Bicycling for mutual aid: centering racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ cyclists in Toronto

ABSTRACT

Within the context of a (post-)COVID-19 pandemic world, there is an urgent need to critically explore how bicycle-related activities may contribute to an environmentally sustainable and equitable world for vulnerable populations. In recent years, mutual aid projects have surged globally, with scholars pointing to the COVID-19 pandemic as a key driver of communities being forced to respond to the unfolding social and environmental crises, alongside state abandonment. In this paper, we discuss how cycling has been taken up by communities disproportionately harmed by colonial systems. Using a decolonial feminist participatory action research approach, the authors collaborated with The Bike Brigade, a non-profit bicycle delivery organization that partners with mutual aid organizations. Using arts-based methods and semi-structured interviews, we draw on the perspectives of 2SLGBTQ+ and racialized cyclists who volunteer with The Bike Brigade. A key theme of the research was the unique way in which research colleagues used bicycles to participate in community care by embodying mutual aid values: community thriving, resource reallocation and solidarity. Thus, this paper puts forth mutual aid as a potential framework for understanding radical mobility practices to foster community care.

KEYWORDS:

• Mutual aid
• bicycles
• bicycle justice
• participatory action research
• decolonial feminist methodology
• arts-based methods

1. Introduction

The structural and systemic violence of settler colonialism […] continues to impact Indigenous sovereignty and the safety of Black communities, as well as refugees, migrants and other racialized peoples, women, trans and queer folks and disabled people. Food insecurity and poverty remain pervasive in these marginalized communities by design. This underscores the importance of knowing that delivering food and essentials to our most vulnerable community members is only our first step towards a more equitable future in this city we call home (Wang, 2021).

This quotation underlines the urgent need for a COVID-19 pandemic recovery that simultaneously addressed the pervasive inequality in urban cities located in settler colonial states, namely, Toronto, Canada. Indeed, settler colonial structures are designed to eliminate Indigenous people from the land, in part by normalizing hierarchies along the lines of race, gender and sexuality (Hunt & Holmes, 2015). These hierarchies have, in turn, resulted in unequal distribution of resources and opportunities, including the right to move freely and safely through urban spaces (Cook & Butz, 2018).

Recent literature suggests that the bicycle – as a mobility tool – may play a key role in creating more equitable futures (Balkmar, 2020). Emerging research has shown how bicycling may support vulnerable communities by providing a safe and inclusive space for under-served youth in Canada (Steinmann et al., 2021), responding to gender-based violence for women in Nicaragua (Hayhurst et al., 2022), and supporting HIV+ women in Uganda (McSweeney et al., 2023). We expand on the diverse ways in which communities take up bicycling to challenge or navigate structural inequality in the literature review below.

Despite advances in research and practice related to the emerging ‘bicycle justice’ movement – which problematizes the race-, gender- and class-based disparities involved in bicycling (Golub et al., 2016) – we still do not know how these inequities intersect with COVID-19 or its influence on and access to bicycles to support 2SLGBTQ+ (Two-Spirit,¹ Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, plus) and racialized² communities in (post-)pandemic life. That is, the focus on bicycles as the sustainable mode of transportation and potential tool for achieving transformative change – especially for these communities – remains understudied. The key research questions guiding this paper, then, are as follows: (1) how might The Bike Brigade (BB) and its members possibly contribute to an equitable COVID-19 recovery and (2) how is bicycling taken up by 2SLGBTQ+ and racialized communities to respond to existing systems of inequality? A key theme from the research was the unique way in which research colleagues (otherwise known as ‘research participants’)³ participated in community care by embodying mutual aid values. In pursuing these objectives, we contend that a decolonial feminist methodological approach revealed how racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ communities took up mobility practices through a framework of mutual aid.

In what follows, we first highlight the scholarship on mutual aid, define key terms and then synthesize previous sociological literature on the bicycle and its intersection with systemic inequality. Next, we outline the decolonial feminist methodology which guided this research project, as well as the participatory action research (PAR) collaboration with BB and data collection methods (arts-based methods and semi-structured interviews). Third, we summarize the key findings from the project as they relate to mutual aid work. We then offer discussion points around the potential for bicycles to connect and support community members through mutual aid values.

2. Literature review

2.1 Mutual aid

Mutual aid has been theorized by Spade (2020a) as a way of being in relation to a community that simultaneously tackles the underlying causes of systemic inequality. In recent years, mutual aid projects have surged globally, with scholars pointing to the COVID-19 pandemic as a key driver of communities being forced to respond to the unfolding social, epidemiological and environmental crises, alongside state abandonment (Sitrin & Sembrar, 2020). Mutual aid as a form of reciprocal care is a strategy for surviving capitalist states that reproduce violence and inequality in the name of profit (Springer, 2020).

