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Title: Organizing Around Transit Author: Tom Wetzel Date: 2011 Language: en Topics: organizing, transport, environmental justice, class struggle, Northeastern Anarchist Source: Retrieved on December 2, 2016 from https://web.archive.org/web/20161202012333/http://nefac.net/CaliTransit Notes: Published in The Northeastern Anarchist Issue #15, 2011.
For the older big cities in North America, public transit is critical to
their daily functioning. Organizing among workers and riders on public
transit has a strategic importance.
Buses, light rail cars and subway trains attract a diverse working class
ridership. Workers in small factories, department stores, hospitals, and
restaurants are thrown together on the bus. We encounter retirees going
to a doctorâs appointment, the unemployed, working class students going
to classes at a community college, people of all colors and
nationalities, immigrants and native-born. Organizing among transit
riders allows the organizers to interact with a broad spectrum of the
working class population.
Transportation is how people glue together the various fragments of
their lives spent in different locations. If transit workers were to
strike, it could bring a large city to a halt. This gives the large
workforce of a transit system a strategic position in the local economy.
Public transit subsidies were a major gain achieved by the working class
in the â60s/â70s era. This became a component of the âsocial wageâ â
benefits working people receive through government programs.
Throughout the first half of the 20^(th) century, public transit was a
capitalist industry. Even when government agencies took over transit
systems, they still operated them like a business. For example, the
fares paid by riders on the bus system in Los Angeles paid all of the
operating costs as recently as 1970. Today, the proportion of expenses
paid by fares varies from a high of 42 percent in New York City, to 26
percent in Los Angeles, and only 12 percent in San Jose.[1]
The present Great Recession has greatly ramped up the fiscal crisis of
the state which has been developing in the USA since the late â70s. The
result has been increasing attacks on the public transit component of
the social wage, through service cuts and fare hikes.
One of the most important ways that capitalist firms generate profit is
through cost-shifting. When firms intensify the pace of work or expose
workers to dangerous chemicals, they are shifting costs of production
onto workers. When costs are shifted onto others, it lowers the firmâs
expenses.
Workers are on the front line of pollution. When factories spew toxins
in the air, factory workers are the first to be exposed to danger. As
Murray Bookchin emphasized, the ecological crisis is rooted in relations
of social domination. Costs are shifted onto vulnerable or dominated
populations...farmworkers are poisoned by pesticides, residents of
communities of color near refineries or waste facilities are polluted,
extractive firms push aside indigenous communities to seize forest or
mineral resources, or rural people are subjected to the toxic pollution
from oil and gas wells. Because these cost-shifting practices are rooted
in domination, they are forms of environmental injustice.
Automotive technology has been exploited by capitalist firms to
facilitate a wide variety of cost-shifting behaviors.
First there was Henry Fordâs re-organization of auto production in his
Highland Park factory between 1910 and 1917. Through machine-pacing,
systemic de-skilling of jobs, a relentless work pace, soul-crushing
discipline, and employment of stool pigeons to crush unions, Ford was
able to reduce the price of his Model-T from $825â850 in 1908 to a low
of $270 in the mid-â20s. Other auto manufacturers were forced to adopt
the same work organization in order to compete. Mass ownership of cars
in the USA would not have been possible without this price reduction.
Mass car ownership was seized upon by the real estate development
industry for their own forms of cost-shifting.
Prior to the 1920s, real estate investment in urban centers was tightly
linked to investment in streetcar lines. Much of the capital for transit
was provided as subsidies from real estate developers. This also created
the characteristic American âdowntown.â Typically developers financed
streetcar lines out to subdivisions from the center where the jobs and
services were located. This made land at the center of the transit
system very valuable. The high value of the real estate tended to drive
out less valuable residential or industrial uses. Downtowns became
wall-to-wall areas of commercial development.
Beginning in the mid-â20s, real estate developers were able to rely on
auto ownership by middle class homebuyers. Vehicle costs were shifted to
motorists. Roads were paid for through user and property taxes.
