How I Became Radicalized
My Journey from Bureaucrat to Bicycle and Pedestrian Advocate
Someone recently asked me, “What radicalized you?” It sounds like a joke until it isn’t, because every advocate I know has a moment. A breaking point. A day when frustration crosses the threshold into purpose. For me, it was not a single flash. It was a slow accumulation of truths that became impossible to ignore.
It happened inside City-County Building conference rooms where the culture of no thrived. It happened in meetings where I sat across from an Indy Star journalist, trying to defend why the Indy Moves transportation plan mattered while knowing it was not actually guiding decisions, shaping budgets, or influencing what got prioritized. It happened every time I watched a plan get quietly shelved or minimized or treated like a suggestion instead of a commitment. And it happened while witnessing grieving families who should never have had to become advocates. Families who should be planning birthdays, carpools, and graduations, not attending vigils or rallies. Not speaking programs where their child’s name becomes shorthand for a preventable tragedy.
That is what radicalized me. And it coincided with the quiet realization that I could do more from the outside looking in than I ever could from within the system. When you see the gap between what communities deserve and what they receive, and when you see it again and again in the way budgets are written, priorities are chosen, and urgency is ignored, your voice eventually refuses to stay quiet.
Still, nothing prepares you for the moment you see the children. At last weekend’s Safe Streets Protest, there were kids everywhere. Elementary schoolers holding handmade signs. Kids weaving through the crowd with the kind of freedom and joy that every city should be designed to protect.
Children should not need to protest to make the streets they use safer. But here they were. And they showed up with more clarity and moral conviction than any task force meeting or budget hearing I have ever sat through.
A Better Indianapolis Is Possible If We Choose It
Last Sunday was not just a protest. It was a reminder that traffic deaths are a policy choice. We already know how to fix dangerous streets. Engineers know. Advocates know. Residents know. Cities across the country have proven it repeatedly.
Indianapolis could choose the same future. A future where safety is built into the design rather than patched on after another tragedy. But that requires leadership willing to shift from performative ribbon cuttings to real accountability. It requires treating safety with the urgency we already use for sports stadiums, development incentives, and anything else that is politically convenient or popular. The crowd yesterday understood that deeply. You could feel it in the chants, in the side conversations, and in the grief sitting quietly just under the surface. But you could also feel resolve. Collective, stubborn, steady.
Why I Keep Showing Up And Why I Hope You Will Too
Becoming a bicycle and pedestrian advocate was not a career pivot. It was a moral correction. Once you see the structural indifference and the absence of urgency, you cannot unsee it. And you definitely cannot ignore it.
My advocacy is shaped by the parents who showed up holding photos of their children. By families who have turned unimaginable loss into public courage. By neighbors who are tired of vigils. By scrappy small business owners who understand that thriving commercial corridors start with safe ones. By the kids who should never have to fight for the right to get home alive. Standing at College and Mass Ave, surrounded by a version of the community Indianapolis could become, the answer to that original question felt clearer than ever.
Do it for them.
For the kids weaving through the crowd on their bikes.
For the parents who should have their children standing beside them instead of memorialized on picture frames or posterboards.
For every family whose life has been divided into before and after.
For everyone who deserves a safe trip home.
We owe them more than thoughts and prayers.
We owe them streets designed with their futures in mind.
We owe them a city that values human life more than convenience.
Until that becomes the norm, and until safety becomes a daily practice rather than a protest, I will keep showing up. I hope you will too. A better Indianapolis is possible.
Safe Streets Spark Joy!