April 17, 2007
Strategy Center, Bus Riders Union, L.A. Community Action Network, Pilipino Workers Center, and Allies call on Mayor Villaraigosa to Support the Social Movement Platform!

Grassroots Progressive Movement Organizations gathered together at 10 a.m. on the Steps of City Hall, to host the first annual Social Movement State of the City Address. The present groups urged the Mayor to address the demands for an alternative pro-civil, human and environmental rights platform counter to Mayor Villaraigosa’s increasingly pro-police, pro-corporate, pro-developer vision.

More Police is Not a Progressive Vision for L.A.!  Mayor Villaraigosa has already stated that at the top of his 2007-08 City Budget will be the hiring of an additional 1,000 police.  This comes despite the Mayor’s announcement that the City plans to cut $100 million from the city budget this year.  We challenge the notion that 1,000 more police can ensure safe and healthy communities; for us safe and healthy communities lay in the reconstruction of the social-safety net, more jobs, and educational and recreational opportunities. The Mayor is also well aware that there are more than 2.3 million prisoners in the United States (close to 1 million of the prisoners are Black, more than 500,000 are Latino, and virtually all of them poor); the L.A. region has the highest arrest rate in the country.  This intersection of class and race that is reflected in the creation of a racially based prisoners’ class, is a civil and human rights violation.  The Mayor’s decision to prioritize the expansion of the police force is disheartening, given the Mayor’s long history in the movement for civil rights and human rights.  Mayor Villaraigosa: We Want 1,000 Less Police!

Mayor Villaragiosa, We Expect You To Be An Ally to Stop the Attacks on Youth, the Homeless, Immigrants and the Environment, Not to Expand Them!  We know the Mayor does advocate some progressive policies and has taken some good stands on some issues, but his actions and policies have also included lobbying in Washington DC and Sacramento to support more funding to suppress gangs, imposing harsher sentences for Latino and Black youth by labeling many “gang members”, staying silent on the expanding local police role in immigration enforcement through L.A. City “tough on gangs” initiatives; he has spearheaded the lifting of tunneling restrictions to expand subway construction, and has secured funding for highway and rail construction lobby with Proposition 1B.  In Los Angeles, the Mayor has supported legislation to restrict civil liberties through gang injunctions, has supported the LAPD anti-homeless Safer City initiatives and he’s even personally passed out flyers to Westside commuters to expand the 405 freeway, while UN climate change experts calls for the reduction of greenhouse gasses.  He has been silent or has not opposed some critical issues facing our communities from the cut backs on King Drew Hospital to the seizing of the South Central Farm.  As a person whose roots are in the Latino and multiracial labor and social movement, we ask him to make a major U turn and reverse his increasingly conservative policies.  We expect proposals from the Mayor’s office that call for the massive expansion of social service such as 1,000 More Buses, 10,000 More Housing Units, 1,000 More Parks, and 1,000 after school programs!

We Urge Him and His Four Votes on the MTA to Strike Down the MTA’s Racist Fare Increase!  Mayor Villaraigosa has not yet opposed the recently announced MTA fare increase proposal that will virtually double to triple the prices of MTA fares and discounted bus passes – a policy that will cause irreparable harm on primarily Black and Latino and female L.A. inner city residents and will cause environmental degradation and cause more public health injuries by increasing auto use in the region. 
(click here to to view PDF file of press release with Civil, Human and Environmental Rights Social Movement Platform)

April 14, 2007
Members go Door-Knocking to Gain Support for Lawn Sign Campaign Urging "Mayor Villaraigosa to Stop MTA's Racist Fare Hike"

As part of the Bus Riders Union overall tactic of raising the public consciousness around the Fare Hike, we have begun a lawn-sign campaign that urges Mayor Villaraigosa to stop the MTA Fare Hike. If you would like a sign for your own lawn, or would like to donate please contact us at (213) 387 2800.

March 27, 2007
Bus Riders Union Demands MTA Board to Withdraw Racist Fare Hike Proposal

On March 27 Bus Riders Union members and representatives from SEIU 1877, UTLA, Community Coalition, and KIWA publicly spoke out against MTA's recent proposal for a fare hike. The proposed fare hike would destroy any progress on achieving a living wage for the thousands of transit dependent families in Los Angeles, most of whom earn an average family income of $12,000/year and it would have serious detrimental effects on our community's health and internationally by creating even more pollution and global warming gasses.