Once a large part of the population owned cars, this led to changes in
the pattern of investment in retail centers. The shift began in the â30s
with grocery stores. In the â20s a typical store was about 5,000 square
feet and didnât have offstreet parking. People walked to the store
frequently, and usually bought only small amounts. By the â30s the big
grocery chains in Los Angeles and some other cities hit upon the idea of
volume selling by attracting people in their cars. They could take more
groceries home with them, and the new electric fridges allowed them to
store more food for a longer period of time. Stores could attract more
customers from a larger area with free parking. Stores got larger. By
1940 stores in Los Angeles were typically 20,000 square feet.
After World War 2, this pattern of using large amounts of free parking
to attract people from a very wide area became the basis for investment
in regional malls and local mini-malls. Developers of retail centers
were using free parking as a competitive wedge to defeat old-fashioned
sidewalk-oriented retail. Suburban âbusiness parksâ also were built to
compete with the office centers in the older downtowns.
Of course, these auto-oriented patterns were much more thoroughly
implemented in the newer suburban rings built up in the decades after
World War 2.
These changes have had a major effect on public transit use. Public
transit use is much lower today in all cities than it was in the â40s.
But remaining ridership tends to be highest in older big cities built up
during the streetcar era. In the USA as a whole, about 60 percent of the
working poor have cars. In older central cities, however, a majority of
the driving-age population in working class neighborhoods typically do
not own a car. The pattern of land-use tends to favor walking and
transit use. Many of the jobs are downtown. In neighborhoods there are
often stores within walking distance...a bodega or cafe at the corner
and various other services nearby. This pattern makes it easier to live
without owning a car.
We can see how land-use affects transit use if we compare transit usage
in urban areas. New York City and San Francisco are at the top of the
pack. In both cities the transit system provides roughly 270 annual
rides per resident. The second tier of transit cities deliver between
130 and 170 annual public transit rides per resident. This includes
Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and central Los Angeles.
The third tier is made up of more auto-centric suburban areas or cities
that grew up mainly after World War 2. This includes Silicon Valley, the
East Bay, San Fernando Valley, and the northern New Jersey suburbs of
New York City. In these areas public transit use is about 40 to 50
annual transit rides per resident.
A more dispersed, auto-oriented land-use pattern makes public transit
ineffective. This means it is also more expensive to provide transit
service in auto-oriented suburban areas. For example, in Los Angeles a
transit ride in the San Fernando Valley costs the Los Angeles MTA 43
percent more than a transit ride in central Los Angeles. Also, a
dispersed, low-density pattern increases costs for the utility grids.
These higher costs are additional examples of cost-shifting by
capitalist developers.
Of course, the shift to mass auto ownership in the USA since World War 2
also brought environmental cost shifting such as air and noise
pollution.
The USA generates about one-fourth of the worldâs air pollution and
greenhouse gas emissions though it has less than five percent of the
worldâs population. Residents of American urban areas consume:
cities.
cities.
as Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo.
This auto-dependency is rooted in both the physical layout of American
urban areas and decades of disinvestment in public transit.
With no taxpayer support, public transit in Los Angeles had deteriorated
continuously from the â20s on. Lack of rapid transit access meant that
downtown Los Angeles was at a disadvantage in competing with new
outlying centers. From the â60s on, capitalists invested in new office
construction in the area between the downtown and the ocean, most of it
splayed out along or near Wilshire Boulevard. The largest concentration
was Century City â 9 million square feet of office space built in the
late â60s. The â50s and â60s were the period when transit ridership
crashed â dropping from about 400 annual transit rides per resident in
central Los Angeles in 1946 to less than 100 1969.
However, sales tax subsidies enacted in the â70s and â80s led to an
increase of more than 40 percent in transit riding in central Los
Angeles between 1969 and 1989. During this period the old WASP
Republican elite faded away and were replaced by a new multi-racial
alliance of capitalist and bureaucratic elites, linked to the rising
Latino and African-American politicians. During this period an elite
coalition came together for rapid transit construction.
The cityâs Redevelopment Agency (CRA) had an ambitious agenda of
attracting big corporate developers to build office blocks and
apartments in âredevelopmentâ districts near subway stations. The CRA
had been providing subsidies to developers through parcel assembly since
the â50s. Also, major corporate general contractors (GCs) were looking
to make big bucks on rail construction projects.
The transit sales tax coalitions were based on the assumption that both
bus enhancements and rapid transit construction could be done at the
same time. But âcontradictionsâ soon emerged.