The concept of mutual aid and care has been a survival tool for marginalized groups long before mutual aid projects were popularized as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, Piepzna-Samarasinha (2018) discussed care and accessibility work as a revolutionary act of love from a disability justice perspective. Piepzna-Samarasinha (2018) asked,

What does it mean to shift our ideas of access and care (whether it’s disability, childcare, economic access, or many more) from an individual chore, an unfortunate cost of having an unfortunate body, to a collective responsibility that’s maybe even deeply joyful? (p. 16)

Key to Piepzna-Samarasinha’s work is centering the lived experiences of disabled 2SLGBTQ+, Black and Brown communities who have been engaging in forms of collective care for survival and joy. Brown’s (2019) work has similarly demonstrated the liberatory potential of community-based care and pleasure for those most vulnerable to systemic violence and oppression. Additionally, Kaba (2021) has applied an abolitionist framework to collective care, envisioning ‘a restructured society in a world where we have everything we need: food, shelter, education, health, art, beauty, clean water, and more things that are foundational to our personal and community safety’ (p. 19). In other words, mutual aid is grounded in the ongoing work that Black, Brown, racialized, disabled and 2SLGBTQ+ communities have been practicing for collective justice and liberation. Mutual aid is multi-issued by nature since it is rooted in anti-capitalism, anti-racism, anti-imperialism, gender justice and disability justice. Thus, mutual aid projects are grounded in a shared understanding of systems of inequality and a commitment to meeting the survival needs of vulnerable community members that blatantly challenge and transform intersectional structural conditions that exacerbate oppression.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a flurry of communities across North America were organized through mutual aid frameworks to respond to the unequal distribution of food and healthcare services (Bergman et al., 2020). For example, the Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto facilitated a program called Unity Kitchen in which community members living in encampments could access resources including a kitchen to cook, clothing, and support in crisis and grief (Sky, 2022). The COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns subsequently led to many Indigenous and other unhoused community members building their own shelters across the city, practicing their right to choose where to live. Key to Unity Kitchen was prioritizing Indigenous self-determination and autonomy within the context of a housing crisis and ongoing Indigenous genocidal systems such as forced displacement and police violence. What is clear is that mutual aid work is led by those who are on the frontline of living through crises and who also have the best experience and knowledge to solving the very issues they face (Spade, 2020a).

Unlike charity-based frameworks, which make up most of the aid and development efforts in the global North, mutual aid frameworks aim to target the roots of systemic issues (Spade, 2020a). Charity-based organizations generally invoke varying relations of benevolence, assistance and support; but that must be critically examined through intersections of global hypercapitalist patriarchy and aid that is deeply racialized, classed and gendered (Nickel, 2018). For example, non-profit organizations must compete to demonstrate to funders that they are worth funding, which means marketing their programming according to the target funder’s values. When non-profit entities are funded by corporate funders, for example, they risk becoming more closely aligned with firms in a variety of ways, especially due to their increasing materialistic and instrumental motivations, alongside increased competition for resources (Chahim & Prakash, 2014).

Charity-based aid further maintains a power and resource hierarchy through policing resource distribution based on problematic criteria about morality. These criteria are grounded in racist and sexist stereotypes that are meant to affirm elite superiority. For example, the Canadian welfare system has disproportionately targeted Black and Indigenous families under racist assumptions that Black and Indigenous parents are unfit to raise their own children (Ontario Human Rights Commission OHRC, 2018). Instead of distributing funds into safe housing – a key factor that results in Black and Indigenous children falling into welfare – the welfare system is designed to assert state control over Black and Indigenous families and their agency. As Spade (2020a) wrote, ‘Elite solutions to poverty are always about managing poor people and never about redistributing wealth’ (p. 26).

Image 2. Fox’s poem, Happiness.

In sum, the literature demonstrates the potential for mutual aid in radically transforming colonial systems of inequality through solidarity, instead of charity-based frameworks that merely reproduce systems of harm. A collective approach to survival and community care is needed to ensure that those most vulnerable to systemic oppression can thrive (Kaba, 2021). In the following section, we outline sociological literature that positions the bicycle as a potential tool for addressing systemic inequality.

