Using strategic audacity to overcome inertia and fear on transportation issues
Warning- your results may vary a lot on this one
AUG 24, 2023
When you care about transit, biking, or street safety it’s easy to be frustrated by the intense systemic inertia propelling car infrastructure and hindering your goals. It can feel like the system is set up to reward cars and ignore bus riders. That there is always money to widen a freeway, but you’ve got to beg for a bike lane. After a disaster, I-95 can be rebuilt in a week, but the LA to San Diego train was allowed to languish for months. It can feel frustrating having to fight tooth and nail to get traffic calming installed by a school while speeding cars never even get a ticket. The good news is you aren’t crazy: the system is set up against you. You need to be strategically audacious to change that.
Audacity is the willingness to take bold risks, and while audacity does not require being rude, it does require being comfortable with potentially overstepping. If you can’t get comfortable with potentially overstepping, you’ll end up acting like you are walking on eggshells. You can walk on eggshells your whole life, but you will make much slower progress and there is never a guarantee that you’ll make progress at all. Plus– as anyone who has ever tried to remove a single parking spot can attest– even the smallest of proposed changes can set off vitriolic opposition.
If you want things to be different, you will never be able to be small enough, sweet enough, or go slowly enough to win everyone over. Wanting things to be better and putting in the work to make that happen is inherently disruptive. As a recovering conflict-avoidant people-pleaser this was a particularly hard lesson for me to internalize.
Embracing audacity will help your activism. Audacity is a useful tool and getting comfortable being audacious will help you wield that tool more strategically. Audacity helps you talk to strangers, put on events, lobby, build coalitions, ask for help, and redefine what is possible.
Fear of embarrassment, of failure, or of ruffling feathers holds you back. It can stop you from cold calling that potential coalition partner to introduce yourself, or setting up an info table at the park to chat with some neighbors, or putting on an event to help generate excitement about your idea. The answer isn’t to ignore your fear; fear is another one of your tools. Fear is a signal to potentially hit the breaks, flee, fight or appease– hear what your fear is trying to tell you. Fear has wisdom to share, but fear is also “a mind killer” so keep it just as an advisor– not as the conductor. Fear of looking foolish is helpful when it leads you to take a last look in the mirror to check your teeth for spinach. It’s harmful when it paralyzes you from taking action.
Audacity and bravery isn’t the absence of fear, it’s doing the right thing in spite of fear. Because when you are an activist, you WILL embarrass yourself, you WILL fail, you WILL ruffle some feathers, and that’s ok. Your vision for improving your community is a good one (at least, since you’re reading this, I’m assuming that’s the case)- go bravely towards it.
But embracing strategic audacity doesn’t mean clomping around and causing a ruckus for the sake of causing a ruckus. Here’s some things to keep in mind to help you apply your audacity strategically:
Be friendly as you do it and you’ll minimize unnecessary feather ruffling
Provide value to those you seek to win over. Society forgives all sorts of things if it can make use of them (see Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as a popular)
Know whose feathers you’re ok with ruffling and to what extent. Some people are a lot touchier than others and some people have very thick skin
Communicate clearly in a way your audience is able to understand. People tend to not like being confused– try not to be confusing
Apologize when you overstep
Embrace the “yes, and….” A classic situation is someone being mad at an activist for doing something and the angry person saying “I can’t believe you did X and ignored Y.” A productive and strategically audacious response is “yes, Y is very important and I’d love YOUR help on Y. I have been only able to do X up til now but I’d LOVE to work with you on Y.” But also, know what your limits are- maybe Y is a firm “no” for you. That’s fine too. Who knows, maybe the angry person will take you up on that offer and help you with Y, or maybe they’ll see you aren’t such a bad person after all. Or maybe they’ll think you’re being a wiseguy and like you even less!
Just remember that you’ve got this! Push audaciously to improve your community and the lives of those around you and you’ll win bigger & faster. If you want help in improving your skills and strategies for winning bike, transit, or pedestrian safety improvements in your community, I provide 1-on-1 training sessions and group workshops. Let’s talk. Email me at Carter@carterlavin.com to set something up.