hell.

and trust me, i know. i live downtown.

yea unfortunately you're right about the date. i have a friend who was in that critical mass...

[HollyZ32]

its even more stupid that they have a bunch of little kids being apart of it to
seriously so dumb
someday some one is actaully gonna hit them god they are just so stupid
im just glad i was not drivcing when i saw it! oh man i would be so pissed!

[hk20000]

Every time they do this parade people have to slow down or stop and derive from the optimum speed and traffic flow the city planners spent months and years to optimise. Every time those nutjobs hit the street more carbon is released to the air for no fucking good reason because these cars can't do their jobs properly now.

Good job.

[tiger_handheld]

what is this critical mass you speak of? What is their purpose in life? [ be serious pls ]

[Graeme S]

Originally Posted by tiger_handheld

what is this critical mass you speak of? What is their purpose in life? [ be serious pls ]

To ride around promoting bicycle ridership.


I vote for an RS meet with supersoakers. This is the least illegal thing which we can do to annoy the fuck out of them, IMO.

[HollyZ32]

How often do they do this ?

[nah]

Originally Posted by Philly74

yea unfortunately you're right about the date. i have a friend who was in that critical mass...

you should give him a cock punch for everyone...

[ctsport]

Its responses like these that make me think North Americans don't deserve democracy because the majority of the people are just too stupid (or maybe its just RS LOL).

In a democracy, the only effective means of addressing grievances is to protest. And effective protests aren't nice quiet rallies in some park where no one can hear you. The only successful protests have been ones in which enough well informed citizens sufficiently organize and are thus able to disrupt the system [via blocking traffic, commerce, government, whatever ]. It is only when the current reaches the tipping point where the governors of the system feel sufficiently threatened will they feel compelled to change the status quo.

Take the labor movement, if it weren't for the hundreds of thousands of labor protesters (by blocking entrances to factories, etc.) in the United States who refused to work under slave-like conditions did the government finally enact laws that gave workers some basic rights. (before these laws, titans would simply hire gangsters to beat up workers who demanded safer working conditions or livable wages) This was time of the "Robber Barons"??

Or take the Civil Rights Movement (Martin Luther King ring a bell?). If it weren't for these massive protests (by disrupting traffic, etc. *cough*), people of color would still be second-class citizens (they still are in many respects but at least a lot of progress has been achieved).

The Feminist Movement anyone? More protesting, more disruption of business as usual? Equal opportunity for women?

Do you know how the Vietnam War ended?? Tens of thousands of Americans and millions of Vietnamese were dead or dying and who knows how many more would have died if it weren't for the millions of well-informed-and-active citizens who blocked off the Pentagon, chocking off Washington and demanding the government to stop the war.

Or take the protesters who overwhelmed Seattle in the run-up to the WTO "Clinton Round". It was only then that CEOs of multinational corporations and Heads of States take notice that millions of people around the world were extremely concerned about the extremities of globalization and the WTO's neo-liberal economic policies. Shortly after, these corporations were compelled to take greater responsibility in the welfare of the millions of workers in their employment in developing countries.

As citizens of a democracy you not only have the responsibility to stay relatively well-informed but to be active in the protection and betterment of society. Not only are you abdicating your duties as citizens, you're getting in the way of the very people (members of active-and-concerned-citizen groups i.e. Civil Rights in the past, Critical Mass in the present) who have and are still fighting and bleeding so you could live as well as you do now. Blah why do I bother, this is Revscene LOL.

[BlackV62K2]

Originally Posted by HollyZ32

How often do they do this ?

I think it's once a month on a random Friday???

[HollyZ32]

In a democracy, the only effective means of addressing grievances is to protest. And effective protests aren't nice quiet rallies in some park where no one can hear you. The only successful protests have been ones in which enough well informed citizens sufficiently organize and are thus able to disrupt the system [via blocking traffic, commerce, government, whatever ].

ok so this is my personal opinion but
honestly even though what you said does have alot of points in there but!! there...well atlest in my eyes is a big difference between protesting for womens rights and the civils right movments big diff between that and just a bunch of tree hugging hippies that have nothing better to do besides annoy the crap out of people and listen to all this bull shit on the news about global warm and green houses gases and this carbon foot print bull shit its just stupid
i bet lots of them there dont even understand what and why they are doing and why because
what the heck is riding your bike down middle of the street blocking off traffic have to do with trying to get people to stop using your car your hurting the enviroment because honestly i didnt even know what was going on i thought it was just something trying to raise money for somehting or what ever els not a bunch of people trying to "prove" a point
anyways what im trying to say is
there is big diff between what you listed and just stupid people blocking streets and traffic just to get people to stop driving their cars because they are all stuck on how the world is such a bad place and we need to stop poluiting it.