2.2 The bicycle

Although the bicycle has not yet been researched as a mutual aid technology, critical scholars have discussed ways in which bicycling is implicated within social structures of inequality, such as systemic racism (Lugo, 2018), housing precarity (Steinmann, 2020), and gender-based violence (LaFrambois, 2019). Furthermore, the bicycle justice movement has shed light on class-, race- and gender-based inequality within cycling spaces, while advocating for access to safe cycling for all (Golub et al., 2016).

Bicycling in North America has a unique history in which social justice movements have been embedded. For example, ‘Critical Mass’ bike demonstrations have emerged in over 100 cities across the globe to assert cyclist rights and disrupt motor vehicle traffic (Vivanco, 2013). While Critical Mass rides have been used to promote cycling as an environmentally-friendly alternative to automobiles, Lugo (2016) has critiqued this ‘bicycle equity’ movement for privileging the voices of White cyclists. Indeed, systemic racism in bicycling mirrors the pattern of poor racialized communities being pushed out of White and upper-class areas of North American cities, resulting in bicycling infrastructure that systemically privileges the needs of White and upper-class cyclists.

For many poor racialized communities who cannot afford motor vehicles, the bicycle is an object of necessity, as opposed to one of leisure or physical activity. Indeed, bicycling (alongside public transit) is an affordable mode of mobility to better access employment opportunities, recreation and other services, compared to using automobiles (Tsenkova & Mahalek, 2014). Instead of thinking of the cyclist as ‘the ultimate moral citizen’ (Steinmann, 2020, p. 31), due to its associations with environmentalism and health, it is important to challenge its assumed moral value by considering how bicycling is taken up by marginalized cyclists who may use the bicycle to potentially resist systems of unequal power. For example, ‘bike marshals’ are volunteer cyclists who keep protesters safe during demonstrations, as an alternative to having police at demonstrations (BikePGH, 2020). Bike marshals have been taken up in protest spaces that refuse police presence due to the history and risk of police violence towards racialized protestors.

In addition to research on bicycles and race, feminist mobility literature has examined the bicycle as a source of empowerment for women (Bussey, 2013). Relatedly, Gamble’s (2019) ethnography of cycling in Quito, Ecuador, demonstrated that cycling spaces for women can be used to reinsert feminist possibilities in urban spaces that are traditionally masculine and that tend to reinscribe violence towards women. Recent research in the global North context on bicycles that engages with a gendered lens demonstrates the potential for bicycles to empower cisgender women (Lubitow et al., 2019); and yet, the same studies emphasize significant infrastructural constraints and ‘hostile cycling conditions’ impeding cisgender women from being able to bicycle safely (Wicken et al., 2022, p. 4; see also Guinn & Stangl, 2014). Taken together, there is a notable gap in research that considers the cycling experiences of those with diverse gender identities, as well as 2SLGBTQ+ individuals who are vulnerable to violence due to heteropatriarchy and transphobia. Therefore, this research aimed to center how racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ individuals take up cycling within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and exacerbated inequality in Toronto.

3. Methods

In this section, we outline the decolonial feminist methodology that informed this project. Next, we provide background on the partner organization, BB, the non-profit bicycle organization with whom this PAR project was created. Third, we describe the specific data collection methods used (arts-based methods and semi-structured interviews) and our reflexive approach. We conclude this section with how we analyzed the data.

3.1 Decolonial feminist methodology

A decolonial feminist methodology was used to allow for a critical examination of gender, race, sexuality and the power structures that uphold patriarchy within mobility practices such as cycling. This methodology challenges the notion that Western ideas are superior while upholding diverse perspectives, particularly those from Indigenous communities (Lenette, 2022). ‘Seeing’ those with intersectional identities, particularly those with marginalized racial and gender identities, is a crucial part of decolonial feminist methodologies (Lugones, 2010). Recent work, for example, has highlighted how PAR is an effective tool to ignite decolonial feminist approaches (Lenette, 2022). This is due to PAR’s emphasis on relationality, its ability to center diverse knowledges and its bold commitment to disrupt the colonial relations and unequal power relations so deeply woven into Western-based approaches (Gill et al., 2012; Lenette, 2022). Indeed, Lenette (2022) demonstrated how PAR’s decolonial roots have been overlooked due to the widespread uptake of PAR as a wrongly assumed Western methodology (see Fals-Borda, 1985; Haque et al., 1997). Nachman et al. (2023) discussed the value of combining decolonial feminist methodology with PAR and arts-based methods elsewhere. Below, the PAR approach in collaboration with BB is discussed.

