Class, climate, and the need for free transit

December is wet and bone-chilling in Seattle. So, imagine climbing from bed two hours early to catch three busses to work. Welcome to the reality of commuting in the wake of public transit cuts. In the dark of an early morning commute, a bus rider told me this horror story as I drove my electric trolley up Beacon Hill, where she works. “It could get worse,” she lamented. Her commuter train is a candidate for elimination because it’s “not profitable.”

I shake my head in dismay, yet we both know her plight isn’t unique. Public transit is in a world of hurt. Here, in Puget Sound, service to the north runs one-third the levels of 2008. And south, the service for blue-collar Tacoma is endangered. In King County, home of Microsoft billionaires and Amazon tax evaders, Metro yanks bus stops, eliminates routes, and cuts rest breaks for drivers to balance its budget.

Like public transit agencies across the U.S., Metro survives on regressive sales taxes, which plummet along with workers’ paychecks. Fares are 80 percent higher than before the Great Recession. Wealthy employers give their workers free passes or service on Wifi-equipped private busses. But Walmart associates and other low-wagers pay $2.50. The poorer you are, the more you pay.

Seattle pretends a liberal, green reputation. The Ride Free Area, covering the central business district, lent credence to that image. Until recently, homeless people rode free, alongside bankers, tourists, and baristas. The “RFA” reduced traffic jams and boarding the bus was a breeze. Then, in Sept. 2012, local officials axed the RFA. Supposedly this was to save money. I think it was more about privatization and the nationwide push to run public services like a business. Pricey security mushroomed. So did slick ad campaigns to promote bus-riding. The transit bureaucracy is growing, as are lines of stressed-out commuters waiting to board the “pay-as-you-enter” bus. Traffic is jammed. Tempers, road rage and car exhaust fumes are worse now that the RFA is gone.

Sadly, this is turning many taxpayers against public transit. The formula is familiar to those who work at public schools or the Post Office. If a public system works, break it through funding cuts and mismanagement.

Here in Seattle, the privatization and cuts tsunami is just hitting. From riders — er, customers — I hear it’s far worse elsewhere. Whole stretches of the U.S. have no public bus service at all. As bus coverage thins, so does the ridership of homeless, elderly and wheelchair-bound people. Where are they? Locked down at home or under a bridge? For the working poor, a change in jobs becomes a nightmare or a return to the old gas-guzzler, if that’s an option.


In short, society is hurtling backward, both economically and environmentally, at a time when forward motion is desperately needed. Heat-trapping pollution rose 3 percent last year and scientists are abandoning hope of limiting the rise in the earth’s temperature to 2 degrees Celsius — believed necessary to avoid climate catastrophe. Rising sea levels are drowning island countries like Tuvalu. Such facts call out for dramatic action, like massively expanding public transit and making it free. How to pay for it? For starters, nationalize the oil industry under workers control!

Some call this pie in the sky. But the dreamers are those who think society can continue on its present course. Imagine the pocketbook relief that free transit would give the working class. And the millions of tons of carbon dioxide it would eliminate.

Some counter that Americans won’t abandon their cars. But in 2008, before cuts and fare hikes shredded public transit, people gladly parked their cars as gas prices soared. Most people, given a choice, would rather save paradise and not put up another parking lot!

This isn't to suggest that free, expanded transit can be won without a radical mass movement. Such a project requires mobilizing millions of climate and class-conscious people to demand that politicians sacrifice the profits of energy goliaths, rather than the planet. It would mean calling out labor officials who refuse to dump the Democrats. For example, the Amalgamated Transit Union endorsed President Obama after he signed legislation the union called a “death blow” to public transit! This has to stop.

As the globe heats up and people scramble to pay their bills, the call for free, expanded transit will gain ground, especially if radicals raise the banner. Let transit workers and riders lead the way. For the sake of the planet and all people, it’s an idea whose time has come.

Originally published in the Freedom Socialist newspaper, Vol. 34, No. 1, February-March 2013
www.socialism.com

A Planet-sized Economy

The simple idea of a "planet-sized living system" sums up what humans must achieve if we are to survive as a species. Chief Sealth understood this more than a century ago,"the earth does not belong to us, we belong to the earth." Yet now is humankind witnessing the meanest, greediest, and most aggressive amongst us dominating over those who cooperate, share, and live within the means our planet can provide. Will evolution enable humans to make the shift to an economic model that lives within the bounds of available resources? Right now, economic expansion is taking place on borrowed money and time. Contrary to a "planet-sized living system," capitalism is running up a steep debt that is putting the future of humanity at risk. When the debt is called, in the form of quickening, disruptive climate change, will we be able to make the transformations of society that will be necessary to bring the earth back into balance? Paul Gilding, in the Great Disruption," predicts this catastrophe may unfold around 2018: Too few resources, too much consumption and toxification of the planet, first and foremost in the form of CO2 emissions and the subsequent warming of the planet. We are in an epoch where the majority, at the grassroots level, must fight for the birth of a new world, where sharing becomes the norm, along with the recognition that humans are a part of the earth, not above or separate from it. These are exciting times.

