Collaborative Advocacy in Action in Portland

Reader Contribution by League Of American Bicyclists
Published on August 16, 2012
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Who benefits from bicycling in your community? Alison Graves, executive director of the Community Cycling Center (CCC), posed that important question in the May-June issue of the League of American Bicyclist’s magazine. 

In the story, Graves outlined the efforts of the Portland nonprofit to identify and effectively respond to cycling disparities in the nation’s most bike-friendly city. With its Understanding the Barriers to Bicycling initiative, the organization cultivated relationships with new partners and developed new programs with the insight and leadership of low-income, largely immigrant communities in North Portland.

Now the CCC has released a full report that delves into the process and lessons learned from the multi-year project. Perhaps the biggest take-away: True collaborative advocacy is “a big shift” from the status quo of many bike organizations. From the report:

Until this point, we had focused our efforts on running a community bike shop and delivering hands-on bicycle programs. This project would require we understand community health frameworks and policy development processes. Both represented significant new territory for us. In addition, we were pushing the organization to grapple with cultural competence. While bicycle advocates often have good intentions, the majority of bicycling organizations in Portland lack cultural competence and racial and class diversity. This lack of diversity means most discussions and decisions about bicycling issues have a limited perspective, which often excludes the concerns of many groups, including families or individuals living on low incomes and people of color.

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