Episode 152: Overcoming the Threat to Black Movement with Charles T. Brown
Doug Gordon: As someone who got my start in bicycle advocacy a long time ago, and who has commuted to work by bike for decades, I’m kind of known as “The Bike Guy.” But even though I’ve ridden all kinds of bikes, including an e-bike for recreation and transportation, up until now I’ve never had an electric cargo bike. That changed recently when the good people at Xtracycle loaned me the new RFA—a multipurpose compact electric cargo bike that really is ready for anything. RFA. Get it?
Doug: On the day I picked up the RFA from the Xtracycle showroom, I rode right to my son’s school to pick him up, then I brought him to a doctor’s appointment before taking him home. It all took no time at all, thanks to the electric assist. In the three weeks since I’ve had the RFA, I’ve put over 75 miles on the bike, and most of those are just from trips around the neighborhood. In addition to the school run, I’ve done some big grocery shopping trips. I went to IKEA to buy a new desk chair. I biked to a big home improvement store to get flowers, plants and soil for spring gardening season. I carried a few bags of old clothes to donate to a local charity, and I dropped off some overdue books at the library—sorry, fellow library patrons.
Doug: Thanks to the Xtracycle RFA, I have been on a bicycle more in the past few weeks than I have in the past few months. Nothing has felt too far away, no hill has felt too steep. Plus, my errands haven’t felt like chores. They’ve been fun. If anything, the more I ride the RFA, the more I look for excuses to ride it again. It’s safe to say that even for someone like me, getting an e-cargo bike has totally changed my life. Okay, but what if you are not a bike advocate or a podcast host who lives in a dense city with lots of bike infrastructure? In the coming weeks, we will bring you stories from other Xtracycle owners, regular folks who live in places that are probably a lot like where you live, and who have found that their electric cargo bikes have changed their lives. We’ll hear from Kate, a mom of four, who has found that getting around Raleigh, North Carolina on her Xtracycle is not just easy, but something she and her family look forward to.
Kate: The impact on your mental health, the quality time you get together as a family, enjoying something together. I have absolutely no regrets. Best decision.
Doug: Then there’s Riley, a dad in Tucson, Arizona, who finds that taking his kids to school and activities on his electric cargo bike is enjoyable and efficient, even in a place that’s pretty sprawled out.
Riley: We actually weren’t that much slower than we’d be in a car in a very car-centric city. And we felt a lot better. The kids loved it. And I’d return home and I’d feel great.
Doug: And we’ll hear from Marie Claire. She works for Xtracycle, helping people figure out how an electric cargo bike can fit into their lives, especially if they want to drive less. She should know, she lives in Tallahassee, Florida and has never owned a car.
Marie Claire: The main reason that the electric cargo bike has changed my life is that it allowed me to stay car free even when my kids were too heavy to transport on a regular, non-electrified bike.
Doug: We here at The War on Cars want everyone to enjoy the benefits of cargo biking, whether to reduce or even relieve the need for cars in your life. You can head to Xtracycle.com/thewaroncars and take the one-minute ride guide, a quiz to help you find out which Xtracycle bike is best for you. And if you decide to purchase a bike, you’ll get $500 off by using the promo code WARONCARS500. Again, that’s Xtracycle—X-T-R-A-C-Y-C-L-E.com/TheWarOnCars.
Charles T. Brown: So when you think about a profession like urban planning and engineering, where decisions are made about transit, about housing and public space, and how it can impact our entire communities for generations, this sort of representation isn’t just symbolic, it has to be structural. We gotta get more people of color in the room so that the knowledge of what it means to be stopped for walking while Black, to grow up next to a freeway, to watch our neighborhoods be completely destroyed because of that freeway, it is missing when you don’t have diversity in the room.
Sarah Goodyear: Welcome to The War on Cars. I’m Sarah Goodyear, in for my co host Doug Gordon. We have a great guest for you this episode and we’re gonna get to that in just a second. But first, some business. We are really excited about our forthcoming book, Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile. It’s now available for pre-order. Go to LifeAfterCars.com to find out more.
Sarah: Also real quick, The War on Cars is on Patreon at Patreon.com/thewaroncarspod. We’re an independent podcast, so please help us out by signing up for just $3 a month.
