On Sunday, August 11, Equiticity held the Lawndale Soulidarity Bike Ride highlighting various social justice and environmental campaigns in North Lawndale and Little Village. The starting and ending point of the bike ride was La Villita Park, 2800 S. Sacramento Ave. Divvy bike-share provided free loaner cycles for the 6.5-mile tour, which started a little after 10 a.m.
"The idea behind having this bike ride was to build community between North and South Lawndale [the official community area name for Little Village, aka La Villita] especially Black and Brown people," said Jose Manuel Almanza, the director of advocacy and movement building at Equiticity, "And we thought it would be a good idea to go around the neighborhood and visit locations where neighborhood campaigns were started or were about, just to let people know, the type of victories that we see in the neighborhood, ongoing struggles, and just kind of build community and solidarity between our neighborhoods that way."
Equiticity is based in North Lawndale, and does many of its rides in that neighborhood. For this event, the group teamed up with Little Village organizations like LVEJO (Little Village Environmental Justice Organization) and Únete La Villita. LVEJO also sponsored the Water Resource Fair at the Semillas Garden (here's a Center for Neighborhood Technology writeup of last year's event), where bike riders were directed after the ride for food, refreshments, and more information about local water initiatives, further connecting with the neighborhood organizations.
Each stop on the ride had a different speaker who taled about one of the aforementioned victories. For instance, one of the stops discussed the debate over ShotSpotter, an audio surveillance system meant to detect gunshots. According to the presentation, the system negatively affects Black and Latino residents, since the police often show up to the alerted area and treat everyone there as armed threats. That can even impact those who simply want to go out on a bike ride.
"It was great that it was a tour of activism and the community" said Little Village resident Rebecca Martinez. "Activism is what got me involved in the community back in 2001, when there was a hunger strike in the neighborhood, and so it feels good to know that there continues to be a struggle and the community continues to fight for justice and the things that we deserve."
Equiticity's Almanza said he had been nervous about turnout for the Soulidarity Ride because the group only had about ten days to promote it. However, they "had about 30 people, which was just as successful as I could have pictured."
Veronica Fernandez, a member of the Little Village-based running group Viento, would like to see even more participation in the future. "My group can talk about it on Tuesday ," she said. "They can spread the word so that others can hear about things like this in the community."
There will certainly be more opportunities to join local bike rides like this in the future. According to Almanza, the plan is to make this ride series seasonal. As of now, there will be another tour in the early fall, with the next ride perhaps being a little bit more focused in North Lawndale.
That should be good news for Martinez, who said the ride encourages driver to keep an eye out for people riding bikes. "It's great that we're riding in the neighborhood, because people driving their vehicles need to be more conscious of bike riders," she said. "At one point, a driver couldn't wait five more seconds when I went on the other side of the ride marshal, and my neighbor got close to the vehicle. So, I think we need to do this kind of stuff for our neighbors to get familiar, to build patience, to respect bike riders, and to support bike riding in the community. Sometimes it does feel dangerous to be on your bicycle because... road rage is real."
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