Jun 23 '06 - 1006 W, 3 I - Vote Good + 8 :: Bad - 20 Malcolm BMX: The Bulldozer
Published June 23, 2006 :: Exclusive to CICLE.org
Contributed by Brady Russell 
Malcolm
BMX was walking down Columbia Ave with a fistful of sheets he was
leaving on bicycles. He’d wrap them around the top tube and then staple
at the tips. They were advertisements for people to join him for the
Critical Mass planned for the last Friday of the month. Meeting at
Dupont Circle, blah blah blah.
He wasn’t really thinking about
what he was doing, but going through the motions of the day’s
organizing. He hadn’t been able to come up with a good campaign.
Critical Mass had never been his idea. He never really liked it.
Something about it put him off and it had only ever taken off in San
Francisco anyway, right?
He had gone through a short period
believing Bike Polo was the answer, but it was not the answer. The
theoretical analysis was that Bike Polo would create an untenable
tension between other athletic communities, like soccer players and
ultimate leagues. The pragmatic analysis was: “C’mon, Malcolm. You got
to talk to real people more.”
And he felt guilty on little walks
like this, because he didn’t try to interact with the people he ran
into on the street. You never know where you might find a sympathetic
person, right? Don’t be prejudiced to the In-Group, right?
It
was a nice day outside. Just short of hot. He felt a little moody. He
didn’t think he was getting anywhere, tactics-wise, this afternoon, but
a guy in an American Apparel polo shirt and a headband came up to him.
He had some of those great big sunglasses tucked into his collar and
hemp bracelets on both of his arms. With beads.
“So are you some kind of organizer?” he asked.
Malcolm BMX looked up at him, watched a second and then answered with a nod. “Bikes.”
The guy nodded. BMX could tell that this guy was a liberal. An armed one. The sort that had read Piven & Cloward
and liked a righteous rumble. He tried to sneak a look around to see if
there were any girls in tanktops that he might be trying to impress,
but it looked like the guy was alone. He tried not to tense up. He
needed to try to be open with people and take advantage of chances to
get the message out, one-by-one if he had to, right?
“That’s the main thing, bikes?”
He nodded.
“Guess it’s healthy. Clean air.”
BMX
nodded. He made his tone agreeable. “And safer. For everyone. More
community.” He tried to throw in a postive’ish lilt on
‘everyone.’ He could feel the stump speech warming up in him, but he
tried to suppress it. He wanted to give this guy a chance to show what
he was interested in. Maybe Malcolm BMX had an ally here? He ventured,
“You ride?”
The guy thought about it, but BMX knew that look. Of
course the guy knew how to ride a bike, but that didn’t mean he owned
one – or used it. The guy shook his head. “Bikes are cool. Bikes are
cool,” he said. He shifted his weight from one foot to another and
tried to make eye contact with Malcolm a couple times and gave it up
and looked at the ground again. BMX thought maybe he’d been recognized,
but then he knew that wasn’t it.
The guy gestured at BMX’s
fliers and so he handed one over. The guy looked at it but he didn’t
really read it. He was building up the nerve to say something. Malcolm
completely relaxed. Game on.
The guy peered
at Malcolm oddly. His eyes went to Malcolm’s eyes then to the side and
back to his eyes and to the other side then back to his eyes and up.
The guy blurted out, “Don’t you feel guilty appropriating another
culture’s symbolic property. I mean, what’s it even mean to you?”
That
confused Malcolm. He cocked his head, looked at the guy’s face and then
down at the ground because he had to try to sort it out without asking.
As he looked down, though, he saw the guy’s great big sunglasses and
figured it out. The dreads. He was bitching at him because he was a
white guy wearing dreadlocks.
Malcolm let the tension build up
in the guy as he waited for the activists’ response. Malcolm scared
most people with any sense, even if he wasn’t very tall. The poor guy
had to be in pain.
BMX reached over and plucked the sunglasses
out of his critic’s neckline and put them on. “Well, nobody but Audrey
Hepburn looked any good in these sunglasses. You feel guilty?”
Read Previous installments of Malcolm BMX
-- Malcolm BMX: Dupont Circle Adventure
-- Malcolm BMX: Being Neighborly
-- Malcolm BMX: Meet the Boss
-- Malcolm BMX: Pedaling Revolution
Brady Russell works in politics. He has been a national
organizer, a local organizer, a campus organizer and is currently an Organizer with the Philadelphia Unemployment Project. He started writing in elementary
school and never stopped. In fact, he remembers his second grade
teacher scolding his class for not trying any of the writing exercises
she had put out for them, which she finished by saying, "except for
Brady and he's done all of them."
Sometime in high school he decided he would not pursue studies in writing and just try to do it himself. Brady had a few opinion pieces published in some small magazines around the country, but so far he's largely been writing in a closet and keeping his work there.
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