FREEDOM RIDERS (THE SEQUEL)
Robin D. G. KelleyExcerpts printed in The Nation, February 5, 1996
Four decades ago Mrs. Rosa Parks of Montgomery, Alabama, became a household name. On December 1, 1955, she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat at the front of the bus to make room for white passengers. The rest, as they say, is history. After veteran black labor organizer E.D. Nixon bailed her out, church and community leaders met, called a boycott, and looked to a young, handsome new pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church to guide them.
An epic story with tremendous historical significance, the yearlong boycott is said to have launched the modem Civil Rights movement in the South, inspiring activists as far away as Ghana and South Africa.
A few celebrations had been planned in recognition of the fortieth anniversary of the Montgomery struggle, and school children everywhere joined their teachers in reconstructing the event. Unfortunately, the script they read from most likely reproduced the same old myths, turning a lesson about community mobilization into the more harmless story of a little old seamstress who was simply too tired to get up. Let's hope they at least learned about Parks' own background as an NAACP activist who had challenged the bus segregation ordinances many times before that fateful December day in 1955. It's even more crucial that they know something about Jo Ann Robinson and the Women's Political Council--the organization that had initiated a campaign against the public transit system long before the bus boycott.
We also must remember that Montgomery's black community fought for more than a seat up front. Leaders demanded black bus drivers, more bus stops in black neighborhoods, and the elimination of the practice of forcing black riders to pay at the front of the bus but enter through the back door. As I point out in Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class, African American passengers fought for space to which they felt entitled- they sought equitable and dignified treatment; they wanted to get to work on time rather than watch half-empty buses pass them by on the pretense of saving space for white people; they demanded a safe environment, free of verbal and physical violence; they wanted better services in their communities; and they wanted to exercise power over institutions that controlled them or on which they were dependent.
While some folks wax nostalgically about the Montgomery boycott and Dr. King's role in it, few will acknowledge the evolution of King's thinking regarding public transportation. "Urban transit systems in most American cities," he observed in 1968, "have become a genuine civil rights issue--and a valid one--because the layout of rapid-transit systems determines the accessibility of jobs to the black community. If transportation systems in American cities could be laid out so as to provide an opportunity for poor people to get meaningful employment, then they could begin to move into the mainstream of American life." Today, racial and class inequality in urban transportation is not only "genuine civil rights issue," but it has sparked a new wave of activism in the 1990s. This time around, however, the movement has its roots not in Bull Connor's Alabama, but in Pete Wilson's and Richard Riordan's Los Angeles, and Pataki's and Guilliani's New York. In an age when the state--dominated by right-wing conservatives backed by big capital and neo-lassiez faire ideologues--is working hard to erode what's left of civil society, government safety nets, and essential public services to the urban poor and working class, "civil rights" takes on a whole new meaning.
Racism is still central, particularly since the main victims of conservative urban policy continue to be people of color. Moreover, immigration and the transformation of work from manufacturing to service, from decent paying full-time work to low wage part-time and temporary work, means that the American working class is increasingly female and non-white. The struggle for equity in public services, particularly in urban transit which is so essential to the economic and physical well being of cities battered by capital flight and deindustrialization, is a working-class movement made up of people of color whose very survival is in question in an age of downsizing, cutbacks, rising racism, xenophobia, and sheer callousness toward the poor.
At the forefront of this new Civil Rights movement is the Labor/Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles and its Bus Riders Union, an organization which traces its roots back to Black liberation and student activism of the 1960s, urban antipoverty and farm workers movements, the UAW Campaign to Keep GM Van Nuys Open in the 1980s, and popular left movements in El Salvador and Mexico. Last year the Strategy Center and the Bus Riders Union, along with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Korean Immigrant Workers' Advocates as co-plaintiffs, filed a class action suit against the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) on behalf of 350,000 bus riders, the vast majority of who are poor people of color. Represented by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the plaintiffs challenged proposals to raise bus fares from $ 1.10 to $1.35, eliminate monthly bus passes, which ran $42.00 for unlimited use; and introduce a zone system on the Blue line commuter rail that would increase fares by more than 100% for half of the passengers. A temporary restraining order issued by federal Judge Terry Hatter kept fares frozen for six months until a pre-trial compromise was reached: the MTA agreed to retain monthly passes at $49.00 in exchange for the full twenty-five cent fare hike.
