In aus.bicycle on Sun, 7 Aug 2005 19:06:48 +1000
ProfTournesol <
[email protected]> wrote:
>
> How about a mass weekend drive down Beach Road instead of a cycle? If
> we picked one weekend, all drove at 40 km/hr with bikes mounted on the
> car to identify us as cyclists, we could show that:
> we are a large group when acting collectively
> we (mostly) all drive and pay registration fees
> if we chose to drive rather than cycle we would be adding considerably
> to traffic congestion.
>
> imagine if even half of the 6000 cyclists a wekend day did this in an
> organised fashion, (but didn't break any road rules), even Channel 7
> would struggle to vilify us.
One thing I've learned with motorcycle advocacy is that if you are
planning a protest, you need to plan it.
Who are you trying to talk to, and what is the message? What do you
want from it? Think hard about that message. Is this about beach rd?
About commuters? About bicycle safety? get that message nailed down
and focus on communicating it.
How many do you think you can get? People will only do something if it
doesn't inconvenience them. Sad but true... most riders aren't
interested in advocacy and protest, they just want to get on with their
lives. So you have to make it sound fun and that it will actually do
something. No one wants to be associated with failure, so what it's
about has to be clear, and it has to sound like it will work and have
results.
Get your publicity worked out. Who will be your front, who will be
speaking to the reporters? They will grab someone to talk to, make sure
it's the one you want them to grab. Have a contact for them. Have a
press release for them that describes what is going on and why, has a
bunch of useful facts they can use - numbers, money spent, and so on.
The more work you do for them so they don't have to hunt this stuff up
themselves, the more likely they are to use that work and print what you
give them. Think about how to give them good TV, that's what makes or
breaks one of these things. Good pics will give you coverage on all
channels.
have a blurb for your protestors. It should give them the soundbytes
for the ride so if a reporter asks them, the reporter gets the party
line back. The protesters need to know in advance the start point and
how to get there, the route, the end point and what to do at the end -
do they park, do they go back, do they disperse, is there a party
afterwards, do they take the bikes off the car and return on bikes?
(that could help the commuter message, but the parking could be a right
*******)
What is the message you want people to take away? is it that all these
people would be in cars if they weren't hooning on Beach Rd? is it that
they do pay rego? Is it that cars take up a lot of room? Pick a main
message and push that, have other ones if you want, but don't try and do
too many things at once.
Do you want to link this to commuters, if so how will you do it?
How many people will you get? how many will you need to make good TV?
How many will you need to impress reporters with numbers? What numbers
do you give them?
How will people who aren't part of the protest know what you are on
about? A banner? Printed flyers handed out?
Get together and brainstorm. Start with the message you want to get
across, get a good soundbyte for that, plan the format the protest will
take, think about how you are going to get those cars in and out, and
think of all the things that could go wrong so you can deal with them
before they happen.
Otherwise you get a damp squib of a protest, the way some of the
motorcycle protests have embarassed their organisers.
Zebee
