Busy Building Buslines: LVEJO's efforts to improve public transit -- from AREA 10

by Mackel Garrison

Public transit is basic urban infrastructure, though not every community in Chicago enjoys adequate services.  Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) works to better understand the transportation needs of our community.  Our work around public transit began back in the 1990s by doing a 2-year, door-to-door survey of neighbors.  The results of that effort led to our participation in coalition efforts to defend Cermak Blue Line Service.  The coalition won a $479 million rehab of the 54/Cermak El branch and the restoration of weekend train service.

In 2008, we wanted an update on people’s transportation needs. Partnering with the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP), we held a series of charettes, or community-based planning sessions.  People gathered around maps to visualize what they wanted for their community in the coming decades.  Among many ideas put forth, Little Village students and families suggested a new bus route.  Little Village Lawndale High School (LVLHS) had recently been built, the victory of a hunger strike by area mothers in 2001.  Yet, CTA had no regular service to the school. In 2006, LVLHS students petitioned the CTA Board to extend bus service to the school.  The result was that a few Pulaski buses were extended beyond the normal route at school start and dismissal.  Still there was no regular bus service for before and after school hours for students in tutoring, detention, sports, theatre, etc.

In 1997-8, CTA had cut 31st Street Bus Service.  It was claimed to be a low-performing route.  Ridership was deemed insufficient to justify the cost of operations. What CTA failed to take into account is that for transit dependent riders, routes like 31st Street are a lifeline to work, school, stores, etc.  

After 10 years without service, new developments like the high school and a new shopping center meant increased demand for a route.  Organizers and volunteers began mapping out a route, based on community input. We decided to go beyond a simple local route and designed one to connect Little Village with the rest of the city.  It would make a connection with 3 El Lines (Orange, Red, Green), and continue on to the 31st Street Beach.  From the beach, the route could run express to McCormick Place, Soldier Field, the Museums, Northerly Island.  This would provide the West and South Side with improved access to jobs, education, and recreation.  

We collected over 2000 petitions to support the route.  We surveyed neighbors about the route, schedule, and frequency of service.  Finally, we identified the Job Access Reverse Commute (JARC) Program, a federal grant program to fund routes like the one we were planning.  We presented CTA with the demand that they restore the 31st Street Bus with Lakefront Access.  To our surprise, CTA agreed to carry out the grant application!  LVEJO collected over 20 letters of support from area businesses and compiled further research to demonstrate need. CTA projected the route would serve some 250,000 potential riders, crossing 6 wards.  We were elated at the progress, and continued to mobilize folks to public hearings and budget meetings to speak out in favor of the route.  After some confusion about the grant process, we received word in April 2009 that CTA had been awarded the JARC funds to begin 31st Street Service.  We pushed for service to begin that summer.
It was at this point that the effort began to lag.  CTA lacked local funds to match the federal grant and would soon be announcing another budget crisis (It’s not a Doomsday, they would say).  CTA would cut 9% of El Service, 18% of bus service and cut 1060 union positions.  Clearly, CTA would not be adding new routes while it was cutting hours on the existing system and laying off workers.
 

We had been preparing ourselves to understand what was happening and what we might do about it.  In winter of 2009 we joined Transit Riders for Public Transportation (TRPT), a national campaign for civil rights and environmental justice in public transportation.  Through this campaign, we learned that the Doomsday was not just a case of local corruption and waste.  Rather, cities across the country were facing similar austerity measures.  Transit’s chronic woes were tied to something called the Federal Surface Transportation Authorization Act (FSTAA).  This bill is renewed every 5-7 years and shapes transportation and land use across the country.  Typically called the “Highway Bill,” 82% of it goes to highways and roads.  Transit gets less than 20%, none of which can be used for the operation of transit systems.  

We discovered that 31st Street Bus Service had been a casualty of transit cuts during the Gingrich Congress of the 1990s.  A string of conservative Supreme Court rulings had stripped people’s civil rights to challenge discriminatory policies like this.  In the face of the climate crisis, peak oil, the recession, the growing growing racial and income inequality, could we flip the script on transportation spending?  Could we level the playing field for public transportation and restore civil rights?  We believe we can.  LVEJO has joined 5 delegations to Washington.  We’ve opened up the debate on transit operations funding and civil rights.  We’ve presented at the Green Festival and the US Social Forum on transit, environmental justice and climate justice.  Still, we are struggling as a minority voice in the transit debate.

Furthermore, any benefits from a struggle to shape national policy will be late coming.  Already postponed twice, the surface transportation bill will not be passed until at least 2011.  Meanwhile, more workers may lose their jobs and services are not coming back.  This has led us to a “by any means necessary” mentality regarding the 31st Street Bus Service.  One idea we have is to get the White Sox, Chicago Bears and the Museums to support the route by matching CTA’s federal funds.  A second idea for a transit coop has come about through conversations with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).  IWW and LVEJO have been looking into what it would take to form a worker self-managed, community controlled, transit cooperative to run bus service.  We are exploring if we can run a better service, with union scale wages and benefits, for less cost.  The added benefit would be that this would also set an example of workplace democracy and community accountability, two things that clearly are absent from the Daley-controlled CTA.  Everything will depend on what neighbors and workers say they want, when we go out to talk to them this summer.