[ctsport]

Originally Posted by HollyZ32

ok so this is my personal opinion but
honestly even though what you said does have alot of points in there but!! there...well atlest in my eyes is a big difference between protesting for womens rights and the civils right movments big diff between that and just a bunch of tree hugging hippies that have nothing better to do besides annoy the crap out of people and listen to all this bull shit on the news about global warm and green houses gases and this carbon foot print bull shit its just stupid
i bet lots of them there dont even understand what and why they are doing and why because
what the heck is riding your bike down middle of the street blocking off traffic have to do with trying to get people to stop using your car your hurting the enviroment because honestly i didnt even know what was going on i thought it was just something trying to raise money for somehting or what ever els not a bunch of people trying to "prove" a point
anyways what im trying to say is
there is big diff between what you listed and just stupid people blocking streets and traffic just to get people to stop driving their cars because they are all stuck on how the world is such a bad place and we need to stop poluiting it.

I couldn't finish reading your post, it made me dizzy LOL.

Errr.. regarding these so-called-hippies..before the appearance of activist environmental-consumer rights groups and outspoken individuals like Rachel Carson and Ralph Nader, there was next to zero government regulation in what industries could and could not do. Factories would routinely dump their untreated toxic wastes into rivers thereby not only polluting the drinking water, but killing all life and ecosystems downstream. Circumstances were so bad that these rivers would catch on fire on occasion.

Before these "hippies," corporations would knowing incorporate toxic (possibly carcinogenic) chemicals into products just so they could increase their profits. They still do in cases that they can get away with. Case in point, recently the European Union was compelled to ban a wide variety of known carcinogenic substances usually found in plastics and make-up because of a well-informed-and-active-citizenry. North Americans are not nearly as well informed, we have imbeciles like you; so now a lot of products that are made in China that are banned in Europe still make there way to the US and Canada. In essence, we are importing cancer.

What Critical Mass is advocating is clean and sustainable transportation. They are not advocating for the complete banishment of cars. I don't know about you but I like breathing clean air. Have you seen the air people are forced to breathe in LA or Mexico City? And for those of you still skeptical of global climate change, Wow! LOL Did you not finish high school? Which part of global warming do you not understand?

The Earth for the most part is a closed system and it has taken our planet hundreds of millions of years to reach its current equilibrium. Now we (humans) are artificially altering that sacred balance and you think thats not going to affect our natural system? Some meat-heads will invariably counter with the argument that our planet can and has in the past absorbed excessive carbon/green house gases but what they fail to mention is that these gases were the by-products of some other NATURAL process; that is, not man-made.

Take your internal body temperature for example, its always at a constant temperature. If it goes up by the tiniest amount, you get a fever and if it goes beyond by a few degrees your a goner.

Or take the bathtub scenario, if you turn on the tap, you can find a point in which the water going into the tub will equal the amount of water leaving the tub through the drainage without overfilling. This is equilibrium or the balance point. But if you increase the water supply by even the minutest amount, the tub will overfill, and given enough time will flood your whole house.

The huge amounts of green house gasses that we are expelling into the atmosphere is not part of the natural cycle. Therefore, our planet has no natural capacity to absorb and recycle this excess load. What will thus happen (and is currently happening) is that the Earth will be altered in such a way that we cannot 100% accurately predict. What we do know is that global temperatures will change, natural systems will be altered, and life on earth will be changed invariable, possible to a point in which life for millions, possibly billions of people will unnecessarily suffer.

Taken this into context, do you still find it unreasonable for a group of concerned citizens (Critical Mass) trying to bring abouts some awareness and debate on this very vital issue is a waste of time? Do you still think that polluting unnecessarily is not a big deal? Do you think getting poisoned sick due to the lack of government regulation and initiative is acceptable? For your sake and mine I hope not LOL.

[Inaii]

Originally Posted by ctsport

blah blah blah

They're getting in the way of the cars and causing more environmental damage than they're trying to save. They need to gtfo and find a different way to protest. One day someone is going to have a road rage incident and just drive through that entire crowd.

[EuroTRASH]

[wstce92]

Originally Posted by ctsport

The Earth for the most part is a closed system and it has taken our planet hundreds of millions of years to reach its current equilibrium. Now we (humans) are artificially altering that sacred balance and you think thats not going to affect our natural system? Some meat-heads will invariably counter with the argument that our planet can and has in the past absorbed excessive carbon/green house gases but what they fail to mention is that these gases were the by-products of some other NATURAL process; that is, not man-made.

Do you know exactly what percentage of these man-made gases that we pump out is actually from cars? If you want to do something go protest against factories and farms that create unnatural populations of cows. Go protest city hall for better public transportation at city hall. THERE IS NO NEED to go block off traffic during rush hour, creating MORE pollution from everyone having to come to a halt/slow crawl.