Tamika Butler joins us to continue our discussion about urban planning and the importance of meeting communities where they are before breaking ground. Silvia Ascarelli tells us the story of teaching her neighbor, Shahreen Raman, and her two young daughters how to ride bikes for the first time, and take back their independence from the confines of COVID lockdown.  Featured in this episode:  Tamika Butler, Silvia Ascarelli, Shahreen Raman and her two daughters Zoriah and Zebba  For show notes, visit <a href='https://www.frictionshift.org/'>frictionshift.org</a>.

Episode 4: Escape From COVID

This bike-focused series seeks to examine how modern-day power structures, and the standards built within them, influence the personal agency of all kinds of cyclists in a changing world. The last three years have been incredible in so many ways: they tanked economies, collapsed supply chains, upended governments and educational structures, and brought social justice and systemic racism to the forefront of our cultural conscience. All of this has us examining the structures and systems that ushered in this unique moment in our collective history.Across six episodes, we will investigate those structures both through the story of one woman’s experiences as an activist as well as a journalistic dive into their foundations. We use cycling as a lens to focus these stories around a common theme and provide listeners with a new way of viewing themselves as recreationists within a larger cultural landscape; full of systems that define our lives and have been revealed as fragile or inequitable throughout the tumult of the last several years.For show notes, visit frictionshift.org.