[sustran] Re: USA: The connection between transportation and social justice

bruun at seas.upenn.edu bruun at seas.upenn.edu
Fri Nov 5 05:37:03 JST 2010


Some other interesting items to add to this. Rosa Parks initiated the  
Montgomery bus boycott,
but the segregationists actually won. Rather than integrate, they just  
phased out the bus
system all together. Montgomery, Alabama had no public transit system  
at all for decades.
Many cities in the south have no or virtually no transit systems, even  
today. Most that do
have them because a local college or University installed them. Even  
today, Alabama, Mississippi
and Georgia state governments give no assistance to public transport  
at all (but huge tax breaks
to large corporations, including automotive manufacturing companies  
that pay low non-union wages.)

It isn't just the small cities. Only 4 of the approximately 12  
counties surrounding the large city of Atlanta have any public  
transport at all, and one county recently shut down its system  
entirely. Palm Beach County (West Palm Beach area) and Broward County  
(Fort Lauderdale area) are very prosperous but have laughably  
inadequate public transport systems.

Eric Bruun

Quoting Todd Edelman <edelman at greenidea.eu>:

> http://www.grist.org/article/2010-10-29-angela-glover-blackwell-talks-about-the-connection-between-trans
>
> Do the rights thing
> Angela Glover Blackwell talks about the connection between
> transportation and social justice
> by Sarah Goodyear 29 Oct 2010 9:51 AM
>
> "This issue is too important to be left to transportation
> professionals," says Angela Glover Blackwell.
>
> Angela Glover Blackwell would like to remind you that transportation is
> a civil rights issue.
>
> Blackwell is the founder and chief executive officer of PolicyLink, "a
> national research and action institute advancing economic and social
> equity." Their slogan is "Lifting Up What Works." They believe that the
> people at the grassroots, closest to the nation's problems, should be a
> central part of figuring out solutions.
>
> Transportation has emerged as a signature issue for PolicyLink. The
> group now chairs the newly formed Equity Caucus, part of Transportation
> for America, calling on federal policymakers to see equity and social
> justice as a key part of transportation planning.
>
> Blackwell recently was invited to the White House, along with many
> governors, mayors, and other elected officials, to give her perspective
> on President Obama's proposed $50 billion infrastructure plan. She was
> the only public policy advocate to attend.
>
> She talked to us by phone about how she was able to influence the
> discussion that day, about how public transit cuts are devastating to
> low-income Americans, and about the central role that transportation
> policy has always played in the struggle for civil rights.
>
> Q. How was it that you came to be invited to sit at that table with the
> president?
>
> A. I was thrilled to be invited to the table, and I'm quite sure that
> the reason that I was invited is because just the week before,
> PolicyLink and Transportation for America launched the Equity Caucus
> [see their principles here].
>
> [At] that launch that nearly 200 people attended in the Cannon Office
> Building, Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) talked about
> transportation in a way that just made it so real. There were people
> there who had tears in their eyes, I understand, from listening to him
> talk about what transportation means to elderly people trying to get
> around, to mothers trying to earn a living.
>
> I think that [we were invited because of] our focus on people, our focus
> on equity, our focus on public transportation, and our determination
> that this issue is too important to be left to transportation professionals.
>
> Q. So there you were. Tell me what you were able to contribute.
>
> A. You probably saw the list of who attended. There were governors,
> mayors, transportation secretaries past and present, labor leaders. When
> the president came in, after greeting people and saying a couple of
> opening remarks, he said, "We're going to start off this conversation
> hearing from Gov. [Ed] Rendell [D-Penn.] and from Angela." So I was just
> so pleased to see the equity perspective frame the conversation right at
> the top.
>
> After my remarks, several people referred back to them. In particular,
> they picked up on the people focus. I think that those people who care
> about transportation have recognized that it is too often an insular
> conversation, and the people who are impacted most by the decisions
> aren't engaged at all.
>
> Q. You talk about creating an awareness that there are people who are
> constituents for public transportation. Do you see that increasing at
> the grassroots level?
>
> A. I am definitely seeing more engagement. We're seeing real concern in
> Chicago, in St. Louis, about the cutbacks in public transportation, what
> that means for people.
>
> The Transportation Equity Network is organizing all over to make sure
> that grassroots people in communities -- who are concerned about their
> livelihoods and their futures, and how little they're able to get out of
> their monthly incomes -- they're really getting involved. I think we're
> beginning to see the beginning of a movement stirring all across the
> country of people making their voices heard on this issue.
>
> Q. Could you talk about the importance of public transportation to
> people with lower incomes, working-class people? And how that figures
> into the larger economic picture?
>
> A. Yes. There are a couple of things I want to point out in that regard.
> One is that the bottom fifth of the nation, the poorest fifth of
> Americans, spend 42 percent of their annual household budget on an
> automobile budget, more than twice the national average. So for people
> who are poor, owning an automobile is a burdensome thing.
>
> Nearly 25 percent of African-Americans do not have access to a car,
> compared that with 7 percent of non-Hispanic whites. You have nearly the
> same number of Latinos who do not have access to a car. So this is huge,
> this is not an isolated problem. For people who are spending too much of
> their income -- over 40 percent just to own a car -- clearly this has a
> devastating impact on the economy in terms of all of the things that
> people cannot do and cannot participate in.
>
> For people who don't have access to cars and depend on public
> transportation, the current crisis is devastating. More than 110 cities
> have public transit routes that are at risk. Children can't get to
> school; people can't get to work. 80 percent of the nation's systems are
> either considering or have recently enacted fare increases or service cuts.
>
> But here's something else that Americans need to know. Spending on