Sarah: Okay, let’s get right to it. We are welcoming back to the podcast, a great guest, Charles T. Brown, who was last with us in 2023. Charles is the founder and principal of Equitable Cities, a minority- and veteran-owned urban planning, public policy and research firm focused and at the intersection of transportation, health and equity. He is also an adjunct professor at the Edward G. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, and he is the author of a brand new book, Arrested Mobility: Overcoming the Threat to Black Movement, out now from Island Press, that builds on the important work he has been doing for many years now. Charles Brown, welcome back to The War on Cars.
Charles T. Brown: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here, to see your face again, and to share what I’ve been doing by way of Arrested Mobility. You have an audience that I really, you know, just enjoy engaging with, so let’s do this.
Sarah: Let’s do this, because I know our audience is gonna be thrilled to hear about it, and it’s a huge accomplishment to write a book. You’re amazing to have done this with all the rest of the things that you do. There’s something that really caught my eye in the book because it echoes something that we say on the podcast all the time about the word “accident,” and how that shouldn’t be used when you’re talking about traffic violence. We’ve had the great Jessie Singer on her book, There Are No Accidents. You write that the planning decisions that limit Black people’s mobility are, quote, “not just accidental outcomes.” Could you explain that idea and how it resonates through the book?
Charles T. Brown: The reason why it’s not just accidental is one of the sole reasons why I wrote the book on arrested mobility, and why I decided to focus primarily on, you know, the Black community. And the reason being is I turn this arrested mobility to describe that these are systemic restrictions of movement of Black Americans, and they’re not just, you know, physical, but socially and economically as well. And when you think about them not being sort of accidental arrested mobility explains that this happens through over policing, it happens through the disinvestments which leads to the traffic violence on our streets. It happens by way of the exclusionary planning, which could lead to the end result of disinvestment or a lack of, I would say, infrastructure in certain places, particularly Black places. And then it shows up best in discriminatory policy which decides who gets what in our society. So none of that is by way of an accident. I think it’s due to the systemic restriction of movement for Black people.
Sarah: And you talk about the framework underneath some of this as being made up of the four Ps, which is policing, public policy, polity and planning. And you say that those four Ps have conspired to hold back Black communities and other communities, but specifically Black communities.
Charles T. Brown: Yes. And I was really struggling, quite frankly, to land at the four Ps, because public health is a big focus of mine, but ultimately health is ingrained in each one of these Ps. And so when you look at the four Ps, arrested mobility is driven by what I call the cumulative weight of these four systems. And they are, as you stated, polity. And polity refers to the structures of power, that is, who holds the decision-making authority and whose voices are excluded when you think about it from the standpoint of structures of power.
Charles T. Brown: Policy. As we know, policy, it shapes the rules of movement, and it is often written in ways that criminalize rather than protect Black, brown and low-income communities. Then we have planning, which I’m extremely passionate about—I identify as an urban planner. But planning really determines the physical design of our communities, and that includes where sidewalks are placed, you know, where highways cut through, and ultimately who gets access to opportunity as a result of that. And then the last P is policing, which refers to the enforcement of all of this, whether at the federal, state, regional or local level. And unfortunately, this is often with, I would say, disproportionate scrutiny, force and harm to Black bodies that are simply trying to exist in public space. So when you look at these four Ps together, they don’t just limit freedom, they systematically arrest it.
Sarah: And that’s something that you as a Black man have experienced personally. You’re from Mississippi.
Charles T. Brown: Mississippi.
Sarah: Which my wife’s from Mississippi, so I’ve spent some time there. And I also know that the Northerner’s perspective is sometimes that’s the South, there’s this special kind of racism in the South. And in the North we don’t have those kinds of systemic problems. And yet you have experienced some really disturbing cases of arrested mobility in New Jersey, in some cases worse than what you experienced in Mississippi.
Charles T. Brown: You know, here’s the thing. I think it was Faulkner who stated that to understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi. And unfortunately, Mississippi receives this sort of stigma of being the most racist place on Earth. You know, I was fortunate. I grew up in a town that was predominantly Black and brown—mostly Black. I didn’t deal with this sort of overt racism that people would think exists in a place like Mississippi. While that is true, it does exist, the racism that I experienced was much more covert, and thus I wasn’t aware of it until my teen years and later.
