Within a month of moving from the Boston area to Oakland six years ago, Amos Lans joined the East Bay Bicycle Coalition. From the beginning, he enjoyed the bicycle boulevards in Berkeley and the bikeways along Mandela Parkway and West Street in Oakland, and knew there was an advocacy organization that pushed to make those happen.

Within a month of moving from the Boston area to Oakland six years ago, Amos Lans joined the East Bay Bicycle Coalition. From the beginning, he enjoyed the bicycle boulevards in Berkeley and the bikeways along Mandela Parkway and West Street in Oakland, and knew there was an advocacy organization that pushed to make those happen.

“My hands-down most-favorite aspect to living in the East Bay and the Bay Area in general is that I have sold my car and basically go everywhere by either bike or putting my bike on BART,” he says. Amos bicycled a lot when he lived in Massachusetts but found the streets of Somerville and Cambridge too narrow and the drivers too hostile to safely schlep all he had to carry by bicycle. Out here, he jokes, “drivers are refreshingly mellow on the local roads and insane on the highways.”

Amos is a generous donor to EBBC and has been for many years. “I think EBBC provides very, very important advocacy and services to the community. Personally I benefited from them in having been able to take the bicycle safety class. That was an absolutely fantastic experience. I learned a lot of very practical skills and some really good guidelines for riding. So I have donated money to help support those classes and also the advocacy work to bring more bicycle lanes and paths to fruition.”

This year, Amos got involved with EBBC’s efforts to pass Measure B1. You may have seen him at the Rockridge BART station on election day handing out leaflets and buttonholing passersby. “I’m at ease with face-to-face contact so that was gratifying,” he says. “I like to have an active role in things and be a participant not a bystander. It’s public education at its best if you’re able actually to have a conversation with people, even if you don’t quote, unquote win.”

Working for social justice, Amos says, is a central concern in his life. He is heartened to see EBBC offering bicycle classes in Spanish and Cantonese. “EBBC is sort of like the convergence of the environmental movement and, hopefully, the social justice movement,” he says. “I’m happy to support outreach to communities of color and low income neighborhoods, where people might not have as much access to training and information around bicycle usage and safety.”