The Accidental Activist

You want to repeal the mandatory helmet law, and you're willing to do what it takes to restore your right to decide.

How effective are you?

This is a reasonable question. It's not a matter of how hard you work, or how passionate you are. Nor does it depend on how effective you are at debating the issue. You have to measure your effectiveness in a way that is simple and easy to prove, just like saying 2 + 2 = 4.

Several states are considering some type of helmet law repeal. And there is no doubt that bikers rights activists are behind these bills. At least one biker organization in each of these states asked a biker-friendly legislator to submit a bill. That much is easy to prove.

But beyond that, it gets murky.

The way it plays out from here is predictable enough. Either the bill passes, or it doesn't. But WHY it plays out as passing or failing is not so clear, and what effect bikers have on the outcome is often totally misunderstood.

The wording of the bill gets a lot of attention, with the belief that adding the right conditions is crucial. Looking back at prior years, many bikers feel that previous bills failed simply because they lacked the right words to sweeten the deal. In truth, this is an extremely small factor since most legislators either support our right to decide ... or they don't.

A little sugar doesn't necessarily help the medicine go down.

Another conventional approach is that bikers need to rise up and be heard when the bill is being considered. Flooding the legislature with emails, faxes, and phone calls is the tactic. But again, this approach has a marginal effect. Incumbent legislators always get a tremendous amount of input on controversial bills. But if there's nothing except temporary noise, it's easy enough to ignore.

Big protest rallies are good at getting bikers stoked up. A show of force is very good ... to a point. But like the flood of emails and faxes, it too subsides. After the rally, the bikers go back home and wait for change to come. And the legislators go back to business as usual.

So what are the results of all this activism?

Not much, when it comes to how the vote comes down on repeal. As long as we bikers limit ourselves to only telling legislators what we want, we will never have control over the outcome. Without doing anything more than voicing our opinions, passing a repeal bill becomes a game of chance.

With these worn out tactics, ther's no way to break out of this dead end. We can not do it by getting more bikers to talk to their legislators. We can't do it by getting better at debating the issue. And we sure can't trick legislators into supporting repeal with crafty bill language.

Simply put, legislators need a reason to change their minds.

It takes a totally different approach to change the game, and that approach is the Repeal Machine. It's a simple process with proven results. With just a few bikers, working as campaign volunteers for electable candidates, we can build a biker-friendly majority.

How legislators vote is no longer a matter of personal opinion. Now it becomes a matter of job security.

Take a look at the Repeal Machine. There are very few moving parts, so there's less to break down. It has no weak links. And if each step is sucessfully completed, the dream of helmet law repeal becomes a reality. And that's no accident.

- RIDE2REPEAL@gmail.com