This is What Transit Racism Looks Like
While MTA complains of a budget shortfall to justify raising fares on its predominantly low-income Black, Latino and Asian riders, they continue to move forward with plans to extend the $1.2 Billion Exposition Light Rail and the $7 Billion Red Line Subway Extension to the Sea. These are the very conditions that led to the original Civil Rights Title VI lawsuit by the BRU of having bus riders carry the MTA budget on their backs.  MTA’s budget shortfall is self-imposed - if they were truly concerned about solving it, they would stop building multibillion-dollar rail projects that serve no legitimate transit objectives.

Fare Hikes Would Result in More Global Warming and More Lung Disease
Such a dramatic fare increase will push people off the bus in droves, forcing poor people to purchase old polluting clunkers and adding to L.A’s public health crisis and indiscriminate emission of greenhouse gases. More pollutants means more childhood asthma, emphysema, cancer and long-term exacerbation of diabetes. More greenhouse gases means more global warming and catastrophic climate change. MTA officials themselves have acknowledged that fare increases reduce ridership. In 2004, when MTA last increased the price of bus passes, ridership decreased by 5% within a year. In contrast, MTA’s own history demonstrates that fare reduction is a proven method of increasing ridership – from 1982-1985, ridership increased by 41% after fares were reduced to 50 cents.  The BRU urges the MTA Board to demonstrate its commitment to improving air quality by rejecting the proposed fare hike and reducing fares to 50 cents and monthly bus passes to $42.

This week's Campaign endorsers: Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA), Community Coalition, United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), Service Employee International Union (SEIU) 1877.
Contact us [213 387 2800] if your church, union, school, work, wants to endorse.

March 22, 2007
The Struggle Begins against MTA's Racist Fare Hike!

At  the March 22, 2007 MTA Board Meeting, CEO Roger Snoble cavalierly announced a public hearing on Monday April 23 at 9 AM to increase MTA fares, saying "so we can end all our financial troubles once and for all!"  CEO Snoble didn't even have the decency to mention actual price hike proposals or engage any real public debate.  Can you imagine a Black or Latina working class bus rider being able to make a Monday morning public hearing?  A sure move to minimize public resistance and opposition to a fare increase! 

Bus Riders Union organizers and members had earlier urged MTA Board members to reject the threat of a fare hike and to support a motion to reduce fares and bus pass prices to improve mobility and air quality in the region.  But, outraged by CEO Snoble's machinations, BRU went on the offensive by calling on MTA Board Chair Gloria Molina and L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to: 1) reject the fare increase and 2) re-schedule the fare increase public hearing to a Saturday with the assurance that all MTA Board members would be present.

In response to protestations in the MTA Board room by the Bus Riders Union, the MTA Board, through the leadership of MTA Chair Gloria Molina has now agreed to postpone the Fare Increase Public Hearing until further notice, with assurances that the meeting will take place on a Saturday and that all Board Members will be present. This was an important procedural victory. Join us as we fight against the fare increase.

On Tuesday, October 17th, over 350 Bus Riders Union members and allies took the steps of City Hall to hold Mayor Villaraigosa accountable to the needs of communities of color and low-income communities and adopt a truly Progressive People's Agenda, including 1,000 More Buses, 1,000 Less Police!

Check out the MP3 audio clips from the rally:
Opening Poem: Mark-Anthony Johnson
Speeches: Barbara Lott-Holland, Manuel Criollo, and Patrisse Cullors
Interviews: Bus Riders Union, South Central Farm, Koreatown Immigrant Worker's Alliance (KIWA), Taxi Worker's Alliance
Chants: Mr. Mayor: We Totally Disagree, Somos Pasajeros, Move Cars Get Out the Way, Mass Transportation is Human Right, A Bus-Only Lane Belongs to Us,
Song: by local artist, SKIM

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Endorse the Civil Rights and Clean Air Platform!

The Bus Riders Union is currently seeking a commitment from the MTA to adopt a platform to continue to expand and improve LA's bus system. This Civil Rights and Clean Air platform, which includes an extension to the Consent Decree as well as other key demands, represents a crucial step in achieving a first class bus system in LA, and we need your support for it. Learn more.

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