Charles T. Brown: As it relates to New Jersey, a place that I call home and I think is fantastic, the racism here is much more covert. It is much more through the polity that I spoke about in terms of the systems of power or the planning or the policing and the policy that shapes where we live, how we live, and who has access. You know, you think about the ghettos in America, a lot of that stems from the North. My family moving north to places like Chicago, New Jersey, and other places where they were placed in the ghettos. The ghettos were not a thing in the South because we lived proximate to this, you know, in quotation “racism.” But the racism, if it exists in Mississippi, one expects it to be overt, in the North, to be covert. I would say you see glimpses of both, depending on where you are in each state.
Sarah: So in your book, you talk about the manifestations of this systemic arrested mobility, and you also talk about ways to heal it. And you use some specific examples. I was wondering if we could talk about Portland, Oregon, and first of all, the history of Portland, and how it was founded and how that is still resonating today. And then you did a study in 2021 there that looked at some of the effects of bike lanes, and how the Black community was using bike lanes. And maybe you could just talk about that case, because I thought there were so many interesting historical notes there, and also just not a blueprint exactly, but a kind of a path that can be taken forward to begin to repair some of this.
Charles T. Brown: Yeah. You know, Portland, my dear Portland, my dear Oregon. I refer to it that way because contrary to what is written, a lot of people are gonna think that I have an issue with Portland as a whole. But I actually have a lot of love and respect for the city of Portland and the state of Oregon. So in short, I sort of open the book with a way that I open a lot of my keynotes. I show these racial sort of demographic maps that really express levels of racial residential segregation across a multitude of cities in America. And I show this map because I want people to call out explicitly what they’re seeing in the maps, which is racial residential segregation. But believe it or not, all over the world, when I show these maps, people are hesitant to say “racial residential segregation.” They instead say segregation, division, so on and so forth. And so once I get them to the place where they’re comfortable saying and naming it as racial residential segregation, I finally say, “Well, people at this point usually ask me for an exception, and what is that exception? And I would say Portland, Oregon, where you can’t find any Black people.”
Charles T. Brown: And now at that point, it’s a joke. People get the joke. They understand that Portland is one of, if not the whitest city in America in terms of its size. And I bring that up because that doesn’t happen by accident. And I use a statistical reference to pinpoint how unlikely it is in a place as diverse as America for Portland and other places to be that white without polity being at play, without policing being at play, and of course, without urban planning playing a role.
Charles T. Brown: And so some of the work that I’ve done around increasing access to biking in America, Portland was one place that we did a stop there to study and understand these barriers. And in engaging with Black people, many of whom were Muslim Americans, they share with me how difficult it was for them to, you know, access bicycling facilities, for them to not be discriminated against because of their attire, their Muslim attire. And many of the women expressed how just fearful it was to traverse those streets in one of the, if not the most bicycle-friendly places in America. And so Portland is putting in the infrastructure to make it safer. The question is: Where is the infrastructure going? Now I think they’ve done a fantastic job as of late recognizing the disconnect between where the needs are—particularly for Black people—in providing the infrastructure. And not just bicycle lanes, but bikes by way of the bike share system, to provide greater access to these people. So Portland is starting to lead the way on addressing, I would say, a discriminatory past.
Sarah: It seems to me that 21st century planners, a lot of them have really, really good intentions. A lot of them know the lessons of the past, the lessons of redlining and freeways, destroying Black and brown neighborhoods. They’re aware of all that, and they want to come into a community and offer the best that planning can offer, right? The good stuff that planning can offer. But a lot of the time when they come into a community that has suffered damage from planners in the past, it can be really hard to build trust. And a lot of communities see something like a bike lane—you know, I’ve seen it in many cities in this country where a Black community feels like a bike lane coming in is a sign that gentrification might be about to happen, that it’s not really intended for the Black people in the community. And I’m wondering, you said you have a passion for planning, and it’s how you identify; how do planners meaningfully rebuild, or build for the first time, that kind of trust with a community that has been damaged in the past?
Charles T. Brown: Oh, that’s a great question. You know, the first thing I think planners have to realize—and many do, whether or not it shows up in the results is a different conversation. But the first thing that they have to realize is that, you know, mobility is about more than just transportation. I speak about arrested mobility in this book through a transportation lens, but mobility is about more than just transportation. It’s really about access to life. And what I want readers to see is the harm that results from arrested mobility and how they can act to prevent it.