Imagine the future

Consider, by some power of medical science, that humans are given the ability to live 100 years longer. The time is 2090. What would life be like?

Walking along Lake Washington in Seattle, I ponder this question and try to envision life along this lake 80 years from now. Continuing along the path humanity is currently on, the proposition isn't pretty. The Mallard Ducks and Canadian Geese that feed off the fish and insects gone. The road above the lake jammed with cars. A warming world with dying trees, and the jogger along the trail plugged into her i-phone avoids all eye contact.

Is this the future we want for Earth and humanity?

To ask the question is to answer it. Society today, with its present values and priorities, is on a crash course. It can be seen along this Lake, or in the images of students protesting to save education at the Tory offices in London, or of French workers flooding the streets in Paris to save their right to retire. The dominant economic model of today's world, capitalism, is putting the pursuit of profits and material wealth above the survival of the human race.

It is hard to imagine right now a world where all people have shelter and enough to eat, and live alongside other species in a spirit of live and let live. Yet this is the future we must fight for.

I don't want to imagine living in a world 80 years from now where the Lake is dead and Mallards do not exist. Or where wolves no longer roam the Rockies. Where the unfolding beauty of Autumn is a distant memory, and talk with fellow humans about ideas is passe. It is a good question to ask what kind of world we want to live in 100 years from now, because that is what we will pass on to future generations. And the fight to create that future is taking place now.

Mobility is a human Right

Also appearing in the Freedom Socialist newspaper, Vol. 31, No. 3, June-September 2010

In 2008, when gas prices spiked, so did transit ridership, reaching 10.7 billion trips nationally. Hard times make this service even more essential to millions of people. So the U.S. government is expanding public transportation, right?
Wrong. Across the U.S., 80 percent of transit agencies are cutting service, hiking fares, or both. Moreover, cuts are hitting hardest the people with the least access to other ways of getting around.
New York City's transit system, the largest in the country, transports half the local populace every day. Faced with a $400 million shortfall, officials are raising fares, eliminating two subway routes and 34 bus lines, and cutting night-owl service, a lifeline to swing-shift workers. Students just beat back an attempt to eliminate free fares.
In Atlanta, where half of transit users don't own a car, authorities are cutting service 30 percent. The same is true in Milwaukee, where 70 percent of entry-level jobs are at least one hour away by bus from inner-city residents who need those jobs the most.
In San Francisco, senior, youth, and disabled passes are jumping from $5 to $20 per month. "It's unfair," says Terri Thorpe of fare hikes in Southern California. "They are going to stick it to the little blue-collar worker who can't afford a car."
But opposition to transit cuts is growing. In several cities, angry residents have packed public hearings; bus rider unions are escalating activity; transit worker unions are organizing protests.

Sticking it to the poor. Before the economy crashed, transit was already under-funded. But now, with state revenues plunging more than at any time since the Great Depression, matters are going from bad to catastrophic. Most big transit agencies are swimming in red ink.
A screwy federal funding formula is one big problem. For every transportation tax dollar, only 18 cents goes to transit. The other 82 cents goes to roads.
On top of this, rules dictate that agencies can use only 10 percent of federal funding for operations -- running the actual system. The other 90 percent must go to capital expenses -- construction of light rail lines, equipment purchases, etc. Who gains from this? Private for-profit companies that get the lucrative government contracts.
Another problem is regressive tax structures. Logically, big business should pay to fund a service that is so essential to the conduct of commerce. Transit gets labor to work, and frees up roads for freight.
But instead of being sufficiently taxed, Corporate America is getting a cheap ride. For example, many transit agencies generate extra money through "public-private partnerships," where service is designed around the needs of a specific private company or wealthy community.
Simultaneously, service is deteriorating for people who rely on transit most -- people of color, seniors, youth, people with disabilities, the unemployed and working poor. And thanks to a heavy reliance on regressive sales taxes to fund transit, those at the bottom of the economic ladder are paying more, while getting less.
On top of service cuts, agencies are saving money by cutting the pay and jobs of their ethnically diverse, highly unionized workforces. San Francisco officials want wage cuts. In New York, management is laying off workers. Similar scenarios are unfolding across the U.S.

