[bru-info] Organizing to Win: Building a movement one bus rider at a time

[bru-info at lists.resist.ca]

> http://sevenoaksmag.com/commentary/37_comm2.html
>
> Organizing to Win:
> Building a movement one bus rider at a time
>
> On October 16, after watching TransLink directors vote overwhelmingly
> in favour of moving forward on the latest bus fare increase, fourteen
> organizers from the Bus Riders Union (BRU) stood up, marched to the
> front of the room, and shut down the meeting.  I am one of the
> organizers who shut down the meeting that day.
>
> There has been considerable discussion about the reaction of
> Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell to our actions on that day.  Mayor
> Campbell, in an ill-advised moment of candor, told the BRU and
> everyone else exactly what he thinks of transit dependent people.  "Total
> losers", he yelled.  About the BRU specifically, Campbell opined that we
> ought to stop using him as our "punching bag".
>
> Now, these poor-bashing statements are certainly interesting for what
> they reveal about the state of COPE and the divisions raging within the
> party (in fact, two elected COPE representatives are BRU members).
> But Larry Campbell and COPE are not the most interesting players in
> this sequence of events.  I think that the events on October 16 are most
> important for what they reveal about the power of grassroots organizing
> and the role of organizing, direct action and lobbying efforts within the
> struggle to expand the rights of working class and marginalized people.
>
> Larry Campbell was right about one thing.  Public transit in the lower
> mainland certainly does produce winners and losers.  Who are the
> losers when TransLink follows an ideologically driven path of service
> cuts, fare hikes and privatization schemes?  Bus riders - who are
> majority women and disproportionately people of colour and Aboriginal
> people.  Big businesses like Bombardier are the clear winners. While
> the working class suffers fare hikes and service cuts, a small number of
> rich men make a killing from lucrative construction contracts and Public
> Private Partnerships. This, in a nutshell, explains why the BRU sees the
> struggle for a first class public transit system as an important part of
the
>
> class struggle in the GVRD.
>
> The Bus Riders Union was founded in 2001 by a group of
> transit-dependent bus riders who came from various left traditions:
> anti-poverty organizing, labour activism, feminist organizing, and
> solidarity work with revolutionary movements in Latin America and the
> Philippines.  The Bus Riders Union was formed as a living experiment
> to see if we could build an explicitly anti-racist movement of working
> class and poor people, led by women.
>
> There are two overarching objectives to this experiment.  First, and most
> importantly, we want to build working class power by uniting the
> multi-racial working class that rides the bus. We use the strategy of
> direct contact organizing to achieve this objective.  We build our own
> organizational power, while at the same time pressuring TransLink to
> actually implement real changes to the transit system. By concentrating
> on direct contact organizing, we win concrete victories that will improve
> the lives of transit dependent people; concrete victories boost our
> credibility in the community and make our direct contact organizing even
> more effective.  If we are successful in our organizing strategy, the BRU
> will be ever more difficult for TransLink to ignore.
>
> Like the groundbreaking anti-poverty group OCAP, the BRU fights to win.
> We fight to win because concrete victories are very important. Without
> proof that we can actually improve conditions, few people are interested
> in participating in grassroots organizing. When I ride the bus as a BRU
> organizer, many bus riders tell me that they support the BRU, but
> express disbelief that we will ever win any real positive change.  As of
> March 2004, I can tell bus riders that positive change really can come
> from getting involved in the BRU. In March we won the return of late night
> buses after a very hard fought 18 month campaign, Night Owl Buses:
> End the Curfew Now!  By winning these small but tangible victories, we
> hope to expand the expectations of bus riders of what they deserve, and
> encourage more people to become involved in the struggle for social
> and economic justice.
>
> How do we win? Like I mentioned, we use a strategy of direct contact
> organizing to build the BRU as a manifestation of working class power.
> We concentrate the majority of our energy on actually riding the buses
> talking with bus riders.  We engage in popular education on the bus; we
> claim the buses as a political space and hear input from thousands of
> bus riders.  The process of organizing by talking to one person at a time
> is called direct contact organizing, and by placing this at the centre of
> our
> organizing we maintain our relevance and credibility with bus riders.
>
> We use many different tactics to work towards victory. There are two that
> are of primary relevance to the events of October 15: principled lobbying
> and collective direct action.  Principled lobbying means that we
> communicate our position regularly with the TransLink board and give
> them the opportunity to do the right thing.  The October 16 meeting
> disruption was the culmination of over six months of communications
> with the TransLink board, in which time we made many delegations at
> their monthly board meetings and made special presentations on the
> impact of high fares on women bus riders.  We also provided each
> TransLink director with a 130-page report detailing the impacts of high
> fares and bus cuts on the lives of working class and marginalized
> women in the GVRD.  We certainly have not used TransLink directors as
> 'punching bags'.  On the contrary: we engage in ongoing
> communications with a goal of giving TransLink directors as many
> opportunities as possible to do the right thing.  We recognize that Larry
> Campbell and the rest of the TransLink board have the ability to make
> tremendous improvements to the transit system, if they only possessed
> the will to do so.
>
> When TransLink votes against the interests of transit dependent people,
> we engage in collective direct action. Direct action as a tactic has been
> used by millions of working class people around the world to protest
> attacks on their social, economic and political rights.  When we shut
> down TransLink meetings or take to the streets, we follow some
> awesome footsteps indeed.  Some of the greatest heroes of the
> twentieth century, including Martin Luther King, Mahatma Ghandi and
> countless unheralded others, were vocal proponents of direct action as
> a tactic to build community power.
>
> Transit dependent bus riders hold very little political or economic power.
> To be specific, we are late night office cleaners, McDonalds workers
> and welfare recipients; we are single moms, kids and people with
> disabilities. We are among the poorest of the working class.  As we fight
> this fare increase we are up against some of the biggest economic and
> political players in British Columbia. Other 'stakeholders' in the
> municipal transit system include The BC Liberals, the 2010 Olympics
> Committee and the Bombardier Corporation, just to name a few.
>
> Even as we face powerful opposition, bus riders retain the power to
> organize.  And we will be organizing hard, because this proposed fare
> increase is an outrageous attack on transit dependent communities.
> The increase, if it goes ahead, will be the third in five years.   It is
an
>
> unconscionable attack on women, people of colour and Aboriginal
> people - communities already staggering from the effects of a six-dollar
> minimum wage, the erosion of labour standards and the gutting of
> welfare and other social services.
>
> So the struggle continues.  We are holding public meetings and
> maintaining our presence on the buses. We will be at the November
> 19 TransLink meeting to, again, give TransLink directors the opportunity
> to realize the ramifications of another fare increase and to vote against
> moving forward.   One thing is for sure: if the fare increase does go
> through, there will be no more business as usual.  If TransLink
> continues to attack the economic human rights of bus riders, we will
> fight back by impacting their own bottom line. The BRU promises a fare
> strike for early 2005 if the fare increase goes ahead.
>
>
> http://sevenoaksmag.com/commentary/37_comm2.html