Reach Out to Those Not Like You
In our Big Initiatives list we suggested it might be a good idea—a responsibility, even—to reach out to others in your community who may not “look/act/speak/be” like you. Some organizations are helping to lead the way.
While perusing the SFBC website tonight, I noticed that their banner image had changed to the image you see at the top-right. Their regular banner image, I believe, is the one to the left, here.
Why the change? I suppose it’s because this weekend is San Francisco Pride—one of the world’s most popular gay pride events. Technically, it is called “The San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Celebration,” so it covers all those groups of people (LGBT).
There’s another company that knows how to reach out to its audience. If you search a certain search engine for pride san francisco, you might just end up with search results that include adsense ads on the right that look like this:
The rainbow stripe is not usually there. I presume this only happens during pride week, and I’m not sure Google has ever done it before. Nonetheless, it shows Google reaching out to a group of folks who have traditionally been considered social minorities.
I think it’s very cool that SFBC and Google do this, and I suspect there are lots of ways that us bicycle advocates can show people in our community that they’re important to us.
And it doesn’t even have to be a recognition of some group along race/class/sexual orientation/religious/cultural lines. You could do something as simple as celebrating the graduating high school class, or a local hero, or the friendly dog or cat that always greets you at the local hardware store. You can and should reach out to social and cultural minorities, to make sure they feel welcome, and you can and should also try to find ideas and themes that represent the common bonds we all share—our collective shared experience.
Let the creativity begin! 
