Today’s “We Are All Traffic” bike rally was quite spectacular. I joined the gathering at Interstate and Greeley, the site of Brett Jarolimek’s fatal collision with a garbage truck, and of Siobhan Doyle’s serious injury crash with a car (both motor vehicles made the same disastrous right turn from Interstate onto Greeley, just weeks apart; following Doyle’s collision, the right turn was closed down).

Thanks to a late morning downpour, the 20-plus cyclists who gathered at this site were soaking wet, but—like hundreds of cyclists assembling around the city, at sites of other fatal collisions—they were serious about taking a stand for safer roads.

At Waterfront Park, under the Hawthorne Bridge, cyclist/author/performer Joe Kurmaskie emceed, welcoming speakers like Doyle.

Just before the rally, Kurmaskie called the events of the past few days—this rally, a press conference yesterday, a meeting on Wednesday night of City Commissioner Sam Adams’ ad-hoc bike safety committee—the emergence of “a civil rights movement for all vulnerable road users.”

Others spoke about the need for more bike infrastructure funding, more education for all road users, and better enforcement of the laws. Kurmaskie specifically called out the Portland Police Bureau’s Lt. Mark Kruger, for some of the statements he’d made in the wake of Jarolimek and Tracey Sparling’s deaths (another cyclist on the scene described Kruger’s statements following the two collisions as ones that placed the blame on the cyclists, both of whom were obeying the law when they were killed. “It’s like saying the rape victim asked for it,” he said, declining to give his name.) Kurmaskie specifically called for Kruger’s transfer to a position where he’s not involved with cyclists, a call that elicited one of the biggest cheers of the day.

The speech of the day, however, was Susie Kubota’s. She’s Sparling’s aunt, and she spoke eloquently about the young woman killed at W Burnside and 14th on October 12.

Tracey Sparling was my sister’s only daughter. She was my father’s only granddaughter, so she was very precious to our family. My father’s been gone for 8 years, and I get some comfort from the belief that they are together.

But then I get angry at the senseless and premature loss of this beautiful, loving, intelligent, talented, ambitious young woman just starting out in her career of creative design.

Her entire speech—which had half the crowd in tears—is after the jump.

More on this week’s events in next week’s paper, in the meantime, here’s the video!

(Click for a larger, more readable version.)