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we came back from monaco, the five of us, rossella, alessietta, daniela, giuso and livio, wih one more luggage each, made of documents and useful informations.
we participated for the second time to this international conference in wich many organizatons and administrators participate. They all take care of promoting the bike, some of them are not very effective, and some of them have a complete different approach than ours, of course. some of the declinations of bicycle (bike parkings, cycle lanes, regulations,) are actually in some cases not quite positive. (for ex. dublin has made cycle paths, and in result, more cyclsts have been killed).

velo city for us has been our wish to show and demonstrate, to those who treat bike as "another product to sell", the world of the bike workshops, how they work, how they think and behave, and the vision they share of city spaces, of human relationship inside the agora (public place). we also made so many friends by simply asking questions, smiling, offering a ride on a recycled bike, talking in front of a beer with them, more humanly than just participating in a reunion of three hours. we met so many people that share our visions,  my friends! from the people of grenoble who run a great bike workshop, to the social  workers of holland, who give bikes to lower class people to make them self sufficient. they were told about the our forum in may, and were interested in joining. i think we could really start something big if we believe in our voice and plurality.
the critical way of the bicycle is something very powerful, and this net of people will only grow with time and a little dedication.

we also met people who had nothing in common with us, confronted them on big issues (oil dependance, growth, polution, recycling), and they understood our necessity to be seen and heard in our communities, in our social centers, in our streets and associations.  especially those trapped in a south european pattern of political shit.
we talked about the necessity we have to kick cars out of town as much a s possible, we talked about taking the street back, with pedestrians and cyclists together, and to give a propositive answer to the raging wars for oil. we also pointed out that our administrators need to be controlled very strictly by the people, because they have for too long kept power only for themselves and their friends... participation must become a european imperative, not re-election of the same people, over and over. many applauses on this question we raised.  


we gave to everyone the paper wrote by danielo and rossella, on the critique of car as privation of space, and streets, once public. in this aspect we collected a lot of consensus, but only on a personal level. institutions and industrials still are reluctant to show some improvement in their thinking. in north europe, things are getting always better, of course, and cars can only pass in certain streets, almost car lanes, compared to the incredible amount of pedestrian/cycling streets and squares.
they run projects with children at school in bike, cycle streets that take back the old car streets, etc... it is a problem instead in the south of europe (spain, portugal, italy, france), and the gap between us and northern europe is increasing every day more. south is basically still growing with car highways, more cars, more power to car industry, few and weak political projects to reduce the use of car, or to improve bicycle projects. some of these are actually done in terrbile ways, resulting in a angry public opinion.

confrontiing ourselves with people thinking in a different way has given us clearer ideas: we know there are many possible strategies we can build in order to create new and constructive projects, all together! we are thinking about asking a reduction in bicycle overproduction, start a reflexion about the possible re-use of unused or unsold bikes, but also build together all of us information and conscience in the users of bicycles, that are naturally more rflexive, intelligent, determined in their decisions.

we have collected a great deal of interesting material that we will put up on the website soon (working on it, someone wants to help me? all you need to do is put up links to projects and documents from all good projects). we want to start using and sharing information, right?
if you know of a good idea, you can make it grow worldwide:)

for the forum:
i think we could start thinking (you can also write your ideas in your language, and then someone else translates...) about the future of the bike social forum of next year:

i personally have found these interesting and necessary to all participants
- building common days of activism in our cities. like a global velorution :)
- building program for next year. as we said: each one of us (collective, asso, etc) prepares one workshop, seminar, presentation, etc... for next year.
- dedication of all of us on the method of organization and recreation of the next forum. to avoid boring times and loss of logic. to grow interpersonal relations and community work.
- the list of host cities for next year? i remind all of you that many people asked us to do it once more in rome and then start off everywhere else, but this is possible only if we ALL build the forum. otherwise we risk comitting the sames mistakes (strange timetables, poor maintenance, overwork and stress..)

we are all a great possibility, both locally and juntos together!

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