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Mackel Garrison is a community organizer with the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization.  He is interested in the struggle against capitalism for a free and ecological society, and what that might look like right where we live.  Find him at chicagopublictransit.org

Transit and Environmental Justice in the Windy City (published in ne@)

by Mackel Garrison

Organizing around public transit in Chicago has been tough to do. Fare increases, service cuts or the threat of what we call “Doomsday” come up every couple of years on our system. It is becoming normalized for a lot of people and there are few groups taking it on. Though Chicago has had its share of attempts to organize around public transit in the last decade.

In 2003, class struggle anarchist organization Midwest Unrest organized a fare strike to protest a fare increase with some success. Fare increases were delayed 6 months.

In 2007, Rider Driver Alliance (RDA) took on a massive Doomsday threat to cut 1/2 of all bus lines, make fare increases and so on. RDA brought together transit workers, riders and paratransit riders in a common struggle. It’s three demands were to “Stop The Cuts”, “Open the Books”, and to run the system “Not On Our Backs.” Though lasting only one fall and with no funding, 20-60 people met regularly, packed hearings, and rallied on these demands. The effort was styled after the LA Bus Riders Union in some respects. RDA differed from local advocacy groups, churches, and green groups who were backing a state-sponsored regressive funding bill. RDA activists successfully disrupted a Congressional Hearing on transit funding, though Mayor Daley managed to skip the federal briefing for a West Side press op at a military school. The coalition effort disbanded under pressure of personalities and different political priorities.

Community based organizations have remained constant in the background, doing patient, long-term work. Developing Communities Project has been organizing around the extension of the Red Line to Chicago’s far South Side. Commute times in this area often exceed 2 hours. This project has been denied African-American communities for over 45 years.

On the West Side, I’ve been working with the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO). During the 1990s LVEJO worked in coalition on train capital infrastructure and service levels in primarily Mexican American and African American working class neighborhoods. The coalition was successful in winning a $479 million rehab of a train line. Later a partial victory restored weekend train service. In the 2000s, foundation money evaporated for transit work and a lot of groups moved on. We’ve struggled to stay focused on it.

We’ve had a campaign for the last couple of years to try to start a CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) bus route on 31st st. This is a route that got the axe during the Gingrich Congress of the late 90s. It’s absence has lengthened or ruled out trips to work, school, the store, etc. We began with a visioning project where we asked the community members what issues were affecting them. Bus service was something that came up. Later on in the campaign, we talked to people about what features a potential bus route should have and what destinations it should reach. We had meetings at churches and schools, gave presentations, had volunteers circulate a petition, and had youth go door-to-door at local businesses. We also did a project where people could write their comments on a big map, which we brought around to public events.

We got the Chicago Transit Authority to agree to pursue a federal grant to fund the project, which was really exciting. The money would cover half the total expenses. After all the press ops to look like they were doing justice to a minority community though, CTA got slow on delivering the goods. We had to get pushy for awhile.

Now CTA’s austerity budget has neutralized the effort to add new routes. Fare hikes were delayed 2 years with a bond measure, increasing state debt. But in February, CTA cut 9% of El Service (elevated train) and 18% of bus service. An unveiled attack on the union also went down, but union leadership was not prepared to organize against it. They got into rallies after community organizations and ANSWER were seen at CTA headquarters with pickets saying “No Layoffs” Refusing wage and pension concessions, the union saw 1060 layoffs.

Back at LVEJO, a lot of our work has shifted to our involvement in a Strategy Center led campaign calling for to shift Congress’s $550 billion “Highway Bill” into an environmental justice, public transit bill. Our demand is to flip the script on the 82% that goes to highways and put that into urban mass transit instead. The demand is meant to educate on what it would really take to mitigate the impacts of climate change and institutional racism. The advocacy effort has been educational, but rank and file organizing and direct action are taking a back seat.

Fortunately, the recession has been an awakening slap in the face for LVEJO. Struggling to transcend Alinsky-style organizing, we are studying and propagandizing the capitalist attack on the public sector. Taking a class struggle approach has made us realize we need to have a relationship to labor. We’ve been taking a trial and error approach to engaging union local execs, rank-and-filers as well as the new Keep America Moving Coalition at the national level. We are quickly learning to steer toward the grassroots and have been meeting and supporting the actions of laid-off CTA workers, even when union brass doesn’t show much effort to turn out support.

The Copenhagen climate fiasco also helped us make an explicit theoretical break with capitalist proposals for climate change. If we are rejecting false solutions to climate change, we are still wondering at the tactical implications for our praxis. We are beginning with popular education to organize transit workers, riders, and other local organizations around the counter-hegemonic demands of our local campaign, but we need to have deeper exploration of what it means that the state controls public transit.

Another idea for a transit coop has come about through conversations with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). IWW and LVEJO have been looking into what it would take to form a worker self-managed, community controlled, transit cooperative to run bus service. We are exploring if we can run a better service, with union scale wages and benefits, for less cost. We may not be able to replace the CTA but we can show them up for awhile. This would also set an example of workplace democracy and community accountability, two things that riders don’t really see from the Daley-controlled CTA. Everything will depend on what neighbors and workers say they want, when we go out to talk to them this summer.

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Mackel Garrison organizes with the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization. He is also a member of Four Star Anarchist Organization and the IWW. He is interested in the struggle against capitalism for a free and ecological society, and what that might look like right where we live.