3.1.1 Decolonial feminist participatory action research with the Bike Brigade

Several collectives have emerged to serve local communities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and rising social inequalities, including food insecurity (Wakefield, 2021) and increased vulnerability of contracting and dying from COVID for low-income and racialized communities (Government of Canada, 2021). BB, a Toronto-based non-profit organization, pairs volunteer cyclists with community organizations that serve vulnerable community members to deliver food and supplies (The Bike Brigade, n.d.-a). The organization was founded in March 2020 in response to exacerbated inequalities from the pandemic, including increased food insecurity and gender-based violence (Wang, 2021). While BB does not consider itself a mutual aid organization, they aim to embody mutual aid values and work closely with mutual aid organizations in Toronto, such as This Way Up Collective, Uplift Kitchen and the Toronto Sex Workers Action Project (The Bike Brigade, n.d.-b). Since March 2020, BB’s team has evolved to include a volunteer logistics team (communications with partners and riders), a volunteer tech team (managing the delivery dispatch application), volunteer board members (leadership and advisory), grant-based researchers; full-time paid staff and approximately 775 volunteer riders. Since the beginning of their operations, BB has already had a significant impact, reporting 52 347 prepared meals delivered from June 2020-June 2023 (data shared with permission from BB).

A PAR partnership was established with BB through a larger SSHRC Grant and a MITACS Grant to pursue this collaborative research project. PAR was used in alignment with Lugones’ (2010) decolonial feminist contention that ‘communities rather than individuals enable the doing; one does with someone else, not in individualist isolation’ (p. 754). PAR is therefore a useful framework for building collective knowledge that is supportive of community members who are involved in mutual care.

To build respectful relationships with research colleagues as part of PAR (Frisby et al., 2005), Jess regularly communicated with BB through their SLACK channel (a virtual organizational communication platform). The authors and two other members from BB involved with BB’s research work held a meeting to determine the project rationale, research questions and data collection methods. The research design was then posted in the SLACK channel for logistics team members to review and provide feedback. Throughout the research project, Jess provided updates to BB’s executive director, Rachel (co-author), and had biweekly meetings to discuss the research progress. To facilitate relationship-building with the BB community, Jess has been volunteering with BB since June 2021 as a delivery person, attended bi-weekly logistics team meetings and helped plan community events.

3.1.2. Data collection

Data collection took place from January to March 2022. Seven research colleagues participated in the project, all of whom identified as racialized and four of whom identified as 2SLGBTQ+. Research colleagues had volunteered with BB for at least one month. The research colleagues Danielle (they/them), Fox (they/them), Nico (he/him) and Tiff (they/them) consented to having their real names shared, while Gia (she/her), Kira (she/her) and Nat (she/her) used pseudonyms to remain anonymous. Research colleagues were recruited through emails, social media posts in the closed BB Facebook group and word-of-mouth with BB’s support. A combination of data collection methods was used: (1) arts-based methods [giving research colleagues the option to use any form of art and creativity to share their knowledge, including photographs, visual art, poetry, etc. (Jones & Leavy, 2014)] and (2) semi-structured interviews.

Consenting research colleagues for arts-based methods were asked to produce an art creation of their choice. Any costs associated with purchasing art supplies were covered through the SSHRC Grant and York University’s research cost fund. Arts-based approaches were beneficial for the research herein because they (1) provide researchers and research colleagues more tools to expand their mode of thought and communication, (2) spark a different perspective than is available through traditional methods and (3) disseminate knowledge beyond the academy for a wider audience (Jones & Leavy, 2014). By creating art pieces, research colleagues were able to challenge the coloniality of knowledge production, by creating knowledge in their own way. Furthermore, arts-based methods are a creative means of producing and sharing embodied knowledge (Seppälä et al., 2021), such as the experience of cycling and reclaiming space in the city as racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ cyclists.

Through a PAR arts-based approach, research colleagues could also share their experiences and input through semi-structured interviews. The interview guide for this project included open-ended questions for research colleagues to explore their experiences as cyclists and volunteering with BB. For example, research colleagues were asked: ‘How does your identity as a racialized/2SLGBTQ+ volunteer affect your experience with cycling and BB?’ to illuminate the unique perspectives of racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ cyclists. Research colleagues were also asked: ‘How do you think BB, if at all, addresses the COVID-19 pandemic?’ to facilitate discussion about BB’s role in contributing to a post-pandemic recovery.

