[bru-info] Fight for the right to get around town.

[bru-info at lists.resist.ca]

from the WestEnder.

 Fight for the right to get around town 

By Aiyanas Ormond and Martha Roberts

For the last three years, the Bus Riders Union has been fighting for an affordable, reliable, and accessible public transit system. As organizers we have learned that our public transit system is critical for the economic survival of 200,000 transit-dependent bus riders, and every fare increase, every service cut, and every bus breakdown demonstrates TransLink's refusal to allocate adequate funding to the buses we need. TransLink's misdirected priorities are an attack on our right to mobility.

Security guards, nannies, single moms, janitors, baristas, childcare workers, sweatshop labourers, and health care workers spend hours each day and far too much of our income on transit. When we examine the course of our lives, we can see that our struggle to afford rent, to find and keep a decent job, to maintain the health of our families, and manage our education are exacerbated by our lack of public transit.

This economic system which prioritizes private profit over public services is robbing our communities of our basic human rights. In this age of neoliberalism, the depth and breadth of poverty is increasing on a global scale. Here in B.C. those hardest hit are evident every time you ride the bus: women, people of colour, immigrants, Aboriginal people, and people with disabilities.

Organizers with the Bus Riders Union know that to turn this tide of attacks on working people we must to unite and demand that the basic needs of our communities for jobs, health, housing, education and transit become the top economic and political priority for our region, our province and our world. The coming forum on Economic Human Rights is an opportunity to learn about current campaigns from grassroots organizers involved in local social justice struggles, and to discuss strategies for advancing our economic human rights. At the march for Economic Human Rights together we will take to the streets to demand economic justice. 

Our call for economic human rights echoes the original demand spearheaded by Martin Luther King, who dreamed of a Poor People's March for Economic Human Rights, a massive "multi-racial army of the poor" marching on Washington to demand an "economic bill of rights." This march gave substance to the political and legal gains made by Blacks through the Civil Rights Movement. When King called the march in 1968, the U.S. was occupying South Vietnam and dropping bombs on Southeast Asia. King directly counter posed economic human rights to the vast waste of the war machine. Why, he asked, can the U.S. government spend billions of dollars on an atrocious and unjust war, but not come up with the lesser sum needed to guarantee every person living in America a decent livable income? Sound familiar? 

The Bus Riders Union campaign to "Stop the fare increase" is one struggle against one policy that puts money into the pockets of the rich while attacking working class communitiesâ right to mobility. The March and Forum for Economic Human Rights are our attempt to broaden our struggle, to create a positive vision of economic and social justice and the global redistribution of wealth.

Aiyanas Ormond and Martha Roberts are organizers with the Bus Riders Union. The March for Economic Human Rights takes place this Sunday (Sept. 19) at 1 p.m and begins at Main Street SkyTrain Station. The Forum on Economic Human Rights takes place this Thursday (Sept. 16), 7 p.m. at the Vancouver Public Library in the Peter Kaye room. For more information contact the BRU at 604 215 2775 
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