We did it!

With your help, we did it! Our mission was to inspire and support positive action toward a non-racist society and telegraph it to space. Thank you to all who touched hearts and minds. We recorded 380 participants and over 500 athletic activities almost equaling the circumference of the earth, despite two weekends of brutal heat and humidity. Many more were out there but unable to record. You count, too, even if we don’t have your data! Collectively, we made the heat map below (more about GeoArtMap here). We also recorded activities from around the nation, including someone who spelled “BLM” while kayaking. Also, 800 people joined our WOC Strava Club. Those are ripples, too--of goodwill, increased awareness and activism. It takes guts just to say, “I’m with this and Black Lives Matter.”

Pledges
More than 600 people registered and made a pledge to further the Black Lives Matter message with colleagues, friends and family. Here are some favorites:

• The next three books I get out of the library will be written by a person of color and at least one will be centered on issues of race. Longer term, I aim to make a habit of seeking out black writers. I am a white person and I have realized that most of the books I read are also written by white people.
• We are reading Just Mercy as a family book group. We are also starting a movie club with cousins to discuss issues of system racism, as portrayed in movies.
• Engage with people of color in my life, probe and listen to their experiences
• Weaving black history and black owned businesses into our upcoming vacation! Whole family is reading How to be an Anti-racist
• Learning about Frederick Douglas with my son
• Write a letter to all of my employees (aprox 90) that I personally and our company support the concept that black lives matter
• Contact elected representatives to urge establishment of Juneteenth as a national holiday
• Listen to and share the 1619 project with others
• Supporting CampaignZero and 8cantwait financially and be an active member of protests, engage my state and federal representatives on the issues.
• I have been taking part of a 21 Day Racial Equity Challenge through the Association of Junior Leagues International
• I lead group rides that encourage diversity - black participation is relatively low, but about 35% of the group is Hispanic. I also attended Diversity & Inclusion Training for NYC nightlife volunteers yesterday.
• Call people in positions of authority to put pressure on the systemic oppression holding down my brothers and sisters of color.

These pledge activities take more than a weekend to accomplish and we encourage everyone to share their progress with us on the Wheels of Change social media platforms. We will follow-up with you as a group in six months.

Feedback, Please
WOC was a grassroots effort organized by a team of 12 volunteers who came together after the death of Mr. George Floyd. After five weeks of intense effort, we took off from New York to Maine. You will help us conjure up a possible next chapter for Wheels of Change by giving us feedback in this survey.

Wrap Up
Again, thank you for your participation and your trust in us. No Geo-Art at this scale had been done before. It was thrilling to watch it take shape as a few participants mushroomed to hundreds, seemingly overnight. In the midst of the Covid pandemic, it was powerful to accomplish this safely and together. It was even more gratifying to hear individual stories of peaceful and positive engagement. We hope our expanding circle shares the sense of hope for accelerated change toward a just and equitable society.​

our mission was to inspire and support positive action toward a non-racist society and telegraph it to space

Event Data

Wheels of Change Black Lives Matter Geo Art:

• We collected 545 activities (bike rides, runs, walks, rows, and swims) from 379 athletes.
• These activities included a total of 24,000 miles, with 20,000 of those miles being on-route for the letters spelling Black Lives Matter.
• On-route was determined by being within 200 meters of the pre-set routes for the letters.

These tracks are displayed on a map of the world, focused on our letters from New York to Maine.
For the default Geo Art shown, two representations are superimposed. 

• The lower layer is known as a “heat map” of the activities.  In this heat map, the number of activities is mapped to a rainbow pallet with blue as low intensity and red as the highest intensity. Thus, one sees that the most traveled routes have the widest and reddest shapes (the B, M, A), and the least traveled are fainter blue or green (K, L, E).
• In addition to the heat map, the activities are also just plotted as lines on the map. Each activity is shown in one of 5 rainbow colors picked arbitrarily. The off-route segments of the activities are shown as dashed lines. Clicking on a track will show the avatar of the contributing athlete.