The next stage of the showdown in The Labor/Community Strategy Center and the Bus Riders Union, et. al., v. the MTA will take place when the case goes to trial on January 23, 1996. We need to pay close attention to the outcome of this case, for as veteran activist and Strategy Center director Eric Mann points out, the suit challenges "transportation racism and the creation of racist, separate and unequal public transportation systems in the way that Brown v. Board of Education did for challenging racist structures of public education." The analogy to Brown is quite apt and its implications reach far beyond Los Angeles. The plaintiffs argue that the MTA's policies violate Tide VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which provides that no person "shall on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."
The evidence that the MTA has created a separate and unequal transit system is overwhelming. On one side is the underfunded, overcrowded bus system which carries 94% of the MTA's passengers (80% of whom are African American, Latino, Asian-Pacific Islander, and Native American) yet receives less than one-third of the MTA's total expenditures. As a result, riders of color experience greater peak-hour overcrowding and tend to wait at neighborhood bus stops that are benchless and unsheltered. On the other side is the lavish commuter rail system connecting (or planning to connect) the predominantly white suburbs to L.A. downtown business district. Although commuter line passengers make up 6% of the ridership, the system receives 70.9% of the MTA's resources. To make matters worse, the fare hike and proposed elimination of the monthly bus passes were accompanied by massive cut backs in bus service. Of course, the MTA will use revenues from sales tax and fare box receipts to pay for its overpriced rail system, but because it is also dependent on federal funding its policies are in direct violation of Title VI. (For background on the Metropolitan Transit Authority's unscrupulous dealings, see Mike Davis, "Runaway Train Crushes Buses," Nation, September 18, 1995.)
Like SNCC in the 1960s, Strategy Center and BRU organizers take litigation and mass organizing seriously, but they're very clear which component drives the process. They've held legal workshops for members, conducted hours and hours of background research, prepared the initial strategy document on which the case is based, and carefully examined and re-examined all legal documentation pertaining to the suit. At the same time, they have worked hard to ensure that "the class" has a voice in the class action suit. In addition to collecting detailed declarations from riders, their main core of organizers are also plaintiffs--i.e., bus riders. Leaders such as Della Bonner (a paralegal from Watts), Pearl Daniels (a hotel worker), and Ricardo and Noemi Zelada (garment workers originally from El Salvador), came to the movement as victims of discrimination. Now they are actively working to challenge the MTA's policies, using their knowledge and experience to strengthen both the legal case and day-to-day organizing strategies. Della Bonner sees the Union's work as an extension of the militant struggles of thirty years ago. In fact, she constantly reminds fellow riders that social movement put blacks and Latinos in office, and social movement will hold them accountable. "We have to remind them. 'The policies that you help create and implement are not meeting the needs of the people who did the protesting. We are still around. We still have our needs.
It is not acceptable for you to sell out!"' In other words, making "class action 'meaningful is not just a legal strategy. "If we lose in court," Eric Mann points out, "we want the class to know that it was a racist legal system that validates even more the urgency of our organizing work, and if we win it will take a mass movement to movement to move the courts from, liability'-- finding the MTA guilty of racism, to 'remedy'--actually moving hundreds of millions of dollars per year from rail to bus to dramatically improve the conditions of the urban poor of color. In either case, it is the bus riders who must be the bus drivers of their own history."
The activities of the Bus Riders Union and the Labor/Community Strategy Center lay bare the critical importance of public transit to contemporary labor struggles. It is one of the few issues that touches the lives of many urban working people across race, ethnic, and gender fines. And ultimately, as Dr. King pointed out, equal access to affordable transportation is tied to equal access to employment opportunities, especially now that manufacturing and other medium- to high-wage jobs have migrated to suburban rings or industrial parks. The combination of rising fares and limits on services has sharply curtailed the ability of workers to get to work. The cost of transportation for many families is a major part of their monthly budget. The average working-class commuter rides the bus between 80 and 100 times a month, including work, family visits, medical care, shopping, etc. A 25 cent increase could mean $25.00 more for bus fare. Worse, the elimination of the $42.00 bus pass would mean that riders paying $1.35 per ride 100 times a month would have to come out of pocket at minimum $162.00--a figure that does not include the cost of 25 cent transfers. For transit dependent wage earners, bus fare could potentially comprise up to one-fourth or more their total income! For many poor people even a small increase makes riding prohibitive. They might visit family less often, skip grocery shopping or even miss work if they don't have bus fare. Forcing low income riders off the buses with higher fares moves the MTA out of the business of transporting the urban poor.
