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Movement Briefing & Media Conference
The Bus Riders Union Calls on MTA to end its Apartheid Pass 
Fareless Transportation for All

Wednesday May 26th 2021 6pm PST
Via Zoom

Join the BRU this Wednesday at 6pm PST. for a movement briefing and media conference

Speakers:

Barbara Lott Holland—Co-Chair, Bus Riders Union

Eric Mann—Director of the Strategy Center

Channing Martinez—Director of Organizing

Maria Brenes—Director of InnerCity Struggle

Representative Community Coalition

We call on Mayor Garcetti, Supervisors Holly Mitchell, Janice Hahn, Sheila Kuehl, Hilda Solis, Kathryn Barger, Board Members Jackie Dupont-Walker, and all MTA board members to pass free transit for high school students, community college students, and the domestic workers, janitors, street vendors, unemployed, houseless LA residents—that is Free Public Transportation for All Do not play the students against their parents. This is a disgrace. It is also an ecological catastrophe to drive low-income people into cars instead of public transportation.

Take Action Before Thursday’s Board Meeting To Help This Campaign

  • Call Mayor Garcetti, Holly Mitchell, & Hilda Solis, and all MTA board members to urge them to vote for Free Public Transportation for All, No Income Test, No Declaration of Poverty, No Immigration Status Reveal!
  • Send a letter to the Mayor using this template: https://bit.ly/SupportBRU
  • Prepare a 1 minute Public Comment to call in to the board on Thursday Morning

This Thursday May 27 at 10 AM the MTA board will entertain a motion for free public transportation for high school and community college students and an apartheid bus pass, tickets, harassment, racial profiling, and requirements that bus riders must prove their income status to qualify for “fareless transit.”Otherwise they will have to pay and outrageous $1.75 for a one-way ride, $7 for an all-day pass, and $100 for a monthly bus pass. Since most low-income Black and Latinx bus riders—representing 70% of all MTA riders—cannot afford these fares—and the MTA knows this—and are transit dependent, many will be forced to use the service with their own or someone else’s pass or get on the train and bus and hope they are not detected. LA bus riders already pay $2 for every $10 of sales tax directly to the MTA—even when it is “free” bus riders have already paid for it

These are the Black Codes where first the MTA criminalizes it passengers, sets up fares that no one can afford, and the justifies is $650 million contract with LAPD, Los Angeles Sheriffs, Long Beach, and its own police department to set up a police state on the trains. This “fareless plan for those who must prove their low-income” will lead to humiliation, non-compliance, deportations of undocumented bus riders, tickets, and arrests and yes, exacerbate L.A. houseless catastrophe. In fact, MTA officials admit off the record that one reason for the Apartheid bus pass is to drive houseless people off public transportation.

Registration is required for this event, please use the link below to register.

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