Charles T. Brown: And planners play a very, very specific role in unarresting the mobility for Black people. They do determine—them and engineers and others—who gets bicycle lanes, the quality of, say, a bicycle lane in terms of, you know, long-term maintenance and such. When it comes to deep community outreach and engagement, planners have to ensure that that’s not simply a formality, but you’re really hearing from those of whom have been denied access for a very long time.
Charles T. Brown: Another thing planners have to do—and, you know, America, we are one of the most diverse places on Earth. We have to ensure that language equity and access is huge in what we do too, or central to what we do as well. So we’re not just hosting meetings for the sake of hosting meetings. We’re aware that not everyone receives the information in the same language. So being diverse from a language perspective is important.
Charles T. Brown: And the last piece I would say is as planners, we’re very data driven. When you look at the data, the data leads you to Black, Native American, low-income communities. Those are the places where people are dying disproportionately due to traffic violence. The question is for planners, for elected officials and engineers: If those people are dying disproportionately, why isn’t the funding being sent to those communities to ensure that they have equal access, protection, safety and dignity as they traverse our cities? That’s what I want them to pay close attention to because the data doesn’t lie.
Sarah: And the data also shows that a lot of the more invisible effects of automobile-heavy transportation systems also disproportionately affect Black and brown neighborhoods. I’m thinking most specifically of air pollution and noise pollution.
Charles T. Brown: Right.
Sarah: Both of which lead to a host of health outcomes, negative health outcomes that are at catastrophic levels in the Black and brown communities that are impacted. And that, I think, is another place for me where it seems that that kind of investment is really urgently needed.
Charles T. Brown: Yeah, and I think there’s a reason for that. You know, we talked about me being a Black man, and also identifying as a planner. I think what I want people to take away from that is when you look at this sort of urban planning world—and we can throw engineering in there because we all are, you know—one, I think I saw a stat somewhere where it says around 14 percent of urban planners are people of color, and less than 2 percent of that are Black men. What that means is that the power to shape cities is concentrated in the hands of people who often have no lived experience of the over policing, the disinvestment or the restricted movement that I talk about in Arrested Mobility. So when you think about a profession like urban planning and engineering, where decisions are made about transit, about housing and public space and how it can impact our entire communities for generations, this sort of representation isn’t just symbolic, it has to be structural, you know? We gotta get more people of color, more men, more women in the room so that the knowledge of what it means to be stopped for walking while Black, for instance, to grow up next to a freeway or to watch our neighborhoods be completely destroyed because of that freeway, it is missing when you don’t have diversity in the room. And that’s why diversity, equity and inclusion is so important, because without us there, few people are advocating for the communities of where we come from, even when they’re well intentioned or not.
Sarah: Yeah, and this current administration is making such a direct attack on the very concept of diversity, equity and inclusion. How do you think that’s going to affect us in the short term in terms of we finally have started to make progress on some of these things, I think. It’s finally been more mainstreamed into the conversation, and now there’s this backlash that is really systematically trying to stamp out even those very words.
Charles T. Brown: I mean, I don’t know if I have the ability to even measure the sort of profound impact that it has already had, and it will continue to have. What I do know is that yes, DEI is under attack, but fighting for dignity and safety, it isn’t about a cultural war, it’s about justice. And so I wrote Arrested Mobility to tell a truth. And if that truth makes people uncomfortable, I believe that’s where their growth begins. We know DEI has lost its favor or may lose even more favor, but we cannot ignore the fact that disparities will still persist. And so this mobility justice that is needed in the work that I do isn’t about politics alone, it’s about the people. And as we all know, and no one can disprove this, the most effective systems are the most inclusive, and so the impact is that our systems will continue to fail if they’re not diverse and representative of the people whose needs must be met. And that’s all of us. You know, sanitizing the language won’t solve the structural harm neither. That’s important to note.
Sarah: I know. It’s like as if there is some magic that they can do by just not speaking these words, that they think that they can erase whole communities.
Charles T. Brown: Right. Well, precision is part of the accountability. And that’s why I wanted to diagnose this as arrested mobility. It’s a diagnosis. And race is very central in this book because ignoring race divides us more. And the way I look at it, if we want this shared progress, which I fought for this country for and many others have, we have to start by naming where harm is greatest. And when we do that, we have to fix it at its root. And that is why I wrote Arrested Mobility.
