[bru-info] Press Release: Bus Riders Ready to Stand Up & Fight for Our Dignity!

[bru-info at lists.resist.ca]

**March 5, 2006**
 
***For Immediate Release***
 
Bus Riders Ready to Stand Up & Fight for Our Dignity!

 
The Bus Riders Union, a grassroots organization with over 900 members fighting for the rights of transit-dependent people is excited to announce our new campaign: "Ride with Dignity: No Overcrowding, No Long Waits, More Buses Now!" to continue to build the power of bus riders by educating, organizing and mobilizing poor and working class people in our communities.  The campaign demands are to make all buses clean-air and wheelchair accessible and to reduce overcrowding and long waits by buying the 400 expansion buses that were promised by 2005.  
 
"Like all of our campaigns, the "Ride with Dignity: No Overcrowding, No Long Waits, More Buses Now!" campaign is based on the experiences of many transit-dependent people, who are overwhelmingly working class, majority women and disproportionately people of colour and Aboriginal people. Through a democratic process of weekly direct-contact organizing and popular education on the bus we know that bus riders are being packed like sardines and forced to stand the whole ride due to overcrowding. Bus riders are regularly waiting 30 – 45 minutes for a bus because of infrequent service and are late for work, school or doctor's appointment because the bus was late" says organizer Yuly Chan.  "The conditions that poor and working class communities have to deal with everyday are totally unacceptable.  The TransLink board would never wait for 45 minutes to stand in an overcrowded and dirty board room.  So why should bus riders put up with this kind of treatment? Just because we're poor or working people does not mean we don't deserve a life with dignity" says organizer Chan.

BRU organizer Beth Grayer continues, "For the cost of the Canada Line, TransLink could buy 2,000 new wheel-chair accessible buses, nearly tripling the number of buses on the road and provide service that would work for everyone.  Instead, TransLink continues to suck the bus system dry by pouring money into expensive and profit-driven mega projects like the Canada Line, which benefits corporations like SNC-Lavalin, a war-profiteer that benefits from making bullets for the war in Iraq, Haiti and Afghanistan.  Therefore, the fight for the immediate needs of transit-dependent people is a fight for dignity."

At the TransLink meeting on Monday March 6, 2006 the TransLink board will decide between buying clean-air natural gas buses or a greater number of cheaper diesel buses.  However, bus riders deserve frequent, reliable bus service and environmentally sound transit.  "Bus Riders Union organizers will be present and ready to put pressure on TransLink to make sure they make decisions in the interests of bus riders, and not just in the name of 'cost effectiveness'", says Grayer. 
 
"As long as TransLink continues to prioritize their big business agenda and ignore the urgent the needs of bus riders, we will not have dignity.  So we need to stand up and fight for what we deserve – a public transit system built on principles of health, justice and dignity for everyone" says Chan.  


Media Contacts:

Zailda Chan 604-215-2775 (BRU office)                     Jennifer Efting 604-255-4745 (cell)

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