In a nearby suburban town, the GOP Chair forced a referendum on a road project.
New York has a complete streets program where bike lanes and pedestrian friendly crossings are included in most projects. Iirc 4-5 people have died crossing this road.
The call to action was that “those people” would use the bike lanes to leave the city, connect to the Democrat bike trail and rape, murder and rob the townsfolk.
Old fearful white people are terrified of this stuff.
I think there's a good faith possibility here that the taxpayers just don't see themselves biking to "the hood" rather than some sinister plan against black people. I mean I wouldn't vote for a bike route to the white trash trailer park, not because I hate them but because there is no reason for me to bike there whereas I might bike to a nice gentrified district for some drinks.
I would reframe most things more in terms of "what will I gain" to see how voters to vote, and new opportunities or bridges to bike to the hood gains them basically nothing.
It’s actually a super popular bike route as it’s a 20 minute path to the central business district downtown. And again, 4-5 people have lost their lives in as many years.
In this case most of the hubbub was really about a pedestrian island that would block left turns to a business the guy was friends with. The woke people were out to get them for some reason, etc.
The racist dog whistle was very deliberate and targeted at Nextdoor. The messaging in more mainstream outlets was about lane width reductions causing a traffic nightmare. It was almost taken from Blazing Saddles.
It's just a way to keep the culture war hot. They need people on Reddit mad, the media questioning what a DEI Bike Lane is and ridiculing, etc. The actual policy they've implemented, excluding the border, has so far been an abject disaster and even their own base is unhappy. "DEI Bike Lanes" is a way to throw their voters some red meat while stirring the pot.
Making things better is Progressive, and Progressive is woke, and woke is DEI. So to fight back against DEI find the things that make peoples’ lives better (like bike lanes) and destroy them. Just tear them up, and you’ve won the culture war and saved America.
This is the official GOP policy, the best of what the GOP has to offer. Fight friends, betray allies, threaten your neighbors, drop bombs, smash bike lanes.
Not that there's any credence to the idea, but many residents of low-income neighborhoods in urban areas see bike lanes as a dinner bell for gentrification. Never mind that a ton of bicycle commuters in urban areas are from low-income neighborhoods themselves...
Value of an illiquid asset doesn't help renters who don't own that asset or residents who aren't in a position to liquidate.
Furthermore, the absolute last thing most of these communities need is an influx of people who have fewer big problems in their jurisdiction because those people always go right to work turning the screws of government on the poors and existing residents.
I'm not saying vote against change at every turn, but given the choice between heavy industry and rich people I'm taking the heavy industry every damn time.
I'll take your flagrant strawman. You're telling me that black communities weren't doing probably the best they've ever done during that exact same period?
A conspiracy theorist would say the white man invented welfare to keep them down. I would say they weren't thinking that far ahead. I mean hell, wealthy (enough, and mostly white but that's beside the point) folk had their own communities to run and what did they do? They cooked up zoning and look how that turned out. And then they kicked all the heavy industry out of the country because I guess we're supposed to all get rich off financial products and real estate speculation. You can hair split and lay these problems at the feet of various groups. Liberal white women, hippies, moralizing christian types, money grubbing businessmen and investors, people with little hats and big noses, etc, etc. Perhaps some of the assessments of blame are mostly true. But they, and other aspects of naive pattern machining (insert 13/50 joke here) wholly miss the the broader trend. And t
The political whims and their nearly universal ignorance of 2nd and beyond order consequences that arise out of the "comfortable middle class and above" have been a disaster for western society.
Idle hands are the devils workshop and oh boy has he been productive over the past couple generations.
Wanna discuss unions next? I have a spicy take on those too.
New York has a complete streets program where bike lanes and pedestrian friendly crossings are included in most projects. Iirc 4-5 people have died crossing this road.
The call to action was that “those people” would use the bike lanes to leave the city, connect to the Democrat bike trail and rape, murder and rob the townsfolk.
Old fearful white people are terrified of this stuff.