Sarah: That’s a perfect place to take a break. We’ll be right back.
Doug: It’s May, so that means it’s Bike Month. And while we here at The War on Cars love all the fun and the festive events, part of our mission is to make every month Bike Month. After all, you don’t need perfect spring weather to ride a bike to work, to school or wherever, you just need safe streets and the perfect gear. That’s why we are big fans of Cleverhood. With Cleverhood’s wide range of rain capes, anoraks, zip-up jackets and more, you can get on your bike all year long. Sarah and I both have the Rover rain cape, which fits easily over whatever we’re wearing, and thanks to Cleverhood’s excellent design and attention to detail, keeps us dry and visible when we’re out and about on our bikes, no matter the season. Listeners of The War on Cars can save 15 percent off everything in the Cleverhood store. Go to Cleverhood.com/waroncars, and enter code BIKEEVERYMONTH at checkout. Again, that’s BIKEEVERYMONTH. Stay dry, have fun, and live every month like it’s Bike Month with Cleverhood.
Doug: If you’re a fan of this podcast, you know there are a lot of problems with cars, and one of the biggies is what they do to the environment. And with all the climate misinformation out there, it can be really hard to know what to believe or even what to do. Luckily, there’s an excellent podcast that’s all about this very issue. It’s called The Climate Denier’s Playbook, and it’s hosted by our friends Rollie Williams and Nicole Conlan. I happen to have Nicole right here.
Nicole Conlan: I happen to be here with you, Doug. Hi.
Doug: Hey. What a coincidence. I am a huge fan of your podcast, but since I have you right here, let me hit you with a hypothetical. Let’s say I am sitting next to you on an airplane, and I’m one of those annoying guys who ignores that you have your headphones on and you clearly want to zone out, and I start asking you, “What do you do?” What would you tell me The Climate Denier’s Playbook is all about?
Nicole Conlan: Well, first thing I’d wonder is why we weren’t taking a train. But then I’d tell you that my co-host, Rollie and I are both comedians with master’s degrees. Mine’s in urban planning, and Rollie’s is in climate and society. And in each episode of the podcast, we take on a major climate denial talking point and deconstruct it so that listeners are better equipped to fight back against misinformation campaigns.
Doug: Like the idea that more carbon is good for plants, or offshore wind turbines are killing whales.
Nicole Conlan: Exactly. And we’ve even done episodes on why electric cars won’t save us, and the absolutely wild conspiracy theories about 15-minute cities.
Doug: I love it, and I know our listeners will, too. You can find The Climate Denier’s Playbook wherever you listen to podcasts, so go check it out and download a bunch of episodes for your next long plane ride.
Nicole Conlan: Train ride.
Doug: Right. Train ride. God, why don’t we have good trains in this country?
Nicole Conlan: Ooh, actually, that’d be a really good episode.
Sarah: I do want to talk about policing. You talked about walking while Black, and in your previous work that we discussed back in 2023, you studied laws around the country that sort of create openings for police to initiate contact with people in Black and brown communities. Those initiations are often followed by escalation, and even if that doesn’t happen, they have a chilling effect on whether people decide to leave their house, go out and be in public space at all. Maybe you could talk about the impact of policing in this 4P equation, and your call for taking the police out of traffic enforcement.
Charles T. Brown: I think the most important thing to sort of preference my statement with is that I am not anti-law enforcement. If there is an issue in my community that warrants police being called, I’ll be one of the first to call them. Also, I stated, I think in the past, maybe even in the book, that, you know, when I was a child, I wanted to be the head of the FBI. So I’m not anti-policing, I’m anti discriminatory policing. And I do believe that that is not the entirety of the police force, but I think it’s enough cancer to be deadly.
Charles T. Brown: And so looking at it through that frame, when you look at arrested mobility and how it shows up across the multiple modes of transportation, I know we don’t center cars in this conversation, you know, but when we look at cars, because not all Black and brown Americans live where you have access to transit, biking and walking paths, starting with cars, it shows up in the pretextual stops where you have Black and brown and low-income people were pulled over for minor issues like broken tail lights or tinted windows. These things then tend to escalate into fines, searches or in the worst case that we’ve seen, violence. And so Black people, particularly drivers, are more likely to be stopped, cited and searched. And this happens, unfortunately, even when they’re less likely to have contraband.
