Third Saturday of the Month Mega Block Party: End the Metro Apartheid Pass Next Steps!

June 19, 2021 10am-4pm

1pm Program Free Public Transportation

Next steps in the Bus riders Union Campaign for Free Public Transportation No Police on MTA Buses and Trains

Eric Mann, Channing Martinez, Barbara Lott-Holland on the Racist Poison pills Metro is using to try to kill its own Fareless Transportation Pilot. Channing Martinez is writing an article on the potential breakthrough and strategic next steps in the campaign. While Metro attempted to do a good thing by moving to fareless there were certainly at least 3 poison pills inserted into the motion to set the stage for failure.

1) Mayor Garcetti included a vague Self Attestation of Poverty component of which we totally disagree with and called on him to not force passengers into public groveling for service we already paid for. Further, Students called on Garcetti to not divide them from their parents in implementing free for students, but forcing their parents to go through a public investigation into low income Black and Latinx bus rider’s personal finances which already make up 70% of the ridership. (and that’s only 70% and not 80% or more only because Metro drove ridership down by hounding Black and Latinx passengers with arrests, tickets, citations, and Jim Crow policies, but that’s for another article)

2) Mayor Garcetti, acting as if a delay motion was a welcome friendly amendment agreed to Janice Hahn’s delay in perpetuity terms to save every sappy rail and highway construction project for the next 20 years and not use any of the current funding within the Metro’s now $8 billion budget a tiny sliver of which goes to bus operations to pay for free public transportation.

3) The pilot project calls on local school districts to pay the bill for students to pay for “fareless” thus pushing the fee to be included in college student fees that are already too damn high! Further

4) The motion calls of a national search of philanthropic partners to pay for the pilot and for any permanent program, even as the Metro, a “transportation agency” spends 50% of its budget on capital rail & highway construction Projects.

WE NEED YOUR HELP TO PUSH THE METRO TO A BUS RIDERS UNION VICTORY. TELL YOUR FRIENDS TO PULL UP!

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