Taiji Terasaki

ADONIA LUGO

Co-Founder, People for Mobility Justice

“What will it take to make our streets safe for black men and boys? What will it take for people to stop needing the shield of a motorized vehicle to travel on the streets of Los Angeles? When will we turn our public resources toward caring for each other rather than building transit systems that people don't feel safe using? I want to live in a Los Angeles where people have enough security at home to share kindness on the streets. What are we doing to ensure that this is happening?”

Biography

A cultural anthropologist who finds opportunities for sustainable transition in people's creative ways of living in cities today—particularly seen through the lens of the bicycle—Lugo has spent the last 11 years communicating with activists and professionals around the United States who feel a sense of urgency around shifting our communities away from dependency on private automobiles. In the process, Lugo found that the legacy of racial segregation persists in how we define and address urban challenges; marginalized communities do not see transportation and mobility challenges in the same way as those who have lived with greater security.

Lugo writes about the need for human infrastructure to connect our divided visions for the future and, as an activist response, helps formulate an urban planning-oriented intervention around the concept of mobility justice. She feels strongly that without addressing issues such as gender-based harassment, racial discrimination in policing, and the fear that comes with living undocumented, the move for sustainable transportation will merely “re-inscribe the same old divides that we've carried with us since the beginning of white settlement in the Americas.”  

Lugo is a core organizer of the Untokening Collective, co-founder and advisory board co-chair of People for Mobility Justice, and a participant in black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) conversations about sustainable mobility in the U.S. and abroad. Her book Bicycle/Race: Transportation, Culture, & Resistance was published in 2018.

www.urbanadonia.com/p/about_22.html