Charles T. Brown: You then move into cycling. Black cyclists are disproportionately cited for infractions like riding on the sidewalk, especially in places that lack safe bicycle infrastructure in these Black neighborhoods. I talked about for some time how disingenuous it is to ticket someone when you have not provided them the safe infrastructure to adhere to said laws. If we’re going to enforce something, we should ensure first that the context is right for said enforcement, meaning you’ve invested in that community in a way to make it safer to do the thing that you’re asking them to do.
Charles T. Brown: And in transit, it shows up in the fare enforcement or the over policing of transit spaces. There’s a heavy degree of surveillance, and this surveillance oftentimes is concentrated where the service is worse. Again, just like cycling, you know, the context isn’t ripe for the enforcement, but the enforcement not only exists, but it is concentrated in these areas. And then we see it in e-scooters, you know, pedestrians. And the pedestrian piece, I think, makes me most sad. And that is because when you think about pedestrians, the most basic form of movement is walking, and it is often the most policed. And so we have jaywalking laws that are still on the books. And unfortunately, these laws are still disproportionately targeting Black pedestrians, even when they are crossing safely. And so those are the things I think we need to decriminalize, we need to repeal or completely eliminate because they’re harmful to Black and brown people in ways that are unimaginable right now.
Sarah: I want to also talk about a non-policing sort of enforcement that happens in neighborhoods that you talk about in the book, and that is the kind of thing that you see happening on Nextdoor or with people’s Ring cameras, that now there are these kind of neighborhood-based surveillance systems as well, that sometimes feed into policing and sometimes spark police intervention, and can really create a hostile polity, I think, for Black people. Can you talk about what you’ve learned about these sort of homegrown surveillance systems?
Charles T. Brown: Oh, yeah. Dead on. You know, I have a Ring camera. I should preface this by saying I live in an amazing community, a diverse community here in New Jersey. I don’t personally feel threatened by violence in any sort of way, but I live in an area where almost every home has a Ring camera or they have a service with ADT, so they have dual camera systems. And we are one of those homes where we have dual camera systems, too. I mainly have it because I travel, and I want to ensure that, you know, my wife and kids feel safe when I’m away. But oftentimes what I see through these systems is the neighborhood alert where someone is saying, “Hey, I noticed this individual in front of my door delivering what looks like a package, or on my sidewalk.” And without fail, when I look at the images that are attached to those comments, I can say pretty confidently that about 95 percent of those are Black males that are on the other end of that comment. I think these systems are being used to surveil Blackness, brownness and otherness in our communities, the people of whom they’ve othered. And I think it’s a deadly thing. And it’s something that I would like to see it being policed more or done away with, because I think it’s causing more harm than good, particularly in places where you’re gonna see Black and brown people. And so we are seeing it grow, but I don’t think it’s growing in the right direction.
Sarah: I mean, what strikes me about it as you’re speaking is thinking of how these Ring cameras, in a way, they’ve become so pervasive that they’re privatizing public space in a way, right? Because if everybody on the street has a Ring camera and is watching who’s walking past, there comes a sense of ownership, I think, of that public space. And especially in states where there are stand your ground laws, it seems extremely dangerous, and it sort of gives people the idea, I think, that it’s their duty to be surveilling their community in a sort of, you know, I’m out here, as you say, just taking care of my family. But too often, I think that becomes a license to start sorting people that are in public space and sorting them into people who are allowed to be in that space and who aren’t.
Charles T. Brown: Absolutely. You know, I think it’s an extension—and many people are probably gonna say this is a stretch, but I see it as an extension of slave patrols to modern policing, to that polity piece. You know, I like to run and I like to walk, but there’s never been a time where I didn’t hesitate to put on a black hoodie before going outside. I think about which shoes I’m wearing, my clothing. I used to think about my hair when I had hair. [laughs] But I really think about, you know, how I go outside prior to going outside to engage in physical activity because I’m concerned that, you know, my neighbors—not directly adjacent to me because I have fantastic neighbors, but people in the community of whom are not expecting to see a Black body in public space like that may view me as a threat as opposed to an opportunity to engage and to get to know me. And so, as you stated, many of these spaces through this technology are being privatized. And that’s not anything new. Like I stated, this sort of connection between modern policing and slavery and now this polity element through these cameras, I think that that legacy is strong and stronger. It just continues. And so I’m concerned. I’ll just leave it there, but I’m very concerned.