Diesel buses are like cars. Once they get old, they are not as reliable.
And then poor workers who depend on the bus fear they may lose their job
due to being late for work. By the mid-â90s the MTAâs bus fleet was
getting pretty ragged. To keep a high level of construction funds
flowing for rail projects, the MTA werenât replacing buses as frequently
as they should. And crowding was often extreme.
A majority (56 percent) of the bus riders are women. When a heterosexual
couple can afford only one car, typically the man drives the car and the
woman takes the bus. Severe overcrowding on the buses facilitates sexual
harassment. There are some men who take advantage of crush-loading to
feel up female passengers. Thus the struggle against overcrowding has a
gender dimension.
Between 1986 and 1996 the Los Angeles transit board raised the bus fare
from 50 cents to $1.35 â an increase of 170 percent. Meanwhile there
were numerous signs of lax oversight of the big GCs. A section of
Hollywood Boulevard collapsed during subway tunneling. GCs were billing
the MTA for bogus cost overruns. A former president of the transit board
told me that managers and top professionals at public agencies like MTA
are looking to get lucrative jobs with the private GCs, and thus fail to
guard the public interest.[2]
Corruption seemed to be occurring all over the place. One MTA Board
member was convicted of taking bribes. The MTA spent $460 million to
erect a 26-story HQ building (nicknamed the âTaj Mahalâ by local
activists).
These various decisions were signs that the bus system was being looted.
Large sections of capital in fact use the public sector as a cash cow.
Cost overruns are notorious in big construction projects (like the Big
Dig in Boston). At the same time, expensive rail infrastructure is also
of interest to developers with projects near proposed stations. For
example, developer CIM Group bought up a lot of properties on Hollywood
Boulevard just before opening of the subway in 1998. These various
business interests also have the resources to influence and buy
politicians. Thus there are âstructuralâ reasons why the âneedsâ of
capital were a higher priority for the politicians than needs of low
income bus riders. And many bus riders in L.A. are immigrants who canât
vote.
In the midst of a steep recession in 1993, the MTA proposed to do away
with transfers and the discounted bus pass and raise the fare. When the
MTA held a hearing on the fare hike, hundreds of people poured out to
oppose the hike. NAACP lawyer Connie Rice describes the scene at the
hearing: âThey ignored people begging them, crying in front of the
board, âPlease donât raise my fare. I wonât be able to get to work.ââ
When this callous indifference to the poor was added to corruption and
mismanagement, the MTA was widely discredited.
This is when the Labor/Community Strategy Center adroitly inserted
themselves, creating the Bus Riders Union. Through leafleting and
talking to riders on buses, protests at MTA hearings, and savvy media
work, the Strategy Center was able to build a mass riders organization
with about 3000 dues-paying members, 300 active members, and 50 to 100
people regularly attending monthly meetings. They claim that 40,000
riders (about 10 percent of the ridership) âidentifyâ with the BRU.
The Strategy Center is an organization of about 100 activists and many
of its key members have a background in the Maoist left of the â70s/â80s
period. Some of the leaders â such as Executive Director Eric Mann â
were veterans of the League of Revolutionary Struggle. LRS had been
created in 1978 from the merger of several Maoist groups â Revolutionary
Communist League, New York-based I Wor Kuen, and the L.A.-based August
29^(th) Movement.
The Strategy Center has its origin in the work of a number of these
radicals at the Van Nuys General Motors plant in the â80s. The UAW local
used a threat of a boycott against GM to keep the plant open. In the
late â80s the UAW international colluded with management to fire the
militant Latino leaders of the local. With the boycott faction in the
local crushed, GM was able to close the plant in 1992. As this fight was
playing out, the radicals involved in the localâs labor/community
alliance formed the Strategy Center in 1989.[3]
The Strategy Center can be thought of as a Leninist party organized as a
non-profit. This enables them to obtain substantial foundation funding
for their campaigns.
In addition to their mass organizing campaigns, the Strategy Center also
runs a National School for Strategic Organizing. Through their school,
college students and working class people are taught the skills of
organizing which they can practice in the Strategy Centerâs campaigns.