Reflexivity Jess followed a reflexive methodology during the research, which embraces one’s position as a researcher and foregrounds how this positionality may inextricably influence and contribute to conversations with research colleagues (Dupuis, 1999). Employing reflexivity strengthened the PAR approach, as Jess was able to build meaningful relationships with research colleagues and the BB community while challenging preconceived assumptions about Jess’ position as the ‘expert’. Being reflexive meant Jess could regularly turn to the BB community and to Rachel and Lyndsay to co-create the project through discussions about the project design and outcomes. Reflexivity also means attuning to the motivations driving a project to center the needs of the research community. Indeed, prioritizing community needs is essential, especially in following Smith’s (2021) key questions pertaining to decolonizing research methodologies, ‘Whose interests does [the research] serve? Who will benefit from it?’ (p. 10). Creating an executive summary for BB’s use was an important outcome for the project to ensure that the organization benefited from the project.

It is worth noting how the authors’ positionalities influenced the PAR process and research findings: Jess’ positionality as an able-bodied, queer, racialized settler; Lyndsay’s positionality as a White settler, heterosexual, able-bodied, cisgender Canadian woman; and Rachel’s positionality as an able-bodied, racialized, cisgender woman and settler. Each author’s unique positionality helped inform the project, especially as it relates to settler colonialism, systemic racism, and gender-based violence. As Jess’ positionality granted them ‘insider access’ to the experiences of other 2SLGBTQ+ and racialized persons, many interactions with research colleagues involved reciprocal sharing of experiences. The project findings were largely informed by these relationships based on shared lived experiences and an orientation towards transformative change.

3.1.3. Data analysis

Interviews were transcribed and emailed to respective research colleagues for their review during March 2022. Coding took place during the end of March 2022. The data included interview transcripts, artwork, captions that research colleagues wrote to describe their own art and reflexive journal notes. Three research colleagues participated in the arts-based research and shared a zine, poetry, and a sculpture, respectively. To analyze the artwork, Jess suggested that research colleagues provide written captions to describe their artwork, to be able to analyze text-based data (Haberlin, 2017). Jess used NVivo, a qualitative data analysis software, to manage and organize the data (Bonello & Meehan, 2019). First, the data were labelled by codes, and then sorted into broader themes to trace patterns across codes (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Codes were grouped into themes based on their prevalence and significance to the research objectives (Braun & Clarke, 2006): (1) exploring how BB may contribute to an equitable COVID-19 recovery and 2) how bicycling is taken up by 2SLGBTQ+ and racialized communities to respond to existing systems of inequality. At the same time and following PAR, Rachel manually coded the data and sorted the codes into key themes. Following the decolonial feminist framework while coding meant that the authors could be attuned to intersecting societal oppressions, including racism, heteropatriarchy, colonialism and capitalism (Lugones, 2010). Jess met with Rachel and Lyndsay to collaboratively discuss and name broader themes from the findings, some of which will be outlined below.

4. Results

Research colleagues named mutual aid as an important alternative system for supporting vulnerable communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings demonstrate how research colleagues embodied mutual aid values while bicycling with BB by (1) working to reallocate resources to disrupt colonial relations; (2) ensuring that community members can thrive, not merely survive and (3) unlearning charity-based frameworks while practicing solidarity.

4.1 Reallocating resources

In Toronto, one in five household experience food insecurity (City of Toronto, 2019) resulting in a dire need to reallocate resources within the city. This need for reallocation is what motivated Kira to volunteer with BB at the start of the pandemic:

The Bike Brigade wasn’t the first place that I approached, I actually went to my [apartment] building [before volunteering with BB]. I put up a sign in the lobby being like, ‘does anyone need food, or errands, or whatever’ […] I felt like I had food, I had a home, I had a job, I knew I was getting a paycheck. When else would you help people, right? (Kira)

Kira hoped to reallocate resources, acknowledging that she was in a position where she had the capacity to deliver food and other resources to community members. Kira also recognized that there was an urgent need to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic by ensuring her community members were supported during the state of emergency. While Kira had tried to support her community by herself initially, BB offered a larger and structured effort to respond to the lack of state action to support those who are food insecure in Toronto. As a bicycle-focused organization, BB connected mutual aid organizations, resources and community members all over Toronto, through a network of bicycle delivery persons.

Research colleagues illuminated how the bicycle functioned as a tool to reallocate resources across Toronto. Danielle explained:

Having a bike in an urban area is incredibly economical. You can carry so much stuff on a bike, you can move around, you know, get yourself where you’re going, maybe even get your kid where you’re going. And you’re not paying for gas, insurance, fixing your engine when the engine craps out of your car. You’re not even paying for [public transit].

