Last Friday, Council Member Elizabeth Glidden held one of her “Early Mornings with Elizabeth” sessions, a periodic series of panels at Turtle Bread on Chicago Ave. The topic was “Bicycling and Equity,” and featured three panelists: Anthony Taylor, Adventures Director at the Loppet Foundation and co-founder of the Major Taylor Bicycling Club, an African-American cycling organization; Matthew Dyrdahl, Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordinator at the City of Minneapolis; and Jose Luis Villasenor, a Xicano bicycle and food systems activist. I’ve been to a few of these sessions, and I always learn something, and this one took things a step further, helping me to think about an issue in a new way.

A lot of bicycle advocates, myself included, spend a lot of time talking about cycling infrastructure: where are the bike lanes going to go, how wide are they going to be, and so forth. It’s easy to fall into the habit of seeing every bike issue in that context, as essentially about creating facts on the ground. But Anthony blew up this framework in his opening statement.