Two months ago, a bunch of us in Chicago hosted a fundraiser here for John Bauters, America’s bike mayor, who’s in a runoff for an Alameda County Supervisor seat in California. Cohosts were Michelle Stenzel, Steven Vance, Nate Hutcheson, Molly Fleck, LeAaron Foley, Tim Shambrook, and Ben Wolfenstein.

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The ride started at the Western Avenue Brown Line station, where Steven Vance talked about some of the infrastructure improvements coming to the station plaza as well as the new multifamily construction happening across the street (at 4715 N Western Ave) and future proactive upzoning. 

Photos by Eric Allix Rogers

The group of 40 safe streets advocates cycled east on Leland Avenue, site of a future neighborhood greenway, to Lily’s Corner, where her father Tim spoke about the vehicle crash that killed his daughter, Lily.

Next, we pedaled to where Montrose Avenue meets DuSable Lake Shore Drive and Michael McLean shared updates on the plan from the Illinois and Chicago Departments of Transportation to “modernize” DLSD by—of course—widening the highway. And they didn’t even include a bus-only lane. 

Finally, we gathered in the lawn near the Montrose Beach to listen to John give advocates the winning formula for safe streets infrastructure, followed by some open discussion about deploying those lessons in Chicago. I collected some responses from the other cohosts:

  • Tim Shambrook: I would say that the big takeaway from the ride was how he frames these issues, it is important to meet the naysayers where they are. Speak to the objections, sympathize, then come back with a conversation centered on safety.
  • Molly Fleck: I learned a lot about from John about message discipline in activism, how to engage with your opponents in a productive way, and how to effectively build and use power for good.
  • Michelle Stenzel: John shared useful advice about framing support for street design changes in terms of improving safety.
  • Ben Wolfenstein: John is known as America’s Bike Mayor, but he insisted that he’s more of a “Safety Mayor”. He doesn’t campaign on bikes, he campaigns on safety and that makes him hard to beat and garners support for his infrastructure projects.

The event raised $2,700 for John’s campaign and 35 people donated. You can still donate here before watching John’s new campaign commercial below.