Bicycling is indeed an affordable form of mobility that can facilitate access to essential resources and services (Tsenkova & Mahalek, 2014). Furthermore, as a cargo technology, the bicycle can carry significant loads given the energy used to bicycle, when compared to the amount of fuel automobiles use (Lee et al., 2019). Thus, research colleagues valued bicycling as an economical and sustainable way to move essential resources across the city, whether for their own access or to deliver to underserved community members.

4.2 Thriving, not surviving

Research colleagues engaged with the concept of community thriving through bicycle deliveries with BB. For example, one research colleague, Danielle, described mutual aid as follows: ‘You’re not giving aid because you feel like somebody needs you to provide for them. You’re giving aid because you feel like that other person is equal to you and deserves everything that you get to have’. Danielle compared the differences between mutual aid and charity, explaining that mutual aid involves the inherent belief that all beings are deserving of resources that facilitate their thriving. Similarly, Nico described mutual aid as treating each other as ‘peers in this world’. Mutual aid, then, involves a completely different mindset towards aid, one that involves treating all members in a community as ‘peers’. Being peers with each other also assumes that there are no power imbalances, but rather that we can care for one another.

By carrying essential goods to their community members, research colleagues voiced feeling like volunteering with BB helped them thrive themselves. In these poems, Fox demonstrated how they personally benefited and felt happiness from doing mutual aid work in the poems ‘About Me’ and ‘Happiness’ (see Image 1 and Image 2). Being able to do work that supported their community members, in addition to having conversations with people, is part of what made Fox thrive. This is one way in which mutual aid work is founded on reciprocity and relationality – that our own well-being is connected to the well-being of others. This finding echoes Mao et al. (2021) work with mutual aid group members who experienced enhanced well-being and purpose from supporting their community members. Further, focusing on supporting the well-being and thriving of community members is an important way to resist the discursive narrative of suffering associated with those affected by systems of oppression (Tuck, 2009). In contrast to deficit-based narratives about racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ communities, research colleagues demonstrated how they themselves thrived and experienced joy through bicycle deliveries. This finding echoes decolonial feminist works that prioritize liberation through being in relation with one another (Lugones, 2010). In other words, the bicycle deliveries were part of a network of community care and thriving for research colleagues.

Image 1. Fox’s poem, About Me.

4.3 Unlearning charity-based frameworks and moving towards solidarity

Research colleagues discussed the importance of unlearning charity frameworks and moving towards being in solidarity with community members. Gia shared how she had been unlearning societal ideas about aid in the following reflection:

[Mutual aid] extends, I think, politically as well in terms of how we want to retain our wealth and how we want to distribute it. We’re very – even myself – we’re still very much like, ‘who’s deserving of my wealth? How much should I give them? Are they just gonna spend it on–’ you know, the typical narrative where people don’t want to give money if they’re gonna spend it on drugs. I don’t know what that is. (Gia)

Gia admitted that she is still unlearning socialized biases about aid, and who is deserving of resources. Consistent with Spade’s (2020a) work, Gia critiqued the charity-based approach to policing resource distribution, which is often based in problematic criteria. Nico also spoke to his own experiences delivering with BB that challenged his biases and helped shape his perspective about solidarity:

I find that when you are biking with The Bike Brigade, you are also going to some places that there are many stereotypes around them. For example, there is something that I’ve been reflecting and it’s why I really appreciate the experience of The Bike Brigade […] Going to some buildings, there are like many people who live there and they have very difficult conditions to live, right? Because they have no job, they have mental health conditions, they are marginalized people from different ethnicities or equity groups, they are LGBTQ+, old, or they’re sex workers, or all these things that we really don’t know about these people […] I have couple experiences when I visited some buildings – and how this bias that I have, how some people who can afford to living here have food insecurity, it’s like, that’s something that we need to reflect as a society. (Nico)

Above, Nico described the importance of challenging charity-based frameworks about who is deserving of resources. Initially, he felt that recipients who lived in certain housing situations may not have been deserving of deliveries from BB, assuming the recipients were wealthy enough to afford their own food. Upon further reflection, he realized that gatekeeping wealth and resources is based on harmful stereotypes. A key part of mutual aid is solidarity, in which ‘members learn about experiences that are not their own and build solidarity’ (Spade, 2020a, p. 137). Put differently, Nico’s reflexive approach to these issues offered insights into how his work with BB facilitated an opportunity to unlearn processes of othering. In turn, Nico was able to better understand the systems and structures that exacerbated the oppression of those who were part of his community, to move towards being in solidarity with them.

