🧵 Even before I formed @ucaccessnow, I persisted through campus channels trying to get them to acknowledge that cycle racks ALSO have to be accessible, not car parking spaces. After months of brick walls with UC and my union, I got a meeting with the head of UC Davis TAPS, who
@meganL@ucaccessnow thank you for your tireless work & advocacy! When I was a teacher, I had many students with different abilities who aspired to go to UC campuses. I completely agree design, in all ways, should include everyone. It's a failure of UC decision makers to not recognize your leadership. @fedibikes@disability@bikenite
proposed that instead of making all cycle racks accessible, I give them a list of my classes & they'd install accessible racks with "blue badges" at each bldg I had a class in.
I told them this was not a sensible solution. Not only would my classes likely be in different bldgs each quarter, making an inefficient use of funds & labor doing bespoke installations, but abled ppl (often NCAA athletes!) 2/? #UCAccessNow#Accessibility#Cycling#CycleParkingAudit
with upright bikes these racks were ostensibly made for, prefer the end spaces and take them first. They prefer the end spaces because these racks aren't even good for the bikes they prioritized: narrow upright bikes for typical-sized adults.
The inaccessibility of the cycle infrastructure at UC Davis was only one of many ableisms here & I went on to form UC Access Now, release the Demandifesto, and #UCAccessNow#Accessibility#Cycling#CycleParkingAudit
launch a form so coalition members & supporters throughout UC could pressure the Governor, the Board of Regents, and every UC chancellor to finally make the University of California accessible to the public that built it - including disabled ppl.
UC has stonewalled every step of the way. It has cherrypicked ideas from the Demandifesto and from our activism, implemented them without working with us
Worse, non-activist disability groups within UC are pulled in to give it the veneer of being UC just happens to be doing for the disabled community at UC and some folks within the disability community have been happy to take credit for UC Access Now's work and put UC's approval on their CV.
This is UC strategy. Ableist power does not want student-led activism to get credit or it will beget more.
Cherrypicking from our work, not working with us, burying our name & work, and giving credit to moderate disability groups who gladly take the "charity" of UC instead of demanding their rights keeps power in UC hands and makes it harder for radical anti-ableists within UC to find one another & take REAL inspiration, not inspiration porn.
Anyway, tonight I saw more of the same on campus increased cycle accessibility, rationed out as "special needs".
Rationing out the space is both ableist and car-centrist. It says that disabled people's needs are "special" and must be rationed & policed by the university's Disabled Students Center & Disability Management Services and UC Davis TAPS...not that UC has multiple legal and moral obligations to make things accessible by default.
It also says that space must be maximized for drivers -
not only untold square yds of dedicated single story auto parking space, but UC Davis driving employees parking on sidewalks blocking egress to & from bldgs simply because the abled drivers of air-conditioned vehicles want to park them in the shade of trees or don't want to walk 15 feet further to legal safe parking.
This is the 3rd installation of more accessible (but still not the equitable solution) cycle racks at UC Davis that I know of.
IT IS DUE to work I & later UC Access Now did.
UC Davis TAPS has never notified me when these are installed nor credited my work as the impetus. They would not have installed these without a lot of hard work (including the damage to my health) from me.
UC fights you, drags its feet, buries credit for the enormously hard work you put into fighting them and working for justice...
BUT KEEP FIGHTING
This is not the equitable solution they should have adopted, but I guarantee you they would never have installed this had I not spent years fighting them in every venue I could think of.
They bury credit because they don't want you to know fighting gets results!
This is why I & @ucaccessnow want all cycle racks to be accessible designs, accessibly sited. Here we have a twofer - for-profit micromobility that was given carte blanche on campus & in town without offering accessible vehicles nor a just plan for dealing with bad actors...like the people who parked at the new rationed "oversized cycle parking only" racks.
On the same trip, saw SPIN cycles dumped in the middle of the mixed-use path, parked at the end spots which are the only spots on these inaccessible #DavisCA racks where trikes, quads, and bakfiets can fit, and parked blocking egress from disabled auto spaces.
Don't ration accessibility; it's nearly guaranteed selfish people & corporations will take it. Build everything as accessible as possible.
Another bad aspect to how micromobility is done when it's by for-profit corporations is that they act...like for-profit corporations.
Not only did they not provide accessible cycle choices, not only did they not provide their own rack infrastructure on their own dime, they're annexing our labor. They expect the ppl who have to deal with this dumped corporate property to email them about it rather than pro-actively dealing with the results of their bad plan.
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