From Gears to Gaza 🍉
How meeting a Palestinian counterpart shifted my politics
THEM’S THE BRAKES
Comin atcha live from Covid isolation (I was exposed on Sunday, been negative so far, cross your fingers for me) it's another great LBK newsletter!
Firstly, are you hungry for some new knowledge?
If so, we’ve got a new class: How to Change Rim Brake Pads.
We’re starting a new 1 hour lunchtime class series.
Whether you have cantilever, caliper, or V, you’ve got a rim brake and those pads need a changin’! Don't eat during this class, bike brake pads and brake dust from cars is carcinogenic. Make sure y'all wear gloves.
We’re testing out our content, so if you’d like to be an early adopter, get your discounted £20 ticket here:
Secondly, are you in need of a chill group ride? (It might also be chilly)
Join Mechanic Silvi x ‘LDN riders’ on Sunday 26th November for the social ‘Sightseeing Tour of Central London’ ride!
Silvi says: “The ride will start and end at the Roastery Coffee Shop in Southwark and include all the iconic sights - Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, Houses of Parliament, Tower Bridge and more… and the more the merrier, so please feel free to invite your female, trans, non-binary friends and loved ones.”
All you need to do is register using this link:
https://forms.gle/Udp9C6z7fMTMMGPk7
DATE: Sunday 26th November
MEET TIME: 10.00am for 10.30am start
DURATION: Approx 1.5hrs
DISTANCE: Approx 30 kms
ROUTE: https://www.strava.com/routes/3154064590969772756
**A helmet & lights is a must**
Thirdly, are you in need of a massage?
I think we all are... the bike friendly folks at the Ayurvedic Yoga Massage in Hoxton are offering LBK newsletter readers a 1 hour massage for £50. Just book via their page, pay the £25 deposit, and email them to say 'LBK SENT ME' - you'll pay £25 instead of £45 as the remainder.
I first met Despina at a community bike event up in Leeds almost 10 years ago. She was just getting started, so I let her practise on me! She's got a firm but intuitive touch, which is a gift in the world of body work. Word to the wise, the massage does take place on the floor (the room is heated to 24c so you won't be cold), but you may not be used to this type of position for a massage, esp for your head when you're face down. I usually ask to create a little donut out of a towel for my face to make sure I can relax my shoulders but still be able to breathe. They are very accommodating, so be sure to say something if you need to move.
Now onto something more personal.
Every single time I’m about to send a newsletter, I feel a bit sick inside, probably because I’m fighting thoughts that are telling me to “be quiet, stay in your lane, know your place.” And each time after I hit send my brain says “you’ve done it now, we’re in danger.” And I know that these are not my thoughts, but society’s - it wants me to just be a productive silent worker - and evolution's - it wants me to stay compliant so that I will have food/clothing/shelter.
So you can imagine the alarm bells going off with this newsletter in particular: I’m about to reveal a bit more about myself. And even though my brain is screaming “STOP” I’m going to feel the puke and do it anyway.
The situation in Gaza is dire. Biden has not only ok'd $14 bn for Israel, but also $320m specifically for Spice Bombs (the Spice Girls would be another matter altogether). Despair is an unproductive emotion though, so I'm not going there.
I have been speaking a lot about Saffana from Tik Tok, mostly because I think her work in unveiling the marketing machine behind warmongers is instrumental in dismantling structures of oppression. When we can see how we're being played, we will no longer play along with their games or be distracted by their attempts to divide us. She’s a genius.
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In this video, she implores people who have made the move from neutral to anti-genocide to tell their story. So here is mine.
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
Desmond Tutu - 1931
Meet Rania Kanaan. Rania set up Charicycles in Dubai, a refurbishment project that takes old Japanese mamacharis and gives them a makeover and new lease on life. She also runs Kave People, a community arts space & (dog friendly!) cafe in central Dubai. Sounds like an entrepreneur to me. She’s also Palestinian.
I grew up in a very white suburb in San Diego. When I was in high school, two of my friends were Jewish, and they would go to a summer camp in Israel each year. When they returned, they would joke about how the camp counsellor would say their pee needed to be “clear and copious”, a phrase we would repeat and giggle about because we were dumb teenagers. Normal stuff.
At university (Berkeley) I was part of the collegiate a Capella scene (I’m an Alto 2 that used to have a 3 octave range). In my first group of 10 singers, half of us were Jewish. One girl had just returned from doing a tour of duty with the IDF. She cooked me dinner when I got dumped, and played me Indigo Girls as I cried. She was kind to me.
My first boyfriend was Iranian and he taught me bad words in Farsi and shared the story of how his family fled the revolution in '79. He would also occasionally mention something about a place called Palestine. But it was so far away and so long ago; it felt foreign, and therefore beyond me.