Profits vs. people. So, if peaking ridership shows that people need public transit, why is government starving it? Because, like quality education, it doesn't generate profits. Indeed, a good transit system actually threatens the profits of GM, Shell, and other corporate heavyweights by offering an alternative to the single-occupancy vehicle.
Lip service to the "green economy" gets votes for politicians. But the deepening crisis of transit funding shows where their real allegiance rests -- squarely with big business. There's no point in looking for change from either Democrats or Republicans. Look for it where it has come from historically: a working class that is in motion, organizing for change.

Mobility is a human right. And public transit unions are stepping into leadership of the fight. Recently, in New York, Washington, D.C., and other cities, the Amalgamated Transit Union, Transportation Workers Union, and United Transportation Union rallied to demand more funds for operations. These unions are also starting to ally with riders.
Los Angeles provided a model in 2000, when the Bus Riders Union representing mostly low-paid Latino service workers defended predominantly Black and Latino drivers striking over pay and conditions. By the strike's end, drivers were protesting fare hikes - a big issue for their riders.
This alliance broke the pattern of some transit workers viewing poor riders as "freeloading," and some riders blaming "high-paid" transit workers for fare hikes. These attitudes buy into the reactionary mindset that public services should pay for themselves, and let politicians off the hook. Public transit will never pay for itself at the farebox. And why should it? Transit is a public good and environmental necessity that frees up land and resources. This is how taxes should be used.
Transit unions have an historic opportunity to unite with riders and fight for transit as a human right that should be available and accessible to all.
For many people it is a service as essential to life as shelter. Yet as long as profits dictate priorities, it is in constant jeopardy. Fortunately, activism to save public transit is alive, and union muscle could give it legs.
In Portland, a riders' union is publicizing good alternatives to transit cuts. They include: thin the ranks of top-heavy management; redirect tax dollars from wars and bank bailouts to transit; tax the rich.
In Atlanta, protesters used creative tactics to oppose transit cuts, marking vehicles on reduced routes with large red X's. Imagine campaigns like these connecting with the fight to save public education and other basic services!
The U.S. can afford free quality transit for all. Winning it will require building a movement that leaves no passenger behind.

Linda Averill, a union bus driver in Seattle, WA, can be reached at LindaEAverill@peoplepc.com

Lawsuit to Challenge Salazar's Wholesale Disregard of Marine Mammal Protection Laws in Gulf of Mexico

Two days before Earth Day, on April 20, criminal negligence on the part of BP and Haliburton brought about what will probably become the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history. That is saying alot, in light of the Exxon Valdez Oil spill in Alaska.
This story belongs as a banner headline on every newspaper in the U.S., every single day. Instead, in Seattle at least, we are being treated to the same ol' same ol.' Mariners won! Everett man executed! Mom has triplets! This story is being buried, and yet it will ultimately, undoubtedly drive some species to extinction. It will mean the end of a livelihoood for thousands of fisherfolk and shrimpers, and people who rely on tourism throughout Mississippi, Louisianna, Florida. We don't really know the scope of this disaster — and that is one of the most disturbing aspects, though not surprising, to this disaster.
We've been lied to by the oil giants -- absolutely no surprise there -- and also the U.S. government. Below is a link to a lawsuit that is being filed to challenge Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. This is by the Center for Biological Diversity. This man is a disaster for the environment and wildlife. He has got to go. Maybe if anything good comes out of this, it is that a capitalist government full of crooked politicians (Democrat and Republican) is incapable of being any kind of watchdog of the corporations who fill the political campaign coffers. U.S. democracy is broken. The BP Oil spill is one more illustration. Nationalize Oil. Put workers in the industry in control. They knew this could happen but their concerns were brushed under the rug.

See the lawsuit link below. Lawsuit to Challenge Salazar's Wholesale Disregard of Marine Mammal Protection Laws in Gulf of Mexico

The Short Line?

Way down in Texas, where the buffalo roam, the longest line at the voting booth is for the Republicans. The Democrats are mid length. But if you want a fast track to the polls, you choose the socialists. It's been awhile since I've been down in Texas. That story is according to my bro, but he's a trustworthy soul and I'll take his word for it.

Of course, first you have to find your way past the cage with the rabid dog that you will be directed to. But socialists are thinkers. And socialists are survivors, who will find their way out of the capitalist traps that are placed in the path and come out ahead in the end.

Welcome to the short line.