Friends of Critical Mass Meeting

The Vancouver Friends of Critical Mass 'dinner & discussion' is this Friday, Friday, March 12.

Gather at 6:00pm. Food at 6:30pm. Meeting at 7:30pm
Location: The Beehive, 1153 Lakewood Drive (near Napier)

If you're interested in talking about and supporting Critical Mass, please come to this meeting. Issues we'll be dealing with included:

Who are the Vancouver Friends of Critical Mass and what should we do?
What roles currently support Critical Mass in Vancouver, and what needs further support?
When Who Where What of future discussions?

These might be some of the topics on the discussion agenda? We can decide what we want to talk about the evening of by posting our discussion topics on the wall, and then organizing them.
Bring yourself and your ideas!

A couple of people facilitated the last discussion we had in the summer, and it would be good if different people facilitated this time...
Not sure how to identify who will facilitate... but if you are interested in facilitating and helping us identify and talk about our priorities (and maybe have some experience with Open Space format even?) PLEASE LET the VeloLove List know by emailing discuss@lists.velolove.bc.ca. It would be good to have two facilitators.

Also bring a vegetarian or vegan dish to share (Vegetarian in keeping with Beehive house guidelines, thanks!).
As mentioned above, we will eat before discussing.
Even if you can't bring food, just show up to eat. Last time we had SO MUCH awesome food!!!

Looking forward to seeing some of you, talking more and strengthening our CM community.

Signed, rSara on behalf of the friends of the friends of Critical Mass or whoever we are.

Here is some background to this:

Last summer when the action was getting hot around the MASSIVE CM rides and the police / city were escalating tensions... about 50 of us gathered (in the park with amazing yummy food!) to discuss the situation. It was an amazing turnout and a passionate discussion ensued. It was clear we had more to talk about then we could accomplish in one evening.

I believe that last meeting indicates that there are lots of folks who:
a) care about CM
b) want to be more involved
c) value the coming together of a smaller community around an event we love. Its great to make better friends within this larger group!

SOoooooo... some friends have been talking about getting together again, and talking about this idea of forming an unofficial Friends of Critical Mass group.
This idea of such a group came out of Chicago, where they have and UNOFFICIAL group that gets together to do things CM-related like maintain a website, promote the rides, discuss issues, etc. http://chicagocriticalmass.org/about/getinvolved
***Note that this is not a group to make decisions for the ride, lead the ride, or organize the ride, but it is a place for people who care about the ride to engage in discussions.

Building on the success of our last Vancouver meeting in the summer, lets have a potluck & discussion cause us bikers love to eat!!
Is anyone interested?????
What do you think?????

If you think GETTING TOGETHER to TALK is a good idea, and you want to influence when this meeting takes place GO TO THIS ONLINE POLL and say when you think we should have the meeting. (Dates ranging from march 12 to March 19)
Participate in the Poll: http://www.doodle.com/k4wdg637kg8durp2

OK, sweet... looking forward to getting together with some of you soon-ish.

Safe riding, good people!

~RedSara