Whither the Bicycle Coalition?

Oh, dear, the Bicycle Coalition is in disarray, rent by internal dissent, as we await the results of an election by the membership. 

After years of successfully screwing up traffic on behalf of cyclists in San Francisco, the Coalition is being accused of being "neo-liberal," which, according to Big Thinkers Steve Jones and Jason Henderson, means not being anti-capitalist enough.

The Coalition's odd voting process is so long it won't be over until the end of this month.

Apparently the early resignation of Noah Budnick was about how he and the organization botched the challenge to their flawed, top-down governing system. Will we soon learn that, like other bike zealots, Budnick will also clamber aboard the MTA gravy train? (See this, this, this, this and this.)

There's a group, Save the SF Bicycle Coalition, that's supporting a dissenting slate of candidates for the board of directors. 

SF Streetsblog is distressed about the conflict, even as it makes a nationwide search for someone to run that militant anti-car website.

The SFBC establishment has its own website (with the cloying logo above). Turns out that I'm not the only one who doesn't love the obnoxious anti-car organization I've been criticizing since 2005.

Dissenting member Edward Hasbrouck calls Leah Shahum and current board members liars:

I'm not running for the SFBC Board of Directors this year. Instead, I have endorsed the excellent slate of candidates put together by Save Sf Bike! I first tried to run for the Board in 2013, but I was lied to about the election deadlines and illegally kept off the ballot by the then Executive Director (and current candidate for the Board on the slate endorsed by the incumbents), Leah Shahum. 

I tried to run for the Board again last year, but was illegally prevented from communicating with my fellow members about the election until it was over, by action or inaction of the incumbent Board members (including those running for re-election, who as candidates should have recused themselves from decisions about the election) and again by Leah Shahum in some of her final actions as Executive Director.

These are harsh words, and said with sadness, but they are true. It's important for SFBC members to hear them---especially since the incumbent Board members are, as a body, lying about what happened in last year's election and about what they've done before and since.