What do Advocates Do? Jeff Rosenblum, Livable Streets

As a trained engineer who became an advocate, then City bureaucrat, and now Ph.D. candidate, Jeff has a vast experience of what makes a city tick and how change happens. He has some great takeaways from his time creating Livable Streets, describing "What Advocates Actually Do?", he boils it down to three points:

• Convince government to do it
• Provide technical assistance
• Build grass-roots support for projects

Also, I will add one more that he said: Thank bureaucrats when they do the right thing
Jeff has some great examples also of specifics.

What specifically do Advocates do?

They build relationships with magazine editors - Bicycling Magazine puts Boston on the worst cities for Cycling.
Build bike rides that start people thinking about riding bikes in the City - Boston Hub on Wheels Citywide ride & festival
Building constituency
Lawsuits when necessary - reconstruction projects must accomodate bikes and pedestrians to the best practicable. Only person doing the suing - Attorney general
When government is no longer the problem, organize a Bike Summit, pick a project to get started on. Make the engineers be the heroes by helping them get project designs correct. Make planning effective by prioritizing the connections that are most important.