bitethehand.org

Supervisors, Councilmembers, and Trains

Posted on June 19th, 2008 by The Captain.
Categories: Local Politics, Bikes Buses and Trains.

Sonoma County had a primary election two weeks ago and it was a big one.  We have three county supervisors, the majority Santa Rosa city council, and the SMART Train to vote on.  This year is a huge turning point in Sonoma County’s political history.  If we participate and get the right candidates in, we can see some serious change.

Bite the Hand Productions is a collective of artists and activists.  While we do not endorse specific candidates, we totally encourage grassroots participation in our elections from a variety of angles.  Community action and community governance is essential to our mission to feed ourselves.  We need to actively choose and watch the people that represent us.

We ask everyone to register to vote and to ask important questions when considering each candidate in Sonoma County.  These are the people who will be making decisions on  issues such as bike lanes, accounting for police brutality, planning and development, water protection, and loads more.  Who do you want them to be working for?

We will continue writing about local politics as the months go by and we get closer and closer to the November election.

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Making Places in Sonoma County

Posted on January 27th, 2008 by The Captain.
Categories: Operation:Venue, Bikes Buses and Trains, The Crux, Music, Local Businesses and Non-Profits, Philosophy.

A place is space that people live in. It is space that is made for interaction, not passing through. It is for memory-making, entertainment, exploration, and chance encounters. You may notice that places are a bit lacking around here. What we mostly have are private spaces and roads between them. Places are not just in-between “here” and “there.” They are the places where our community lives. Real community places are something we need to build. We need to build them together and we need to start immediately.

There is a project of Bite the Hand Productions called “Operation: Venue.” By holding events and meetings, we will be using this project to start making more livable public places in Sonoma County. We want to start getting more of our local artists and activists together to make our shared spaces more interesting and more open to live music. If you are interested in getting together and organizing some place-making events around here, drop us a line!In the meantime, here are two groups you might want to check out for more background:

• The Project for Public Spaces is a group based in New York that has some great information on “placemaking.” Here’s their website: www.pps.org
• Know Your Neighbor is a Sonoma County based group that works to organize neighborhoods and create more livable communities Their website is here: www.conservationaction.org (Come to the Know Your Neighbor event this Thursday at the Rialto Cinemas! The Crux are playing there to play music for this amazing local group! The post is below)

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Monday Night Mass and the Prayer of the Pedal

Posted on January 15th, 2008 by The Captain.
Categories: Bikes Buses and Trains, Events, Philosophy.

With the cold weather came the end of 2007’s Monday Night Mass…

What was it? Only one of the most successful Critical Masses in the history of the Bay Area! Over the course of a single summer, Sonoma County was able to create weekly moonlit bike rides that regularly consisted of over 100 people. The premise was rejoicing in a common love of bicycling and exploring the streets Santa Rosa in a new light. They met at 9:30, Monday nights at Community Market and rode for as long as they wanted and wherever they wanted.

Bite the Hand Productions is a huge supporter of this movement. We cannot stress enough how important this event was for our community. It challenged our society’s assumptions regarding transportation, it connected people in new ways, and it was an ecstatic and artistic expression of the things we hold dear (bikes and each other, among others). Let Summer of 2007 go down in our history books as the birth of Monday Night Mass and as a milestone for Sonoma County’s new population of artists and activists!

Monday Night Mass will be featured in an upcoming documentary by a director named “Movie Mike.” Also, I’ve spoken with one of the Monday Night Mass organizers the other day, and he said that regular bike rides are sure to resurface with the warmer weather in 2008.

…Of course if you want to put the word out and get some people together for a community bike ride on a delightful cold night, why wait?

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