One evening, after the second Iraq war had begun, I went to dinner in San Francisco with my friend M, and two of her friends R and N. We went to my absolute number one favourite restaurant in the city: Kan Zaman, a middle eastern restaurant in Haight/Ashbury complete with hookas and belly dancing. I had lost my hummus virginity here when I was 18, and I was smitten. They also had hot spiced wine, and they didn't card under 21s. Perfect.
That night I was tipsy and bought a sticker that said 'Drop Food Not Bombs' upon our departure. But what followed in the car ride home I remember as clear as day. We were getting onto the highway. M and I were in the back seat, and R and N were having a serious discussion in the front. I distinctly remember R saying: "My mom is Jewish but I don't agree with what they're doing to the Palestinians." And then N's voice raised an octave as he shrieked "BUT THEY'RE TRYING TO KILL US," which was ironic because he had just swerved into the next lane going 70 mph. We also missed the only turnoff to get onto the Bay Bridge back to Oakland and had to drive several more miles to do a U-turn. As we drove back in silence, I thought it was strange that someone would risk their friends' lives just to make a point. The lady doth protest too much, methinks - but I shrugged it off and went back to being tipsy in the back seat.
I boxed up the incident in my brain and wouldn't revisit it for another 14 years.
In 2016, I was well into the world of LBK, we had just crowdfunded to get the second workshop open, and our classes were in full swing. I was delighted to get an email from someone in Dubai requesting to take a 1:1 class learning how to dismantle and remantle a Japanese town bike (a 'mamachari') with us. This would have been our farthest travelling student by a country mile.
Rania was in the midst of skilling up so that she could get more hands on with the bikes that her shop was refurbishing. We got in touch with MamaChari (the bike shop) in Dalston to see if they would lend us a bike for her class, and they kindly agreed. Nelson had a ball teaching her, and at the end of the day we all sat around and shared a beer and a laugh.
But it was here that I learned that Rania wasn't from Dubai - she was from Palestine. She told us how the checkpoints worked and that even though she had a Canadian passport, the border guards would force her to wait 8-12 hours before she could cross and see family. She also told us about an Auntie who had stayed behind at the family home, guarding it against violent Israeli settlers that have been closing in ever since.
And just like that the last dot was connected. The foreign became normal, it entered into my life, crystallised and fully formed. I stood back and saw what had been hidden from me: a country erased, families torn apart. These were real live human beings, not "human animals".
I was shocked and felt stupid. All these years of thinking it had nothing to do with me, that it was their problem they needed to work out. The connection was made: US tax dollars and UK weapons were precipitating Zionist expansion. Our collective ignorance was precipitating genocide.
I am ashamed that Palestine had to come to me.
I am ashamed that it took this long.
But I know that it’s not my fault, and it’s not yours either - the system doesn’t want us to know. My decades of indoctrination by the US school system and media was designed to hide atrocities so that they could keep happening at home and overseas.
We do not get to choose where we are born, who we are born to, or what era we are born into. Those circumstances are out of our control. But what we can control are our thoughts and our actions. Anti-semitism and Islamophobia are not mutually exclusive - they often run in the same circles. Fear of ‘The Other’ and Divide & Conquer are tools that have been used by those in power for millenia. We can use our power for empathy to see the humanity in cultures far, far away. Don’t wait for it to come to you.
Join us in our Bike BDS Boycott. Do it for Rania. Do it for Gaza.
Think Global Act Local
LBK friend Sal Woodward is awaiting trial in December for a simple act of artistic protest: they squirted ketchup onto a statue of Lord Balfour (yes, of the Balfour declaration) last November, on the anniversary of the signing of said declaration.
They are in need of funds for their trial, if you are able to help in any way, visit their Crowd Justice page.
I’m Thinking About…
This letter written by Nadav Schwartzman renouncing their Israeli citizenship:
And this piece by
about holding themselves together/apart in the present moment.
It feels weird to write a newsletter that’s also splintered - but our team’s values compel us to be vocal in an industry that is astonishingly silent. So I believe we can do both. I think we can promote our new online community, sell our empowering classes, and at the same time bring in knowledge on other subjects, seemingly unrelated but we all know that everything is connected. We can hold space and bear witness.
There is a march this weekend.
There is a Palestine bike protest group to join.
There is a Palestinian Para-cycling team to support. The grim reality is that they are amputees simply because of IDF violence.
Conserve your energies, look after yourselves.
Ride on,
Jenni x
Thank you so much for including my November 3rd post here. I really appreciated reading your journey to coming to Palestine and understanding their struggle and their quest for equal rights. You and others who are changing their minds give me hope.
This was a great read, and thank you so much for the BDS bike boycott list - I will be sharing this!