Sarah: Yeah. And I mean, I have to say that in the recent weeks, seeing video of ICE renditions, of people being snatched from the street, being snatched from their cars, I gotta say that that legacy of slave patrol that you talk about has been very much front of mind. And the way that people can just be taken away like that by these masked law enforcement officers, it does feel like something from a long time ago in many ways, even though that kind of stuff has been going on through all the—you know, let’s not romanticize the 200 years in between, but it’s kind of shocking to see how stark that action is. The idea that law enforcement agents can just go out into the street and start seizing people, it’s really terrifying.
Charles T. Brown: Absolutely. And you’re gonna have some people that say, you know, these things are done because it’s necessary for public safety. And I want to say that I’m not saying safety doesn’t matter. I’m saying how we define safety and how we deliver safety matters. I say this because right now we have equated safety with enforcement. But safety should mean being able to walk, to ride or to roll without fear. Not fear of traffic, not fear of police and not fear of being targeted, whether one is a citizen or not. And so I believe in due process, and if we really think about it, we have to ask when we talk about the safety, whose safety are we referring to and at what cost?
Sarah: Yeah. So let’s talk about how to create real safety and how to unarrest mobility, and how we all can work together, Black people and allies, to make that happen, to make real mobility a reality in our society.
Charles T. Brown: Yeah. So in the book I talk about, I think it’s four ways. You know, firstly, I start with the need to repeal or reframe these road safety laws. Road safety should not come at the cost of racial profiling. I want to be clear. Many traffic laws, you know, from jaywalking to these minor equipment violations that I point to in the book, they disproportionately criminalize Black movement. And so what we need to do then is shift from these punitive laws to protective infrastructure, because safety is ultimately rooted in harm reduction, not harassment, which is what we’ve gotten historically and what continues to happen in many places.
Charles T. Brown: Number two, we need to rethink the way in which we practice and undergo urban planning and policy in this country. The way I do planning is that I plan for justice, not just growth. And from my study, you know, and historically planning has, you know, too often been a tool of exclusion. And it is past time that we use it as a tool of repair. And the way that we can do that is to prioritize Black communities in this mobility investment. So these communities—the Black, the brown, the low-incomes—ones that have been denied safe infrastructure, it’s just simply time to reverse that. And so the policy decision there is give these communities more funding, better infrastructure. But don’t do engagement just for formality’s sake. Ensure that engagement, deep engagement is non-negotiable.
Charles T. Brown: We also should consider removing policing from mobility enforcement. My thinking is police should not be traffic enforcers, because what is happening is that their presence is often escalating very minor things rather than solving or resolving these sort of mobility encounters. And we’ve seen across the country these alternative enforcement models that are starting to pop up. For instance, civilian traffic units, speed cameras that are designed with equity considerations in them. What might that look like? Placing them equitably across the entire city, not just in Black, brown, low-income communities. And we’ve even seen community ambassadors who can help improve safety without introducing that element of fear. And then lastly, as you are doing by way of this podcast, which is why it’s great to see you again, and that is to hear from, to empower and follow Black leadership in this space in particular. And I say that because we can’t fix systems that have been built on this exclusion without centering those who’ve been excluded. And I really believe that Black leadership brings lived experience and it brings visionary thinking in a way that can help us bring about the solutions needed for our communities, and quite frankly, all communities.
Sarah: Speaking of Black leadership, you describe yourself as an urban planner and truth seeker. I thought that was really interesting, a really interesting dimension to add to the idea of being an urban planner. And how does that play out for you?
Charles T. Brown: [laughs] Being a truth seeker within urban planning?
Sarah: Yeah.
Charles T. Brown: It’s very enlightening, I must say. You know, urban planners are some of the most compassionate people on the planet. Most of us study planning because we care about people, we care about community, we care about the environment. You know, we care about this country and many other places around the world. We are united people; we want to unite everyone. The problem has been, in terms of truth seeking, is that we’ve been ahistorical and apolitical, you know, in trying to make that happen. Many of us either don’t know or choose to know the sort of racist past and history of planning—even contemporary forms of it, you know, when we’re talking zoning and land-use decisions. But I think we’re well intentioned. Many of us just lack the education that is provided in arrested mobility to sort of fill in the gap between knowledge and practice.