5. Discussion

BB’s work, following the work of other mutual aid organizations, potentially cultivated an alternative to capitalist systems that have failed to support Toronto’s diverse communities. In the wake of COVID-19, there has been an urgent need to reimagine our social systems and move away from exploitative capitalist systems that continue to harm racialized and Indigenous communities, communities in the global South and the non-human environment (Azmanova, 2020). With a decrease in available social services and food insecurity on the rise, BB’s work responded to the failure of the welfare state to support Toronto’s most vulnerable communities during the COVID-19 emergency. An increasingly neoliberal Western world has resulted in a need for mutual aid organizing, as Azmanova (2020, p. 100) explained:

Responsibility was thus offloaded onto individuals (as citizens, professionals, entrepreneurs) under the guise of ‘participatory democracy’, while societies were becoming more precarious as they were made to rely on businesses’ good will and individuals’ self-sacrifice for critical public services such as emergency healthcare.

Put differently, we cannot rely on state action to meet the urgent needs of those communities facing displacement and violence as a by-product of the existence of the settler colonial state. The research colleagues in the project herein have demonstrated that many racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ community members are actively engaging in practices that respond to state abandonment. At the same time, Spade (2020b) warned against the neoliberal co-optation of mutual aid, in which ‘[t]he cultural narrative about social justice entrepreneurship suggests that people who want change should not fight for justice but should invent new ways of managing poor people and social problems’ (p. 142). With these points in mind, we aim to examine the contributions of research colleagues and BB that are ‘threatening and oppositional to the status quo’ (Spade, 2020b, p. 142), while also recognizing the risk of co-optation.

A key theme from the findings was how BB potentially provided the structure for racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ communities – demographics who are discursively constructed as marginal in North American cities – to create their own system(s) of support. As demonstrated in the literature, those who are vulnerable to systemic violence, such as women vulnerable to gender-based violence (Hayhurst et al., 2022) and precariously housed individuals (Steinmann, 2020), use tools such as the bicycle to survive hostile urban systems. In (re-)imagining possibilities for a more equitable and sustainable future for Toronto post-pandemic, the research colleagues, BB and mutual aid organizations are already doing the work to build equitable spaces founded in reciprocity.

The bicycle became an interesting focal point for this project, since BB members used their bicycles to transport resources from mutual aid organizations that provided the resources to recipients. In dense urban areas such as Toronto, bicycle delivery has been shown to be cost-effective, time-efficient and environmentally friendly when compared to using automobiles to deliver resources (Lee et al., 2019). Moreover, the bicycle provided an opportunity for safe social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic (Buehler & Pucher, 2022).

Furthermore, and according to previous literature on the bicycle and social justice, bicycling is ‘an outcome of oppression, leaving the bicycle as the only reasonable travel option due to inadequate public transportation, complex travel needs, or low wages and high transportation costs’ (Golub et al., 2016, p. 2). Examining the diverse ways in which racialized, 2SLBTQ+ and other systemically marginalized cyclists take up cycling is thus essential to illuminate how radical mobility practices are used to survive violent colonial systems. This research responds to the need to amplify the voices of women, racialized persons and other cyclists who inhabit marginalized identities (Lubitow et al., 2019). By illuminating diverse and intersectional cycling perspectives, this project adds to bicycle justice work that aims to enhance access to safe mobility (of humans and resources) for underserved communities (Golub et al., 2016).

Fostering a new understanding of ‘humans in relation’ involves anti-oppressive work and unlearning beliefs produced by the colonial matrix. Within BB and within wider societal consciousness, there is a need to unlearn dominant charity frameworks grounded in notions of philanthropy that secure capitalism’s place in North America. In stark contrast, mutual aid represents an opportunity to commit to anti-capitalism by surpassing colonial frameworks, such as charity. BB research colleagues re-cast the bicycle as a tool to dismantle colonial frameworks and connect community members through mutual aid values of solidarity, thriving, and resource reallocation.

6. Limitations

The project’s main limitations are two-fold. Firstly, only seven research colleagues were recruited. While the arts-based methods allowed for a rich set of data, having more research colleagues contribute to this project would have offered more rich insight. Despite sending the recruitment notice to over six hundred volunteers, only seven research colleagues chose to participate given the inclusion criteria (being 2SLGBTQ+ and/or racialized), pointing to an urgent need for BB to assess the demographic of their community, and how they may better support those with diverse identities. The second challenge pertains to the PAR methodology. As this project was Jess’ MA thesis, a paid internship through the MITACS grant, as well as part of a larger SSHRC project, Jess had to balance various roles within the project, while attuning to the needs of BB community. Having a limited timeline to complete the thesis and the internship added an extra challenge to ensuring that the research community’s needs were being centered throughout the project. Conducting PAR with decolonizing goals within colonial research institutions poses unique challenges, including time constraints and tensions between research community and state interests (Zavala, 2013).

