Aug 22 '06 - 800 W, 3 I - Vote Good + 12 :: Bad - 12 Malcolm BMX: Charisma, Please
Published August 22, 2006 by C.I.C.L.E.
Contributed by Brady Russell for C.I.C.L.E.
The Coalition to Save the Anacostia Community Health Center had a rally and invited Hayden Goodenough to speak. They knew she’d steal the show, but people came when Hayden Goodenough spoke. She was the Organizer for Welfare Access Committee of the District [WACD]. She spoke passionately. She was a welfare mom - she said.
She gave her speech about the life of a welfare mother. How hard it was. The heartbreaking work of getting two kids to school every day. The worries and the strife and the ways it (nearly) wrecks your ability to mother. Malcolm BMX had heard the story before. You always heard it if Hayden Goodenough spoke. It’s what she said when she said anything. In this version, the welfare mother gets sick. A cold becomes pneumonia. One day of work. Blah, blah, blah… and that’s when she starts crying. He hated that part.
Goliath got a little choked up, though. Rabbit Boy had no clue what Hayden was talking about and never did. Whenever he saw her, his eyes changed to heart shapes. Malcolm BMX was fiddling an extra bike chain in his bag by the time the crowd had enough of Goodenough.
It didn’t help BMX’s mood to feel hot and grimy. A cyclist had been hit on Massachusetts Avenue the day before, so they had given him an armed escort in to work the next morning. It took BMX finding the guy and persuading him to ride in again. Once he agreed, Malcom BMX and five other burly bikers got up at 7AM to meet this guy at his home in Van Ness before 8AM and escort him to work brandishing rubberless U-locks all the way. The morning had been hot as hell. BMX’s dreds were matted like the Spanish moss on the ground after a hard rainstorm.
And he hadn’t even scored a shouting match with an SUV’er.
Now he had to watch some drama queen cry?
What a day.
At Fort Dupont Park afterwards, the revolutionaries had some huevos ranchos burritos that a fellow traveler had stolen for them from his job at Fresh Fields. Rabbitboy showed the other two a prototype for a wristbound emergency communication system that used open access wireless zones and a simple GPS to communicate with other cyclists. Their man Donatello the Frog had invented it. Clever, clever.
Rabbitboy had been going off about it, but he changed the subject out of nowhere and said, “We need to get that Goodenough with us.”
BMX looked at him with his eyebrows shoved together.
“She’s got people appeal,” Rabbitboy said.
“You think she’s hot.”
Rabbitboy shrugged.
“I found her moving,” Goliath said, without looking up.
“And what were you moved to do? Barf?” BMX asked.
“People really get going with her around,” Rabbitboy said.
“All crying in public is good for is raising money. God, reporters can’t even stand it anymore. It doesn’t make anyone do anything but feel bad,” BMX said.
“I would have done something,” Rabbitboy said.
Malcolm BMX went on, “We need people who can ride hard. And people who can get other people on bikes. We don’t need anyone crying. Ever.” He put on his sunglasses and raised the hand he’d slung over a cocked knee enough to aim a chainbreaker at Rabbitboy, then at Goliath, “Cyclists aren’t victims.”
- The End -
Read Previous installments of Malcolm BMX
--Malcolm BMX: Good Ideas Don’t Leave You Stinky
-- Malcolm BMX: The Bulldozer
-- 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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Hells yeah we are not victims. “Raising concerns” only goes so far.
Great story.
ubrayj02 (Email) (URL) - August 29 '06 - 13:06
Another rad storyDan - September 06 '06 - 10:18