In some ways, the L.A. story has its parallel in New York City. Just last month the Transit Authority raised the cost of subway/bus tokens from $1.25 to $1.50--the largest percentage increase in eleven years. (Fortunately, a proposal to do away with free passes for school children was aborted--at least for the time being. Functioning as a trial balloon, the decision to keep the free passes not only tested the public's reaction to Nff A policy changes, but it made the fare hikes more palatable. Had the proposal been implemented, it would have had a devastating impact on poor children who take advantage of school choice policies in order to attend better schools outside their neighborhood or district.
Besides, as school bus service becomes increasingly privatized, the burden of paying for transportation will fall increasingly on the shoulders of parents, thus limiting the choices available to poor black and Latino kids.) The fare increases were announced on the heels of substantial cutbacks in service, particularly on lines that cater to poor African American and Latino communities in Brooklyn, Harlem, and the Bronx. On the Lexington Ave. line (the 4, 5, and 6 trains), for example, the MTA has drastically cut back nighttime service to East Harlem and the South Bronx. Given how difficult it is nowadays for black people to hail cabs to the South Bronx or Brooklyn at night (let alone, afford the cab fare), the lack of train service has actually made nighttime commuting for African Americans more dangerous. In the face of an already racist taxi system, the last bastion of decent equitable transportation is the MTA.
Reigning Republicans Governor George Pataki and Mayor Rudolph Guilliani publicly opposed the fare increases, though their cries of injustice rang hollow to say the least. They both created the conditions for the increase by drastically reducing state and city subsidies for New York public transit. Combined, the state and city cut subsidies to the MTA by $125 million and made one-time cuts in the system totaling $330 million. Moreover, the state's cuts in New York City's subways and bus systems coincided with increases in every other transit system in the state.
Reminiscent of L.A.'s suburban-urban divide, subway fares rose twice as much as the commuter rail fare, which has held steady for almost six years. Bronx Borough president Fernando Ferrer characterized the fare increase and all of its accompanying deals as "a tax hike on working New Yorkers because City Hall, Albany and the MTA want to repay their political debts to suburban and upstate voters."
Michelle DePasse, a dynamic African American attorney and founding director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance (NYCEJA), anticipated the fare hike almost a year in advance. At least eight months prior to the change, NYCEJA began studying the impact such an increase would have on low-income communities of color. With data in hand, NYCEJA, along with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), turned to the Labor/Community Strategy Center for assistance. Eric Mann was brought in from California to help bring together several organizations, including NYCEJA and the Straphangers Campaign (a riders' advocate group), to fight the increase. Following the L.A. example, the group prepared to sue the MTA for violating Title VI. In an effort to pass on the lessons of the L.A. campaign, Mann stressed the need to build a mass movement before jumping into a legal battle. He also pushed the Straphangers Campaign to see beyond a consumerist agenda and to make the civil rights and racial issues more central to their political vision. Anxious to get the ball rolling, however, the Straphangers brought the New York Urban League into the coalition since their legal staff was willing to take on the case. Unfortunately, the Urban League's attorneys ignored the larger issues at stake--the connections between public transit and environmental justice, civil rights, urban poverty, labor struggles, and the problems for poor consumers under capitalism--in favor of a narrow legal strategy. With the Urban League now, ironically, the most visible component of the suit and the campaign, they paid little attention to communities of color and focused more on the consumer advocacy issues. Echoing Borough president Fernando Ferrer, they adopted the slogan: "a fare hike is a tax hike." A victory in this case, they argued was a victory for "all New Yorkers."