The Bus Riders Union has a grassroots character and the Strategy Center
doesnât intervene in the day-to-day work with a heavy hand. But the
BRUâs basic line was developed by the Strategy Center. Of the 12 members
of the BRUâs Planning Committee, 5 are not elected by members but are
the staff appointed by the Strategy Center. The staff shepherd the
monthly meetings. In classic Leninist fashion, the mass organization is
regarded as a transmission belt of the party.
Looking at this from a libertarian socialist point of view, there are
both things to learn from and to criticize. Criticizing the Strategy
Centerâs vanguardism shouldnât blind us to the fact that theyâve built a
mass organization, have an educational program for training organizers,
and have made significant gains. If libertarian socialists prefer a
different approach, the challenge for us is to prove this will work in
practice.
The Strategy Center/BRU select only certain priority bus routes to
organize on. This includes the two busiest routes, on Vermont Avenue and
Wilshire Boulevard. With office buildings splayed out near Wilshire from
downtown to the ocean, this has become the cityâs main drag and the
Wilshire bus service has the highest volume of any bus line in L.A. When
the organizers get on the bus, they tell the driver theyâre organizing
with the BRU and distribute leaflets.
The Vermont and Wilshire lines bisect densely populated, multi-ethnic
west-central Los Angeles. This is an area of mostly working class
neighborhoods south of the wealthy Hollywood Hills and lying between the
downtown and the predominantly white, middle class Westside. This area
is the heart of the L.A. transit system.
BRU also does organizing on the Soto Street crosstown bus that runs
through the densely populated and heavily Latino Boyle Heights
neighborhood east of downtown. Also, their organizers can be seen on the
Crenshaw route â a line that passes the Baldwin Hills Mall and Leimert
Park Village in the heart of L.A.âs African-American community. The
particular mix of routes ensures regular contact with the various ethnic
or racial groups that make up the cityâs working class population.
The BRU has tried to reach out to the drivers. BRU supported the 2000
driversâ strike. When I interviewed drivers in a rank-and-file union
opposition group, they told me: âThe Bus Riders Union wants the same
things we do.â[4] But the corrupt and undemocratic bureaucracy of the
union (United Transportation Union) has shown no interest in reaching
out to the BRU.
The Strategy Center has used the slogan âFight Transit Racismâ to frame
the BRU organizing. In part, this refers to the structural racism that
was exhibited by the MTA in the late â80s/early â90s decisions that
degraded service for working class people of color who ride the buses.
Also, the Strategy Center decided on a tactic of trying to block the
1993 fare hike by arguing in federal court that it was a violation of
the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The lawsuit was never decided on its merits. The MTA was in such broad
discredit that Republican Mayor Richard Riordan capitulated â agreeing
to a 10-year collective bargaining arrangement in the form of a judicial
Consent Decree.
The Strategy Center has argued that greater subsidies are provided to
rail lines that serve a more predominantly white, affluent ridership.
This argument has some plausibility when directed against the Metrolink
suburban diesel railway. This suburban network was set up in the early
â90s with hundreds of million of dollars in county transit sales tax
funds. It links far-flung ex-urban regions into L.A.âs downtown. A study
in the â90s showed that 63 percent of Metrolink riders work as managers
and professionals. The average household income of Metrolink passengers
was 81 percent higher than the Los Angeles County median household
income. Also, two thirds of the riders were white.[5]
Suburban commuter railways in the USA typically have a whiter and more
affluent ridership than city public transit systems. For example, the
Metro-North and Long Island commuter railways in New York have a
ridership that is 79 percent white whereas New York City subway riders
are 49 percent white. Median income of bus and subway riders in New York
City is 10 percent below the city median income. For Metro-North, 42
percent of the riders have incomes over $100,000.[6]
Because Metrolink is not operated by MTA, the Strategy Center/BRU have
directed their attack against the MTAâs urban rail lines.
I donât believe the Strategy Center has a plausible case here. In 1998
the MTA did a demographic survey of its ridership:
The Blue and Green Line and subway ridership comes overwhelming from
working class communities of color. These lines seem to attract more
working class people with somewhat higher incomes and more people who
have cars. In fact, any faster, higher quality transit service is likely
to have this effect.
In recent years Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has been pushing to extend
the Wilshire Boulevard subway at least to Westwood Village. To finance
bus and rail rapid transit projects, the MTA put a half-cent sales tax
on the ballot in November, 2008. Although the Strategy Center/BRU
opposed this, it passed with 74 percent of the vote.
