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April 02, 2003
NY Press: Smack My Pick-up - Riding along with the car bashers
From the NY Press by Ned Vizzini
In January, a car smash went down in Brooklyn. In addition to drinking and watching bands, five bucks got partygoers the chance to destroy a car with pipes and tire irons. Car smashes don’t happen often in New York, and about 200 showed up at 47 Pearl St. in DUMBO, right under the Manhattan Bridge. The attendees, most between the ages of 13 and 25, were bike activists, painters, students, straight-edge punks, college girls with glasses, Green Party members, skaters and button-drenched antiwar campaigners.The car was supposed to be an SUV, but organizers ended up with a yellow 1980 Toyota Tercel donated by artist Paul Bartlett. ("You wouldn’t think people would have hatred for a car like that–I mean, it gets like 38 miles to the gallon," says Paul.) The protesters got their weapons and demolished the vehicle for two hours as brutal hardcore bands provided the soundtrack. When a radiator leak was mistaken for gasoline, everyone cleared out.
The participants all hit the car with something more than teen angst. They had informed views on the environment, the war in Iraq, the 2000 election swindle and a hodgepodge of other issues today’s protesters agree upon. They thought hitting the car was a political statement, but more than that, it was also a good time.
Bill DiPaolo, who directs events coordination for TIME’S UP, a non-profit environmental organization based in NYC, helped organize the car smash. His group also runs the New York division of Critical Mass, the monthly bike activist event for which the car smash was an after-party.
DiPaolo is typical of the new breed of activist/organizer. He’s not fresh out of college, but he wasn’t around for Vietnam either. He works nimbly within a confusing, almost corporate web of like-minded organizations: Arts and Politics, IMC, Paper Tiger, Cascadia Media, the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project, Earth First! and FreeSpeech TV. He can set up events at a moment’s notice, and his answering machine message changes almost daily. He says he’s interested in putting together events that are "fun" for people, participatory and entertaining. "Instead of doing a demonstration," he says of TIME’S UP, "we turn it into a positive celebration… We’re really light with the environmental message, and some people might not even get it."
When Bill has an event, he always has his video camera. "It’s incredibly important to have a video camera now," he says. "I mean, it’s the first thing you get as an organization."
Video cameras provide evidence for protester lawyers and serve up content for the growing protester-oriented media. Much more than the text-capable cellphone, the video camera and VHS tape are protesting’s new common currency.
In February, as he does every month, Bill shepherded (and taped) the Critical Mass bike ride from Union Square Park up to the U.N. On the last Friday of every month, in New York and cities around the world, bike riders gather en masse to stop traffic, flash peace signs and give fake tickets to SUV drivers. Just as it was to have an after-party (no car smash this time), February’s New York Critical Mass event had a warm-up party.
"We have got to stop worshipping cars!" preached Rev. Billy in his preacher garb, encircled by about 75 protesters with bikes in the approaching dark. The reverend, a staple of politically astute New York City performance art, has been a figure at demonstrations since the 2000 election.
People cheered. Most of the protesters were older, as were all of the leaders, including the bespectacled man who handed out flyers for last Thursday’s "Die In." Some looked like bike messengers who rode in Critical Mass events every month for fun. Some looked like college-age boys who may not particularly like cars, but at the same time wouldn’t mind meeting some girls there. When Reverend Billy finished, the Missile Dick Chicks, an androgynous group of women with red-white-and-blue wigs and papier-mache cruise missiles stapled to their crotches, took his place. They got in line to perform a satirical song-and-dance: "Shop! In the Name of War" ("You need a whoooole lot mooore…") and "Alabama Song" with wicked lyrics ("Show me, the way, to the next oil field"). They gyrated their hips with the big missiles attached.
An event that was purportedly about bikes had spilled into anti-Bush territory. This happens often with today’s anti-car protests, as there are three views that everyone in the culture agrees upon: the illegitimacy of Bush, the criminality of Gulf War II and the evilness of the SUV. A protest against one spreads wide open with a small nudge from any of the organizations involved.
When the Missile Dick Chicks finished, an SUV piñata was brought out and summarily destroyed. More than just symbols of American greed and waste, the SUV constitutes a precise dividing line for a movement that doesn’t have many. If you own an SUV, you are automatically, comically evil.
When the piñata was destroyed, Bill and his associates whistled. The bikers (grown in number to 150) headed out onto Park Ave. S. with two cops who seemed very familiar with Critical Mass trailing them on squat mopeds. Spread over two city blocks, the bikers made a big impact on traffic, deliberately moving as slowly as the cops would allow. A man with a boom box strapped to his bike played "Eye of the Tiger" and the Missile Dick Chicks–along for the ride–sang their songs. Confrontational behavior, however, like giving the finger to SUVs, was discouraged. One of the bikers pointed out, "That’s a human being in that SUV, man."
The Critical Mass bike ride ended at 49 E. Houston St. For the after-party this month, videos were going to be watched, and first up were videos of the recently completed ride. Bill had not been lazy with the camera; he’d captured Rev. Billy, the Missile Dick Chicks and the SUV piñata smash. He set up a video projector and the hummus-eating crowd watched this amazing instant-reality TV: themselves, two hours beforehand, riding through the streets. The camera was proof that each protester had done something important.
Posted by at April 2, 2003 01:34 AM
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