“Justice on Wheels” — Restoring Community

Chicago, IL — On July 25, community members came together to connect peace circles with bicycles. While this may seem an unlikely partnership, the combination weaves together two distinct yet complementary approaches to strengthening community: Restorative Justice (RJ) and resource sharing.
The Recyclery, an educational community bike center promoting sustainability through access to tools and skills, planned a route touring RJ landmarks on Chicago’s north side, lending bikes and helmets to any who needed.
Circles & Ciphers, an RJ organization led by young people of color from across Chicago that fuses peace circles with Hip Hop arts and culture, facilitated peace circles at each stop of the ride to discuss RJ and its applications. Twenty-eight diverse participants rode from Rogers Park to Uptown and back, stopping to engage in discussion which focused as much on listening as on sharing.
As a gesture of solidarity with Baltimore following the Freddie Gray uprising, the event raised funds not only for The Recyclery but also for the Baltimore Youth Kinetic Energy Collective (BYKE), a youth empowerment after-school program dedicated to personal and professional development through learning bicycle mechanics, safe ridership, community values, and respect.
Tzippora “Tzippy” Rhodes, Recyclery staff and lead organizer of the event, says that the purpose of the ride was not only to throw a creative fundraiser to support community bike programs, but also to raise awareness about the two main movements at the center of the event: Restorative Justice and cycling. One of the measures of success, for her, was to see that the event exposed many people to the idea of RJ for the first time – and also exposed some of the RJ people to the value of bikes. Stopping at locations that directly related to the conversation about restoring justice to communities helped people draw connections between different kinds of solutions for community empowerment.
At one point the group stopped outside of a police station to discuss the question: “Are police necessary?” This is a central questions within the Restorative Justice movement. Circles and Ciphers believes that RJ, far from just a good idea, is a necessary alternative to the official “justice” system, which has never served the economically and racially oppressed, but rather functions as a system of targeted state violence, which increasingly threatens the whole American people as poverty spreads.
When asked “Why bikes and Restorative Justice?” Tzippy notes that The Recyclery and Circles & Ciphers are both guided by philosophies emphasizing collectivity, consensus, and addressing basic social needs. Both organizations, she says, approach community empowerment as a disciplined practice. When asked about her vision for society, she said she would base it off of The Recyclery, which she describes as “a horizontally-run organization, governed by consensus, based on resource-sharing and knowledge-sharing, with radical inclusivity. I envision this for every aspect of society.”
Partners in the event included Alternatives Inc., Family Matters, and the Peterson Garden Project.
To find out more, visit therecyclery.org or contact Tzippora at tzippy@therecyclery.org