January Ponderings - Here's hoping for an improved New Year

            I’m back! – for good or bad, it’s me again, as Membership Coordinator for 2012 (add mumbling comment here).

            As the Lincoln Land Chapter puts the 25 year chevron in place celebrating our two-and-a-half decades of standing up for motorcycle rights in central Illinois, it occurred to me that this fight has been going on for a lot longer than that. As successful as A.B.A.T.E. has been here in the Prairie State, other states have had groups in place, keeping up the united front for some time before us. The history of a motorcycle rights group goes back to 1971 when Easyriders Magazine made a call to organize the effort.

            My son had sent me a link to The Selvege Yard blog to read about the writing and filming of “American Graffiti.” This blog is a real guy-type of blog about all kinds of things, including some history and adventure with motorized machines. While there, I stumbled across some vintage pix of bikes (I love the ’70s choppers) and events. There I found two images from September and October of 1977 and A.B.A.T.E. shirts were present even back then.

            A.B.A.T.E. of Illinois, Inc. has been around in since 1986, but A.B.A.T.E. was first incorporated in Illinois in 1975. It seems that even though we have had much success over the past 25 years, we still battle the same issues from the same governmental processes that we were facing even back then.

* * * * * * *

 “…Individual bike clubs can go before city councils, state legislatures, and congressional committees, but as single clubs, and unprofessional at the game of politics, their efforts are usually futile.

Scattered, unorganized, individual efforts have little if any effect against the power structure.

The major problem is not any particular anti-bike movement or organization - the problem is that the people who make the laws are people who know nothing about bikes. The little old lady writes her congressman and complains. There is no one offering rebuttal -- intelligent, professional rebuttal -- to her unfair charges. The congressman, who doesn't hear any arguments against what the old lady said, but does want to please everybody and does want to get elected again, introduces a bill to ban whatever was bugging the old lady. The bikers in the area don't see the small item, buried in the back of the newspaper along with the hemorrhoid cures, announcing the proposed law for all bikes to have roll bars. Since no one sees it, no rebuttal is offered, and the law is passed. Or if it is seen, and a club or two protest, it isn't a loud enough protest, or it is a disorganized protest, or an unprofessional protest, and as a result the law is passed.

We need a national organization of bikers. An organization united together in a common endeavor, and in sufficient numbers to be heard in Washington, D.C., in the state legislatures, and even down to the city councils.

We must present our case and defend it vigorously.”

© Copyright 1971 Easyriders Magazine (October)

* * * * * * *

“…The letters stand for A Brotherhood Against Totalitarian (i.e., strict control by coercive measures; completely regulated by the state) Enactments (i.e. to make (as a bill) into law).

…We must present our case and defend it vigorously!

Our mission is positive. We want to educate the lawmakers, to give them our side of the story, before laws are enacted, and we are devoted to working aggressively toward the abatement of all unfair, unjustified, arbitrary anti-bike laws everywhere.”

© Copyright 1972 Easyriders Magazine (February)

            Our name may have changed a little, but the sentiment is still the same. But I can’t decide if we have made that much progress in keeping motorcycles a legal means of transportation with the modest amount of regulation that has been placed on our machines or if we are just maintaining the status quo for actually educating the public and government as to our interests and beliefs. We’ve come a long way, but then again, we’re still fighting the same demons.

            As the article read, we must present our case and defend it vigorously. Otherwise all the work that was begun 40 years ago will be a largely wasted effort. So I guess we just keep moving on and work for our rights and our freedoms as motorcyclists, just like the riders and builders of those sweet choppers did before us. Far out!

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”   -- Abraham Lincoln