The Strategy Center has been pushing surface bus lanes as an alternative
to the Wilshire subway. End-to-end speed would be 16 miles per hour
versus 32 miles per hour for the subway. To evaluate these alternatives
we need to look at the concept of traffic density on a transit facility.
We can think of each mile youâre on the bus or train as a unit of
consumer benefit. The farther you go, the more benefit youâre
getting...and the more resources youâre using. The more passenger miles
a line squeezes into each mile of the route, the greater the flow. Thus
we can measure the density of the traffic flow by looking at the number
of passenger miles a transit route or system serves up per route mile
per year.
We can see the difference rail rapid transit makes by comparing density
on a number of Los Angeles services:
The traffic density on the L.A. subway is higher than the Chicago or
Philadelphia rapid transit systems but lower than DC Metro or the Boston
Red and Orange lines.
The proposed subway out Wilshire is likely to have at least the traffic
density of the existing subway. But the Rapid bus on Wilshire has only
one-fifth of the subwayâs traffic flow. Even with improved bus lanes, it
canât match the subwayâs potential. Although there is a case for rapid
transit, the BRU is needed to ensure that this isnât built by looting
the existing service or slashing the social wage.
The Bus Riders Union has achieved a number of victories. After MTA
agreed to the collective bargaining arrangement in 1995, the BRU was
able to retain the discount monthly pass and add a new weekly pass. The
Consent Decree enabled the Strategy Center/BRU to prevent a fare hike
for 12 years. The BRU estimates the total benefit to the riders from its
efforts during this period at $2.5 billion.
The Strategy Center also pressured the MTA into replacing its aging
diesel bus fleet with 1800 natural gas buses. These buses emit less
particulate pollution than the old diesels but itâs an exaggeration to
say gas is a âcleanâ fuel. A gas field can emit as much toxic pollution
as one of Houstonâs oil refineries. In the early â90s there had been a
campaign to install electric buses in Los Angeles, but the Strategy
Center failed to support that proposal.
Under the slogan âNo Seat No Fare,â the BRU carried out a fare strike on
Thursdays against overcrowding in 1999. Groups would get on a bus and
announce to the driver they were not paying. Ultimately the BRU was
successful in getting the MTA to expand the bus fleet by 550 buses.
Responding to pressure from the BRU, the MTA introduced a new type of
express bus service â Rapid buses. These are buses that provide a faster
trip because their stops are spaced a mile apart. The initial test was
the Wilshire Rapid, introduced in 2000. This led to a 42 percent
increase in rides on Wilshire Boulevard...and attracted car-owners and
probably more white folks as well.
In the current environment of attacks on the public sector and the
social wage, the Los Angeles MTA is proposing a 20 percent across the
board fare hike and a reduction of 388,000 hours of bus service. For
eight days in May BRU members conducted a hunger strike in a tent next
to the old Plaza Church â a short distance from the Taj Mahal. At the
MTA Board meeting on May 27^(th), the Board chair refused to start with
a public hearing on the proposed fare hikes. The BRU had been organizing
for days to get people to a hearing at this meeting. So, 150 BRU members
simply blocked the meeting from continuing and some members were
arrested.[7]
The visibility and successes of the Los Angeles BRU spurred transit
rider organizing in a number of other cities â Vancouver, Boston,
Atlanta, San Francisco, and elsewhere.
Between 2003 and 2009, the city-owned Muni in San Francisco raised the
fare three times, from $1 to $2. And this year the agency enacted a 10
percent cut in service. In 2003 and 2005 there were failed attempts to
fight fare hikes with a fare strike.[8]
The organizing in 2005 began with lobbying by various non-profits
organized in a Transit Justice Coalition. But Muni management simply
rolled over this opposition with a decision in March for a fare hike in
September. This meant organizers had six months to prepare for a fare
strike. Organizing was initiated by a group of anarcho-communists
associated with the Bay Area Anarchist Council. They envisioned a joint
worker/rider action such as the actions initiated by transit workers in
Nantes, France and Turin, Italy in the late â70s. In those actions,
transit workers continued to run the buses but refused to collect fares.
