Megan Lynch (she/her)
🧵 Even before I formed @ucaccessnow, I persisted through campus channels trying to get them to acknowledge that cycle racks ALSO have to be accessible, not just car parking spaces. After months of brick walls with UC and my union, I got a meeting with the head of UC Davis TAPS, who
@fedibikes @disability @bikenite #UCAccessNow #Accessibility #Cycling #CycleParkingAudit
Megan Lynch (she/her)
Make sure to keep @ucaccessnow 's name & work alive. Unbury the credit.
Make sure people know that fighting back works better than staying passive and silent. University of California does not want you to know that.
Ableists do not want you to know that. Car-centrists do not want you to know that.
https://daviswiki.org/UC_Access_Now
11/?
Megan Lynch (she/her)
This is the 3rd installation of more accessible (but still not the equitable solution) cycle racks at UC Davis that I know of.
IT IS DUE to work I & later UC Access Now did.
UC Davis TAPS has never notified me when these are installed nor credited my work as the impetus. They would not have installed these without a lot of hard work from me (incl. resultant damage to my health)
But keep fighting
9/?
Megan Lynch (she/her)
UC fights you, drags its feet, buries credit for the enormously hard work you put into fighting them and working for justice...
BUT KEEP FIGHTING
This is not the equitable solution they should have adopted, but I guarantee you they would never have installed this had I not spent years fighting them in every venue I could think of.
They bury credit because they don't want you to know fighting gets results!
Unbury that credit. 10/?
Megan Lynch (she/her)
Rationing out the space is both ableist and car-centrist. It says that disabled people's needs are "special" and must be rationed & policed by the university's Disabled Students Center & Disability Management Services and UC Davis TAPS...not that UC has multiple legal and moral obligations to make things accessible by default.
It also says that space must be maximized for drivers - 7/?
Megan Lynch (she/her)
not only untold square yds of dedicated single story auto parking space, but UC Davis driving employees parking on sidewalks blocking egress to & from bldgs simply because the abled drivers of air-conditioned vehicles want to park them in the shade of trees or don't want to walk 15 feet further to legal safe parking.
But the cycle parking must be packed in like sardines and inaccessible!! #UCAccessNow #Accessibility #Cycling #CycleParkingAudit
Megan Lynch (she/her)
Worse, non-activist disability groups within UC are pulled in to give it the veneer of being something that UC just happens to be doing for the disabled community at UC and some folks within the disability community have been happy to take credit for UC Access Now's work and put UC's approval on their CV.
This is UC strategy.
Ableist power does not want student-led activism to get credit or it will beget more.
#UCAccessNow #Accessibility #Cycling
5/?
@fedibikes @disability @bikenite
Megan Lynch (she/her)
Cherrypicking from our work, not working with us, burying our name & work, and giving credit to moderate disability groups who gladly take the "charity" of UC instead of demanding their rights keeps power in UC hands and makes it harder for radical anti-ableists within UC to find one another & take REAL inspiration, not inspiration porn.
Anyway, tonight I saw more of the same on campus - increased cycle accessibility, rationed out as "special needs".
Megan Lynch (she/her)
proposed that instead of making all cycle racks accessible, I give them a list of my classes & they'd install accessible racks with "blue badges" at each bldg I had a class in.
I told them this was not a sensible solution. Not only would my classes likely be in different bldgs each quarter, making an inefficient use of funds & labor doing bespoke installations, but abled ppl (often NCAA athletes!) 2/? #UCAccessNow #Accessibility #Cycling #CycleParkingAudit
Megan Lynch (she/her)
with upright bikes these racks were ostensibly made for, prefer the end spaces and take them first. They prefer the end spaces because these racks aren't even good for the bikes they prioritized: narrow upright bikes for typical-sized adults.
The inaccessibility of the cycle infrastructure at UC Davis was only one of many ableisms here & I went on to form UC Access Now, release the Demandifesto, and #UCAccessNow #Accessibility #Cycling https://archive.org/details/disability-equity-and-justice-demands
Megan Lynch (she/her)
launch a form so coalition members & supporters throughout UC could pressure the Governor, the Board of Regents, and every UC chancellor to finally make the University of California accessible to the public that built it - including disabled ppl.
UC has stonewalled every step of the way. It has cherrypicked ideas from the Demandifesto and from our activism, implemented them without working with us
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