To compound matters, less than a week before the filing date of the suit, NYCEJA was removed as one of the plaintiffs. Despite the actions of counsel, however, NYCEJA filed an amicus brief through the Center for Constitutional Rights and continues to be the most informed party in the case. While it is not clear why their name was dropped from the suit, one guess is that they strongly disagreed with the direction the Urban League and its counsel had taken. NYCEJA, after all, had consistently kept the issue of race and class oppression at the center of their discussions, and they emphasized the need to build a social movement along with the legal campaign. By focusing entirely on the courtroom battle, the Straphangers and the Urban League not only failed to obtain a temporary restraining order to stop the fare increase, but they did not generate a movement that could continue to fight the MTA in other arenas. Worse still, they entered the courtroom with a flawed legal strategy. Unlike the L.A. case, in which the BRU and NAACP-LDF are claiming both intentional discrimination under the 14th amendment and discriminatory impacts under Title VI, the NY Urban League disavowed charges of intentional discrimination by the NY MTA and simply registered opposition to the increased based on numerical racial differences between subway riders and Long Island Railroad riders. A weak, ill-prepared case from the outset, it set bad legal precedent as it was overturned by New York's Second District Court. Fortunately for the BRU, four years of relentlessly documenting the MTA's discriminatory policies have built a strong case for intentional and defacto racism giving them a far greater chance of winning in federal district court and sustaining appeals before more hostile Circuit and Supreme Courts.
While these law suits are critical landmarks in the history of Civil Rights struggle, the specific legal challenge is less important than the social movement that grows out of it and the political direction it provides for rebuilding a progressive alternative to the right-wing drift. There are certainly many issues around which progressive alliances can be built--a renewed labor movement, environmental justice, racial justice, immigrant rights, anti-poverty, etc. Public transit is a site of struggle that literally touches all of these issues--a lesson Labor/Community Strategy Center organizers understand well. Eric Mann, Rita Burgos, Martin Hernandez, Kikanza Ramsey, Chris Mathis and others have consistently made connections between civil rights, environmental justice, labor struggles, privatization, and the problems of capitalism. Bus Riders Union organizers see their constituency in all of its dimensions--as workers, consumers, citizens, and city dwellers tired of toxic living. The Union's demands--more resources devoted to buses, a moratorium on an overpriced rail service, lower fares, better service, safety, no-emissions electric buses, MTA policies that create jobs in inner city communities--genuinely reflect a range of issues beyond the problem of transportation. More importantly, they have gotten results. The Union's efforts in and out of the courtroom forced the MTA to retain bus passes and announce improvements in bus service--the latter clearly a pre-trial maneuver.
Like the Montgomery Improvement Association forty years ago, the L.A. Bus Riders Union is forging a new social movement. While old guard Civil Rights leaders are busy begging the Democratic Party not to abandon black people, the Bus Riders Union is remaking the Civil Rights agenda for a new era. The growth of black elected officials and the integration of corporate boardrooms has sharpened the class dimension of the Civil Rights movement. Now the battle lines are drawn between a multiracial class that's primarily African Americans, Latino, and Asian American, and a multiracial class that's predominantly white. Union organizers know that politicians and MTA board members of color who support the status quo play a critical part in the perpetuation of class-based racism. They also know that the remaining 20% of poor and working class white riders are their friends. (The only reason they are not part of the suit is because class oppression in this country is still legal.) But rather than see race as a problem for working-class unity, the Bus Riders Union argues that the struggle against racism is in the interest of the class. A victory in the suit, for example, would improve bus service for all riders--transit dependent white workers, the disabled, the elderly, and students."
"Through their own struggles, in the courts and city council chambers, on the streets and buses of L.A., the Bus Riders Union has advanced a radical vision of social justice. What they are offering is precisely the vision of social justice Progressives tragically seem to have lost. Lacking such a vision, many of us have not been able to see why the struggle over public transportation is so important for working people, or how antiracism benefits the entire working-class. And given what sociologist Stephen Steinberg rightly calls the "liberal retreat from racial justice," white Progressives have a poor record when it comes to recognizing the fundamentally racist character of the class war being waged against the urban poor. The bus campaigns powerfully demonstrate that the issues facing the vast majority of people of color, for the most part, are working-class issues. Thus unless we understand the significance of "billions for buses' campaign or Labor/Community Strategy Center and Bus Riders Union, et. al. v. the MTA, we'll never understand the deeper connections between welfare, workfare, warfare, and bus fare ... or bus riders and unions, for that matter.