In the early â80s Adam Cornford coined the term âsocial strikeâ for this
type of action. Thus the anarchists decided on the name âSocial Strikeâ
for their group. Since âsocial strikeâ is not exactly in everyday use,
this is a rather arcane name to most people. Kevin Keating, one of the
initiators of this group, had suggested the grittier name âRefuse to
Pay.â
At the first meeting, the Transit Justice Coalition sent a leftist
nonprofit staffer as a liaison. But Keatingâs constant patter of insults
directed at her seemed to cut off that potential source of support.
Keating, to his credit, did encourage the people in Social Strike to
initially focus on outreach to the drivers. Leaflets were distributed to
drivers on the main routes, and contacts were made with the Drivers
Action Committee â a rank and file opposition in the drivers union,
Transport Workers Union Local 250A.
Social Strike also began by organizing two âtown hallâ meetings. But
these were poorly advertised and poorly attended. Several of the
attendees â Marc Norton (a veteran of the â80s Maoist group Line of
March) and members of a loose council communist grouping, Insane
Dialectical Posse, then initiated a separate group, Muni Fare Strike.
The Fare Strike group focused on passing out leaflets to riders.
To its credit, however, the Fare Strike group did do outreach to gain
support among a variety of community organizations â a Latina womenâs
collective, Green Party people, the Chinese Progressive Association, and
the day laborersâ organization. Speakers from these various groups were
present at two public speakouts that were held on the busy Mission
Street bus route.
After several months of organizing, a Transit Justice Coalition meeting
was called where people from Social Strike and Fare Strike groups tried
to gain the Coalitionâs endorsement of the fare strike. The main group
in the Transit Justice Coalition was a large hierarchical non-profit,
Tenderloin Neighborhood Housing Clinic. The TNHC staffers blocked the
endorsement.
A total of about 50 activists were involved in the fare strike
organizing. The addition of the day laborersâ organization was the most
important extension. This group did outreach to Spanish-speaking
immigrants. On the day of the fare strike, they ushered groups of riders
onto buses along Mission Street. They also gained the support of Latino
bus drivers, who refused to collect fares.
Many of the anarchists in Social Strike flaked after a couple months. By
the time the September fare hike rolled around, only about five members
of that group were still involved. On the day of the actual fare strike,
the Fare Strike group deployed its people at several major stops on the
busiest route â Mission-Van Ness. But the city was prepared. Squads of
motorcycle cops throughout the day moved in on any concentration of fare
strike protestors.
About two thousand people participated in the fare strike on the first
day. But the action was not big enough to make a dent in Muniâs revenue.
Muni bureaucrats simply rolled on with their plan.
I had proposed a project of creating an on-going Muni ridersâ union. If
the groups were to do regular tabling at busy bus stops, with colorful
banners and handing out literature, they could sign up people as members
in a mass organization. They could invite these people to subsequent
meetings to talk about actions and get more people involved in the
organizing on the ground. Of course, these meetings would need to be
conducted in a way that would be comfortable to people who might not be
in 100 percent agreement with the most ultra-anti-capitalist rhetoric.
Anarcho-communists and council communists told me an ongoing ridersâ
union would be âreformistâ. They predicted it would be bogged down in
supporting candidates for election and lobbying.
The Social Strike and Fare Strike groups were focused on a protest
âactionâ â they failed to view this as just one battle in a longer war.
If a militant minority rider organization had been created, it could
continue the battle through other tactics â ongoing fare resistance
(such as encouraging people to get on through the back doors), speaking
out or jamming public hearings, and general educational work among the
riding public. They could build momentum to go after the big downtown
banks and building owners to pay for Muni. A role for libertarian
socialists in such a group would be to argue for a militant course and
against becoming a hierarchical non-profit or an appendage of the
Democratic Party. The Los Angeles BRU has remained a militant voice for
17 years. If libertarian socialists believe in our own ideas, we should
believe that it would be possible to do this in ways consistent with
libertarian socialism.
The current struggle on Muni is a part of the larger struggle against
attacks on the social wage and public workers in California. The failure
of the libertarian left to create an ongoing rider organization during
the 2005 struggle ultimately created a vacuum...and now we see Leninists
and other advocates of hierarchical approaches filling the void. There
are currently two rider unions being organized in San Francisco.
The S.F. Transit Riders Union (
/) is being organized as a project of a local nonprofit, Livable City.