> transit generates more jobs than spending on highways. If our nation's
> 20 metro areas shifted just 50 percent of their highways funds to
> transit, they would create over 1.1 million new transit-related jobs in
> over 5 years. That's without spending a single dollar more.
>
> Q. It strikes me that something strange has happened in this country,
> that now when people talk about public transit, we get a polarized
> political situation where people sometimes say, "Cars are what ordinary
> folks use. Investing in public transit, that's what this urban,
> sophisticated elite wants."
>
> A. I have heard that. Part of the reason is because there are two things
> going on in this country at the same time. One is that we have
> continuing, entrenched urban poverty, with the communities that have
> always been left behind continuing to be left behind.
>
> At the same time that we have that continuing harsh reality, we have
> many enlightened people living in metropolitan areas who recognize that
> for the sake of climate, we need to get out of our cars and use more
> public transportation, we need to live in denser communities, we need to
> connect in communities that are diverse and enjoy the cultural
> activities that reflect this nation. These people are often moving into
> cities -- Chicago, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Manhattan in New
> York -- and enjoying the fruits of urban life, looking for safe,
> efficient public transit, and wanting to live near transit stops so that
> they can be more efficient in the use of their income.
>
> Often this is what people see as gentrification, and people in poor
> communities often fear that if a community starts to gentrify, they may
> be pushed out of the communities.
>
> What we have to remember is that the majority of people who use public
> transportation in this nation are people of color, low-income people.
> That is what keeps our system going. If we are going to begin to invest
> in it, we need to invest in it leading with equity, asking, How do we
> build modern public transportation systems that serve those people who
> have been the backbone of utilizing public transportation? Who need it,
> not because it's the smart thing to do, but it's the only thing for them
> to do in order to stretch their dollars and respond to their reality of
> not having a car? This notion that public transit is [only] for the
> affluent who are looking for a different lifestyle is a false notion.
>
> Q. I've heard you refer to access to transportation as a civil rights
> issue. I would like to hear you speak to that.
>
> A. It is interesting that transportation, in recent years, has not been
> framed as a civil rights issue, because most of the civil rights
> struggle in this country has centered around transportation, in one way
> or another, starting with Plessy v. Ferguson [in 1896]. That had to do
> with access to train cars. Then we have Rosa Parks sitting down on a
> bus. We had the Freedom Riders trying to do something to show that black
> people ought to be able to ride a bus across jurisdictions, they ought
> to be able to ride through the South on a bus without having to go to
> the back of the bus. The whole urban renewal, which people often call
> "black removal," because that's what happens, in the 60s, was a fight
> around highways coming in, going right through communities that had been
> vibrant, often destroying the financial district in an African-American
> community.
>
> So if you go all the way from Plessy v. Ferguson right up to the urban
> renewal, you will see that the fights have often been around
> transportation, and how transportation decisions have been made. Also
> the interstate highway system, the roads that have been built that
> allowed for the expansion from cities into suburbs, often had a
> devastating impact, as people abandoned city schools, and moved to
> suburban schools, leaving poor people of color in city schools, with
> fewer resources, less political clout, and often abandoning the
> neighborhoods and the infrastructure that made those neighborhoods strong.
>
> I think one of the things that the Equity Caucus is doing is bringing in
> the civil rights movement to once again reclaim the fairness issue
> involved in transportation policy thinking.
>
> Q. Anticipating what the Congress is going to look like after the
> midterm elections, what do you think the prospects are for advancing
> these arguments?
>
> A. I have been reading the past week the book Nixonland by Rick
> Perlstein. I'm just in the first quarter of it, and I have been struck
> by how it was not a bright line between Republicans and Democrats on
> some fundamental issues. There were liberal Republicans who were proud
> to be associated with the civil rights acts that were getting passed in
> the '60s. There were liberal Republicans who were real advocates for
> civil rights, even before those civil rights. I'm sure there were
> Republicans and Democrats who always agreed -- without even thinking
> about party lines -- when we were talking about the future of the nation
> and how important its infrastructure was to it. Infrastructure used to
> be one of those issues that did not divide, but pulled together.
>
> It ought to be obvious to anyone looking at the global economy that
> those nations with the infrastructure are the ones that are going to do
> the best. So while it is probably safe to assume that if the Congress
> becomes more Republican that having the support for infrastructure
> investment in public transportation will become a divisive issue, it's
> shocking to me. It shouldn't.
>
> Q. Well, there is a lot going on that really doesn't make any sense.
>
> A. It's too true.
>
> ***
>
> Sarah Goodyear is Grist?s cities editor. You can follow her Twitter feed
> at http://twitter.com/buttermilk1.
>
> --
>
> Todd Edelman
> Green Idea Factory,
> a member of the OPENbike team
>
> Mobile: ++49(0)162 814 4081
>
> edelman at greenidea.eu
> www.greenidea.eu
> todd at openbike.se
> www.openbike.se
>
> Skype: toddedelman
>
> Urbanstr. 45
> 10967 Berlin
> Germany
>
> ***
>
> OPENbike - Share the Perfect Fit!
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
> To search the archives of sustran-discuss visit
> http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=014715651517519735401:ijjtzwbu_ss
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
> If you get sustran-discuss via YAHOOGROUPS, please go to  
> http://list.jca.apc.org/manage/listinfo/sustran-discuss to join the  
> real sustran-discuss and get full membership rights.
>
> ================================================================
> SUSTRAN-DISCUSS is a forum devoted to discussion of people-centred,  
> equitable and sustainable transport with a focus on developing  
> countries (the 'Global South').
>
>





More information about the Sustran-discuss mailing list