Outdoor Activist Anthony Taylor-Theba Balances Culture And Nature By Sara Abdelaal
“It’s not a bike ride. The bike is the vehicle we are using, but it’s more about introducing people to a place they live in, but don’t actually know.” Anthony Taylor-Theba is an outdoor activist and founder of “Slow Roll Twin Cities” with The Cultural Wellness Center. Taylor-Theba curates bike rides through Slow Roll Twin Cities as a way to empower communities of color to rediscover, heal, reconnect and reimagine their communities together by bike. In late September, Slow Roll Twin Cities and The Cultural Wellness Center partnered up with Twin Cities PBS on Biking Through History for Your Health, an interactive and physical 90-minute curated “Slow Roll” bike ride throughout South Minneapolis. “So often people who live around here get into their car and go from point A to point B with very little effort, it’s almost like a teleportation device where everything in between is invisible,” said Taylor-Theba. “But when you put people on a bike, you focused their effort, they become self-propelled, they begin to move at a pace that allows them to be in the moment. You now are covering real estate at a pace where you can see it all and take it all in. It really affords you to have these really interesting discoveries your own neighborhood and how it works.” “If you put a group of 30, 40, 100 people, and you put them on bikes together, there’s incredible safety in those numbers. Most people feel vulnerable on a bike.”
That feeling of safety is one goal for Taylor-Theba’s slow rolls. Along with feeling safe, he wants these rides to introduce people to communities they don’t know and provide feelings of unity and connection. “Connect them to a feeling of safety and unity that they long for, but very rarely feel, and then give them connection through time that they have an innate awareness of, but don’t really know what those connections are. For most communities of color, especially the African-American community, there’s always this idea of being connected to the ancestors. So we want to take them on a ride that connects them to moments in the past. The goal is not to get in shape on a bike ride, it’s to feel safe and connected to the community and land around you.” Taylor-Theba is not only a cyclist – he’s a paddler, fisherman, snowboarder, mountain biker and cross-country skier who believes outdoor activity is vital to physical, mental and even spiritual health, and that it serves as a tool for healing from racial trauma. In addition to talking about his slow roll events, I had the pleasure of interviewing Taylor-Theba, who also serves as the SVP of Equity in the Outdoors for the YMCA of the North and is the co- founder of Major Taylor Bicycling, to get his take on the narrative of being a person of color in outdoor spaces, his views on health and wellness, and his hopes for the future. What obstacles do BIPOC still face in regard to wellness? Taylor-Theba: Experience is one of them. We weren’t around wellness growing up, we didn’t have access to it. At The [Cultural] Wellness Center, something we hear about often is people see a new activity and go, I’ll try it once. And worse than that, they go with a friend who already does it and makes them feel bad about their skill level. People need to learn the skill as a progressive activity where they can show continuous improvement because continuous improvement is the foundation of what people love. They’d love
“Slow Roll” participants stop near the Say Their Names Cemetery in South Minneapolis.
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