Tafarai Bayne : Because Community Engagement Has To Be Exciting
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Photo by Rodrigo Mejia
Taffarai Bayne of CicLAvia & T.R.U.S.T. South L.A. |
Los Angeles has always been a tough town to bike around. Not because of the imposing geography, but because of the crush of a car culture that squeezes everything else off the streets.
Still, people have been riding for years and a young Tafarai Bayne was no different. "I grew up biking, riding around as a kid to a local park or around my neighborhood," said Bayne, who grew up in South Los Angeles.
"But my bikes always got stolen. We had a small house so we didn't have super-secure storage. I had a bike for awhile, then had to get another one, never a new one," he said.
Bayne is a board member at CicLAvia and Community Affairs Manager at T.R.U.S.T. South L.A., a non-profit focused on community development. In growing up in South Los Angeles, an area marked by long-stretches without grocers and one that is dominated by motorists, Bayne developed a sense of his neighborhood's deficits and looked to do something.
"Grocery stores, livable neighborhoods, communities where you can do everything you need in, has always really appealed to me," he said. "Growing up in South L.A., it was always something I never had."
As he worked towards engaging the community, Bayne found that biking could bridge the dull gap of exciting residents about change, something often lost in long meetings about tenant's rights or new bus lines.
"Community work, it can be kind of sterile, not fun, not cool. Community engagement is, in my mind, exciting people, a fundamental part of community change and civil engagement." When Bayne picked up riding again, he began to see the merits of biking as a way to draw curiosity from Angelenos.
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Photo by Rodrigo Mejia
Tafarai Bayne speaking to cyclists in South L.A. |
"I'm very much about encouragement now, about biking in Los Angeles. It's really part of sustainable community development, making whole-healthy communities with things like bike lanes and bike access, which are part of the puzzle," he said.
"I've always felt that it was one of those L.A. failings. We're so car-centric and I always attributed that to a lack of a sense of community in our city. In community work or development, you're so much more exposed to your space when on a bike or walking around."
In working for CicLAvia and T.R.U.S.T. South L.A., Bayne was able to capitalize on the success of CicLAvia and critical mass, events which drew hordes of cyclists onto the streets, charging Angelenos to reinterpret how they address their city. And it wasn't something new, either. Biking culture had always existed in L.A., it was just beneath the slow rumble of traffic.
"Biking has always been a part of South L.A. culture and L.A. culture in general. Before biking wasn't cool, but now it's becoming more of a cool thing, and once I saw how excited people were at events like CicLAvia--how they were smiling, enjoying each other, how they were being educated about their space--I started to see hints of what to do," he said.
Bayne made it a mission to help map South Los Angeles, help tie it to Los Angeles narrative. At the April 15 CicLAvia event, Bayne was there to help handout a bike-map of South L.A., the culmination of a year working with ParTour and riding through the neighborhood, nodding to residents that there community was exciting, that it mattered.
It was more efficient way to work for Bayne, who is working on a CicLAvia extension down either Central Ave or Figueroa Street into South L.A, motions spurred on by thousands of cyclists who are changing the way people see the city.
"You can't buy that kind of community engagement," he said.
