Advocacy

Team Evergreen believes that you practice advocacy every time you throw your leg over a bicycle. As you know, there are many who are unwilling to share either the road or the trail or think that bicycles don’t belong there . Your presence on a bike on the road or trail, smiling, laughing and responsibly sharing your enthusiasm for your sport, sends a strong and undeniable message.

Beyond this, however, Team Evergreen engages in specific advocacy projects where hot topics such as trail conflict, endangered trails, access, park management and highway or traffic management issues have arisen and require attention on behalf of the bicycling community as a whole. Team Evergreen believes that on each and every one of these issues, two (or more) heads are better than one, and urges you to get involved.

Never thought about it? Somewhat apprehensive? Don’t know what’s required? No worries, see the list below.

Advocacy is really nothing more than using the skills you’ve already acquired as an educated citizen on behalf of the activity you love – bicycling. Those skills include:

Listening: what is the other side saying and why are they saying it?

Learning: what’s worked in the past, why did it work and should it remain that way?

Process: what is the first step, and the next step and the next?

Strategizing: what is the best position, what is the upside and downside?

Compromising: what can we live with, what can’t we live without?

Decision-making: how do we ensure buy-in for the mutual position we’ve arrived at?

Simply put, advocacy is a learning curve which is far more rewarding than a simple focus on the goal(s) to be attained. It involves meeting with others, some whom agree with you and more that don’t and being willing to put your best foot forward on behalf of your community. Believe it or not, it can be fun!!

Team Evergreen has a very strong advocacy team with lots of years of experience and welcomes the participation of those who would like to be of assistance. There are more than enough issues to go around and one or more of them will likely pique your interest. If you don’t mind the occasional meeting, are willing to “brush up” the skills described above, to challenge your own and other’s notions of what ought to be, and to dialogue with those who cooperate with or oppose the bicycling community, then step forward, make your voice heard, and help protect and shape the future of your community.

In an effort to responsibly represent the bicycling community, Team Evergreen Advocacy focuses on building strong and constructive working relationships with those that it works with on a regular basis—Bicycle Colorado, Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department, Jefferson County Open Space, Jefferson County Trail Use Task Force, Plan Jeffco,  Bike Jeffco, and the Jefferson County Commissioners. In addition, and perhaps, most importantly, Team Evergreen also focuses on outreach to those with whom it does not work with regularly and with those who don’t agree that bicycles belong on roads or on trails. It is only when one has established a relationship that minds can change. This can only be accomplished by meeting bicycling’s opponents in face to face meetings, listening to their valid concerns, keeping ones focus on the goal to be reached, and determining and following through on a mutual strategy to solve the problem or issue that was raised.

Team Evergreen Advocacy has already accomplished much: Kelley Garrod, our road bike advocate, has ridden along with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department in their patrols up the Deer Creek Canyon Corridor and learned and written about enforcement issues there in the Team Evergreen Bike Beat. Peter Morales, Advocacy Director and mountain bike advocate, Vicki Klinger, Team Evergreen Director, and Mark Spurgeon, Team Evergreen Director, helped initiate the JCOS Trail Use Task Force Apex Working File which proposed a directional trail management solution, in consultation with all other user groups. TE Directors Jerry Haynie and Mark Spurgeon were instrumental in the placement of a porta pottie at the 543 parking lot at the Buffalo Creek area, so as to alleviate a potential nuisance and hazard to the local community. Team Evergreen Advocacy is presently involved in seeking mutual solutions with the other user groups for trail conflict issues which have recently arisen on Apex Park and on Chimney Gulch. Peter Morales, Advocacy Director, recently penned an article in Bike Beat entitled Feel The Need – To Yield, on these issues. Lastly, Team Evergreen Trail Blazers are at the forefront of Team Evergreen stewardship efforts and trail building, which are, after all, the ultimate advocacy activity—when you build and maintain trail for people, they listen to you when you later approach them about other issues which have arisen. Again, all of these accomplishments are the result of relationships which have been built upon mutual interest and trust and which have taken much time and many meetings to nuture.

Please think about giving some of your time to such efforts. Let’s see what we can accomplish together!