Dave Snyder, the organizer of the union, tells me that he initially
wanted to build a very broad organization that would attract both
working class people of color and middle class riders[9]. He proceeded
to get endorsements from the Green Party, neighborhood groups in the
Marina and Telegraph Hill (affluent areas) and from SPUR (an
elite-oriented think tank), but also gained the support of the Chinese
Progressive Association and S.F. Youth Commission. When he called a
meeting of people whoâd signed up with the union, he told me he refused
to call it a âmembership meetingâ because almost all of the people who
showed up were white. A credible ridersâ union in S.F. needs to be a
reflection of the multi-racial ridership.
Snyder tells me that the endorsements from the more affluent groups made
it impossible for him to get the backing of People Organized to Win
Employment Rights (POWER). POWER has organized among workfare workers
and in recent years have been fighting gentrification and city
redevelopment in Bayview-Hunters Point (the only neighborhood in the
city with a large African-American population).
The other rider organizing effort is Muni Operators and Riders for
Expanding Transit (
). This is a coalition in which ANSWER (a front for the Party for
Socialism and Liberation) and POWER are the main-movers. But there are
others involved, including the day laborersâ organization, Chinese
Progressive Association, and the driversâ union, TWU 250A.
MORE Transit has focused on developing a rider-driver alliance but by
working with the TWU union leadership. The top manager of Muni makes
over $300,000 a year, and the Muni drivers have demanded that any cuts
start by shrinking the bloated managerial bureaucracy.
The coalition is also opposing the current practice of Muni
âreimbursingâ the police department millions of dollars each year. Itâs
another example of how transit is often used as a cash cow.
MORE Transit has mobilized people to speak out in public hearings and
organized a march to defend the drivers against demands for concessions.
MORE Transit has also been fighting Muniâs âsaturation raids.â For quite
some time there has been pressure in the corporate media to âcrack down
on fare cheatsâ. This has led to SWAT-style raids on buses, where police
demand that people come up with proof of having paid a fare. From a
financial point of view, itâs useless. But it diverts attention away
from the local sources of wealth that could be taxed and scapegoats the
poor (often people of color) for Muniâs problems. Also, about a dozen
immigrants have been deported as a result of the raids.
A number of transit advocacy groups, including both S.F. Transit Riders
Union, MORE Transit and the Strategy Center are currently pushing for
the U.S. Congress to pass a $2 billion emergency measure to fund
existing transit services. If this were passed, it would allow Muni to
restore the services that were recently cut.
The struggles of riders are a form of class struggle at the point of
consumption. And the struggle to defend and to expand public transit is
also an environmental struggle as well. From this brief review, I think
we can see that there is a potential for an activist group to create a
militant riders organization in a period when cuts and fare hikes are
generating anger and a willingness to speak out in opposition. Transit
workers themselves are in a potentially strong position to take action,
and a rank-and-file solidarity movement among workers could seek to
build an alliance with the riders.
[1] This data is from the National Transit Database, run by the Federal
Transit Administration. The FTA requires all transit agencies in the USA
to provide annual reports. To find these reports online, go to
[2] Interview with Nick Patsaouris, April 22, 1999. Patsouris is a Greek
immigrant who is himself a building contractor.
[3] Eric Mann, âA Race Struggle, a Class Struggle, a Womenâs Struggle
All at Once: Organizing on the Buses of L.A.â, Socialist Register 2001 (
) (accessed May 8^(th), 2002).
[4] Tom Wetzel, âOpposition in Los Angeles Transit Unionâ, Workers
Solidarity #3 (
)
[5] âMetrolink Wins Round of Praise from Its Ridersâ, Los Angeles Times,
5/15/93.
[6] Sources on New York transit demographics:
âWorried by Ridership Figures, Metro-North is Trying Harderâ, New York
Times 8/1/2008
[7]
[8] Participants in the 2005 fare strike effort wrote a number of
accounts:
Insane Dialectical Posse, Fare Strike! (
/).
Kevin Keating, âMuni Social Strikeoutâ (
).
Tom Wetzel, âPost Mortem on the San Francisco Fare Strikeâ (
).
[9] Alex Wolens, âPush to Organize SF Transit Riders Proving Difficultâ,
SF Weekly (
)