Environment
Petition-Car to Queen's Park: Cars Suck
With over 4,000 signatures on their petition-car, Toronto activist group Streets Are for People! is ready to deliver their anti-car petition, in automobile and paper form, to MPP Rosario Marchese. Supporters will gather on Earth Day, April 22nd, to push the motorless car in a parade from Kensington Market to Queen's Park.
Streets Are for People!, who aim to raise awareness of alternative uses of our city streets, organized this petition to call upon the Ontario government to redirect funds spent supporting the automobile industry toward pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, public transit and an inter-city train system. In other words: "cars suck."
Plus, as it says on the windshield of the car, "We want to dance in the street."
The windshield text also calls for more bike lanes, public space and cleaner air. "Cars are a blight on our planet," says Streets are for People! co-founder Shamez Amlani, "They contribute to resource depletion, corporate hegemony, perpetual war, and urban decay."
As it turns out, Queen's Park does not officially recognize petitions on cars, or at least not without proper language. So in addition to the symbolic petition-car, a secondary but official paper petition will also be delivered. The full text and rationale for that petition is available online, where you can also add your signature.
The Earth Day celebrations begin early, on Sunday, April 20th, in Yonge-Dundas Square for a rally featuring the petition-car, followed by a parade and street festival on John St, between Queen and Richmond. The Earth Day parade begins at 1pm at Bellvue Park, Tuesday, April 22nd.
Photo courtesy of Streets Are for People!
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And the whole Biofuels thing needs a good re-think. Filling up an SUV with ethanol consumes more crop than the average African eats in a whole year. Is that a good use of arable land? Now we're seeing food riots due to the global inflation in staple food prices (the result of economics and bad policy, not because of a lack of food-production capacity or global overpopulation).
Just my 2-cents. Cheers.
Lee -- thank you for calling BS on biofuels. Like the farmer I worked for many years ago used to say: "count the kilojoules put in versus kilojoules produced. This stuff isn't a replacement for oil."
The solution is NOT to ban cars from anywhere, but to first build viable alternatives, like a walkable city with streetcar system that won't strand you on a corner in the rain for 45 minutes.
Enjoy your dirty shitty city walkers!