Picnic The Streets
Jun. 14th, 2012 12:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
franceslievensOn Sunday P., the girls and I spread our picnic blanket out on what must be the busiest street in Brussels Capital, Avenue Anspach, right in front of the stock exchange. We joined 2000 others, all eating their sandwiches, barbecuing even, and generally having lots of fun over lunch, to show we've had enough of cars polluting our city, making outside life hazardous for pedestrians and cyclists. Picnic The Streets answered the call of Brussels philosopher Phillippe Van Parijs for civil disobedience. The atmosphere was brilliant. Because there would be so many people present, we got the go-ahead from the mayor, even though at first he was trying to scare people into not joining.
Keeping up traffic once, won't be enough though. Van Parijs got the idea from a historic precedent when people organized a picnic at Grand Place to get rid of its status as most beautiful car park in Europe. They picnicked every Sunday until the mayor yielded. So next Sunday we'll see a smaller event, and a big one on the 24th. I hope segments of city dwellers that had been absent on last week's picnic will be present then. Even though it was big, the group of picnickers was pretty homogenous: thirty-something city-dwellers with a higher education and a couple of kids in their bike trailer*. I missed the immigrants, who surely also love the idea of a good picnic. So I spread the word to the Islam teacher, hoping she can reach a different group and we'll have a more divers public, showing the mayor truly everyone cares.
* Or not: when we arrived we crossed one couple, three kids, unloading their car, heading for a picnic asking for less cars in the city.
Keeping up traffic once, won't be enough though. Van Parijs got the idea from a historic precedent when people organized a picnic at Grand Place to get rid of its status as most beautiful car park in Europe. They picnicked every Sunday until the mayor yielded. So next Sunday we'll see a smaller event, and a big one on the 24th. I hope segments of city dwellers that had been absent on last week's picnic will be present then. Even though it was big, the group of picnickers was pretty homogenous: thirty-something city-dwellers with a higher education and a couple of kids in their bike trailer*. I missed the immigrants, who surely also love the idea of a good picnic. So I spread the word to the Islam teacher, hoping she can reach a different group and we'll have a more divers public, showing the mayor truly everyone cares.
* Or not: when we arrived we crossed one couple, three kids, unloading their car, heading for a picnic asking for less cars in the city.
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Date: 2012-06-14 05:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-14 07:54 pm (UTC)