7. Conclusion: decolonial feminist mutual aid practices in urban cycling futures

Within the wider context of COVID-19 and pre-existing inequality in Toronto, there was a pressing need to connect vulnerable community members to mutual aid organizations that were already working to reallocate resources. BB’s network of bicyclists largely facilitated that connection, through an environmentally sustainable and COVID-safe means of transportation. The research colleagues of this study – as well as BB as an organization – demonstrated the potential for using the bicycle to support vulnerable community members. And yet, at the same time, using the bicycle in this way does not address the systemic issue of inequality and food insecurity that has resulted in a need for mutual aid organizations in the first place. For example, scholars have recently noted the ways in which bicycling reproduces inequality, such as through the waste that is produced through bicycle manufacturing (Szto, 2022), and increasing visibility and thus vulnerability to violence for 2SLGBTQ+ and racialized riders (Lubitow et al., 2019). In other words, the bicycle must be understood within the contexts of broader colonial, hyper-capitalist patriarchal contexts in which it is taken up. The various tensions enveloped by such contexts need to be accounted for in future urban cycling futures, with particular attention to the diverse ways that the bicycle is implicated within harmful systems, if we are to form new mobility practices grounded in solidarity.

Methodologically, a decolonial feminist PAR approach was used to amplify diverse perspectives that have been systemically silenced through colonial processes (Lugones, 2010) as well as in bicycling spaces (Lugo, 2016). Creative methods such as arts-based methods can give research colleagues the choice in how they want to participate in a PAR project and thus can diminish power hierarchies between researcher and researched while illuminating ideas that might have otherwise not emerged through interviews alone (Nachman et al., 2023). We hope this project serves to center the perspectives of those who have been systemically silenced in knowledge production on bicycling, mobility, urban transport and beyond. Future research on bicycles is needed to contribute to the palpable lack of literature on issues such as ableism in bicycling, as a truly just and sustainable future must be grounded in disability justice (Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2018). We also hope that future research will consider a more in-depth and focused analysis on issues such as anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, and violence against transgender persons within cycling spaces. Centering diverse perspectives in research can illuminate how those with systemically oppressed identities create systems of mobility and care that challenge the structures that continue to harm our communities.

In imagining a future in which we all thrive, it is vital to unlearn the exploitative, violent and dehumanizing ways in which the settler colonial state forces us to (un)relate to one another. It is with immense awe and gratitude that we acknowledge the incredible work of the research colleagues in this project, as well as BB’s work in reconnecting community members to resources and to one another. As Spade (2020a) wrote, [i]n this context of social isolation and forced dependency on hostile systems, mutual aid – where we choose to help each other out, share things, and put time and resources into caring for the most vulnerable – is a radical act (p. 8).

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by a MITACS Accelerate grant (Nachman) with contributions from The Bike Brigade; a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant titled, ‘Wheels of Change? Exploring “Bicycles for Development” for Women and Girls in the (Post-)Pandemic Contexts of Canada, Uganda, and Nicaragua’ (number 435-2021-1188; PI: Hayhurst) and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation Grant [number 2019-0455; PI: Hayhurst].

The authors would like to express great thanks to The Bike Brigade community for their support throughout this research project. We also thank the research colleagues, without whom, this research would not be possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Canada Foundation for Innovation [2019-0455]; Mitacs; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council [2019-0455]; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [435-2021-1188].

Notes

1. Two-Spirit refers to a culturally specific identity for Indigenous people whose gender identity, spiritual identity and/or sexual orientation is both female and male spirited (Government of Canada, 2022).

2. Racialization is the process by which people have been classified by race, despite no biological evidence that race-based differences exist between humans. By definition, White people are racialized, however, White people do not face the same consequences of racialization as do other racialized groups. The term ‘racialized’ refers to groups of people who have been socially constructed as ‘different’ and thus have been subject to discrimination based on characteristics such as skin colour, accents, names, citizenship, beliefs, etc. (Ontario Human Rights Commission, 2009).

3. Tallbear (2014) posited that research participants should be considered ‘colleagues’ instead of ‘subjects’ as a methodological approach to avoid treating colleagues as ‘data’ and instead as co-creators of knowledge.