Why CMN Commits to Die-in’s
St. Claude Avenue sees over 300 cyclists a day—but it lacks protected bike lanes. The deaths of Miron Lockett and Michael Milam are not isolated tragedies; they are the result of a systemic failure to prioritize people over cars.
We choose to respond to traffic violence with die-ins because they create a visceral, human visualization of loss. A die-in is more than an act of protest—it is a demonstration of collective grief. When bodies lie motionless on the pavement, they force drivers, officials, and bystanders to confront the human cost of unsafe streets. The silence, the stillness, the vulnerability of lying down in public—all of it becomes a language that communicates what statistics never could.
This tactic has roots in the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s, where activists dramatized the human toll of injustice by placing their own bodies in symbolic positions of death. In the early 1970s, Dutch parents and cyclists—organized under the banner Stop de Kindermoord (“Stop the Child Murder”)—brought die-ins to the center of their struggle. They staged haunting demonstrations with children’s shoes, bicycles scattered across intersections, and parents lying down in protest. Their message was simple but undeniable: the violence of cars could no longer be treated as accidents, but as political choices. Out of that movement grew the world’s most bike-friendly streets.
When we lie down together in New Orleans, we echo that history. A die-in is not only a warning—it is an act of solidarity. Cyclists, pedestrians, and allies gather and surrender their individual motion in order to embody a shared stillness. Strangers lie shoulder to shoulder. People of different backgrounds, ages, and neighborhoods become one collective body, each person representing not only themselves but everyone lost to traffic violence. That moment of togetherness is a statement that your grief is my grief, your fight is my fight.
Die-ins serve as collective rituals, where mourning transforms into movement. They turn asphalt into an altar, where we remember those stolen from us and demand the future they deserved to live in. And when we rise from the ground together, it is not just symbolic—we rise with resolve, demanding protected bike lanes, safer infrastructure, and justice for fallen riders.
When we ride, we resist.
When we lie down, we remember.
When we rise, we demand.
Join the resistance every last Friday of the month. We meet at 6pm in the French Market and roll out at 6:30pm.
-Eric Gabourel
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