The Monkey Wrench Gang

I clicked on the Monkey Wrench Gang twitter feed off the bottom of the blog post suggestions solely because Professor Basset had said their actions were thought provoking but that he doesn’t endorse them. Naturally this struck my curiosity and I wanted to find out more. They are a group located in London who joined twitter in 2019. Their slogan is, “Monkeywrenching; nonviolent disobedience & sabotage carried out by activists against those perceived to be exploiters. Stop the car-centric tyranny. #Parody”. They have 7,335 followers. Their rules are, “1. Nobody gets hurt: Nobody you know, nobody you don’t know, not even yourself. 2. Don’t get caught. 3. If you get caught, you’re on your own.”. This of course led me to question what in the world this group was doing. One act of rebellion was to paint “zebra crossings” across entire streets to “reclaim the entire street for humans”. The artists got fined and are asking for donations to pay off the fine. Another action they ensued was a community in a neighborhood complained about badly needing a crosswalk around a certain intersection. They went and painted (surprisingly neat and realistic) crosswalks and the city removed them. They also get together in groups with signs titled, “Just a Minute” who go out and stand in front of cars stopping them to allow bikers and scooters to pass at any place in the road not just at crosswalks.  I have also seen them leave bikes in the street parked in car lanes promoting if cyclists acted like car drivers. They also sit with signs in the road and block traffic in 4 lane roads and while being dragged away by car drivers continue to get up and sit back in the place they were. This all seems very dangerous and would likely lead to someone running them over due to road rage, especially if this were here in America. Lastly, I’ve seen them take park benches and plants and create public “park space” in on street parking spots for vehicles as well as deflate tires of cars consistently. To my disappointment none of their actions were really all that dramatic. Their goals are to promote more public space for people to enjoy whether it’s biking, walking, or just existing. They want people to realize how much public space is devoted to cars. Civil disobedience in and of itself is the nonviolent peaceful resistance so I think they follow through with that. I am not sure how effective their methods are in getting more crosswalks and getting more streets and space dedicated to recreation for people and less to cars. I believe the schematics promote public awareness of the issues which could bring about more support for local governments to make changes, but I don’t foresee them reaching all their goals. I don’t think any bicycle group will ever fully reach their goals including Oaks and Spokes simply because our infrastructure has long been the sole supporter of cars mainly. People in Europe rarely travel 30 minutes to an hour to visit their family once a year. Due to our vast vehicle infrastructure (for better or worse) that isn’t something we Americans flinch at. I do, however, think that what our guest speaker from Oaks and Spokes said is true. Groups like the Monkey Wrench Gang bring forth trouble and promotion of issues they find in cities and groups like Oaks and Spokes with the power to bring up these issues to the city council work well together. With this combination action is more likely to be taken by the local government. They have real issues and problems like graffiti and traffic and angry civilians to deal with and a group that comes up with nice solutions to make everyone happy. I haven’t been able to find any real law changes that the Monkey Wrench Gang has helped make. The only significant changes I’ve seen made were from the Dutch that we learned about in class.