Sarah: There’s a quotation that you come back to a couple times in this text. “Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness.” That’s Alejandro Jodorowsky—I don’t know that I’m pronouncing his name right. Why does that quotation resonate so strongly for you?
Charles T. Brown: Oh my God. Every time I hear or read that quote, I want to cry. I think it’s because we’ve become so tribal in this country. We live in these bubbles, whether we’re talking the blue or the red states, so on and so forth. And what we don’t realize is that we are those birds that are born in those cages, that tribe, that political orientation that doesn’t allow us the freedom to see what’s possible when we think about what America could really be.
Charles T. Brown: I grew up in a bubble, thus a cage. And it wasn’t until I broke free that I realized that freedom is where it’s at. So I do this work because I’m a free bird and I want everyone else to be free. But freedom first starts with acknowledging past harms, and then taking up the call to action to do something about it. And so if people don’t get anything else out of the book, please be free.
Sarah: That’s really beautiful. And we could end there, but I wanted to ask you, I remember the last time we spoke, we spoke about this a little bit, and I thought about it some more when I was reading this book. You begin and end the book with a spiritual acknowledgment and call to action based on a spiritual foundation. You identify as Christian. For you as a Christian, what role does your work in mobility play in that sort of living out of your identity? And how does it feed and sustain you through the difficult times?
Charles T. Brown: Yeah.
Sarah: I’m just interested to hear you speak to that.
Charles T. Brown: Yeah, great question. I’m not just Christian, I’m unapologetically Christian. And I am for many reasons, but the way in which it shows up in my work is that Arrested Mobility came about because I love my neighbors as myself. And as I stated, I live in one of the most diverse communities in the world, and so this book is written for Black people, but it’s also written for other people to acknowledge that if you love thy neighbor as thyself, if you see anyone suffering, regardless of their race, their ethnicity, their income, their gender, their sexual orientation, their political affiliations, you help them. And so I am, in essence, practicing loving thy neighbor as thyself by writing this book at a time in which many think it will be banned. But standing firm in my faith, that’s what the truth requires.
Charles T. Brown: So I’m willing to risk it all, which is what I think is foundational to Christianity, so that my neighbor can be free and have everything that they have. So that shows up in my work by speaking truth to power, by not being afraid, and by calling on everyone to love thy neighbor as thyself. And I really appreciate you asking that question, because in our profession, we all act as if religion plays no part. And I wouldn’t be who I am if it wasn’t for my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So I start the book there. I end the book there, because that’s who I am. And that sort of belief in God, in Christ, is what allows me to love all people, including law enforcement, including racist members of our society, because ultimately, I want to see a better place for my kids, for the future, and for everyone. And I believe it’s possible. And what better place to make that happen than the United States of America, a place where I was willing to lay down my life for when I signed up for the US military. And that hasn’t changed.
Sarah: That’s it for this episode of The War on Cars. Thanks again to Charles T. Brown. You can find his book, Arrested Mobility: Overcoming the Threat to Black Movement anywhere books are sold. We’ll put a link to our official Bookshop.org page in the show notes. We’ll also put a link to his podcast, Arrested Mobility.
Sarah: If you’d like to join and support us in the fight against car dependence, go to Patreon.com/thewaroncarspod, and sign up today for exclusive bonus content, ad-free versions of regular episodes, pre-sale tickets for live shows, access to our Discord server, free stickers and more.
Sarah: A big thanks to everyone who supports us on Patreon, including our top contributors: Charley Gee of Human Powered Law in Portland, Oregon, Mark Hedlund and Virginia Baker. Thanks also to Cleverhood. Listeners of The War on Cars can save 15 percent on everything in the Cleverhood store now through the end of May by going to Cleverhood.com/waroncars and entering code BIKEEVERYMONTH at checkout. Thanks also to Xtracycle. If you’ve been thinking about how an electric cargo bike could change your life—it would—head to Xtracycle.com/thewaroncars. That’s Xtracycle—X-T-R-A-C-Y-C-L-E. Xtracycle.com/thewaroncars.
Sarah: This episode was edited by Ali Lemer. Our theme music is by Nathaniel Goodyear. Transcripts are by Russell Gragg. I’m Sarah Goodyear, and on behalf of my co-host Doug Gordon, this is The War on Cars.