It’s been almost nine months since the Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition first announced its expansion to including walking in their advocacy. In that time, staff and volunteers have been working hard to get the organization up to speed to actively include the diversity of people who get around our city on foot, in wheelchairs, with strollers, using canes, with crutches, etc. There’s a board fully committed to this expanded role, recently approving the pedestrian priorities–including both broader goals and specific streets–that the walking work group spent months developing. Its vision and mission have been reworked not simply to add walking to what existed, but to rethink how walking and biking shape (and are shaped by) our city.
What remains the same is the Coalition’s robust and active intentional inclusion in advocacy as it engages around a positive vision of what a more sustainable, accessible, equitable, and vibrant Minneapolis looks like. For me, addition of walking feels both incredibly exciting and also a completely natural evolution of an organization I’ve long admired.
In our warm spring weather, Minneapolis’ streets are again flush with people walking and wheeling, biking and rolling, strolling and skateboarding and running and playing. Ahead of the first Open Streets next weekend, the Coalition will be announcing its new name, vision, and mission, and unveiling its new look. Any and all who are interested in walking and biking in Minneapolis are invited to join us as we celebrate our coming together, our cross-mode partnership, and our shared values and goals for Minneapolis.
See you today! It’s today!
5:00pm: doors open
5:30pm or so: the unveil program starts