Many in the Occupy movement believe that making specific demands will leave the movement open to cooptation and division. But without demands that ask the president, Congress, and Wall Street to make radical changes in policy, there is the danger that they will still carry out business as usual while the protests grow stronger.

Civil rights, labor, environmental, public health, and housing organizations argue bus service and fare increases result in civil rights harms for transit-dependent people and obstruct economic recovery for low-income transit-dependent Angelenos.

Media trumpeted the news as the Los Angeles School Police Department unveiled protocols intended to reduce the number of daytime curfew tickets written to students. The revised procedures are a result of collaboration and discussions between Public Counsel, the Community Rights Campaign, the ACLU of Southern California, Children's Defense Fund, CADRE, and Youth Justice Coalition - groups that work to keep students in school - and Los Angeles School Police Department (LASPD) leaders.

With a federal review of MTA's civil rights record still in progress, a standing room only-crowd of over 200 and an all-star panel exposed LA MTA's civil rights crisis at the Transit Justice Town Hall meeting Saturday. Overo 100 bus riders people gave three hours of testimony on the harms caused by deep cuts in bus service, inadequate bus service, increases in fares - all of which will be used for a report on the crisis to be released in September. The event was organized by the Bus Riders Union and sponsored by a city-wide multi-racial coalition of 35 organizations.

After six years of campaigning, the BRU scored a major environmental victory today: the Wilshire Boulevard Bus-Only Lanes won the resounding approval from the LA City Council and cleared the last major political hurdle for it to become reality

Reason #8 Union meetings are rough and tumble but a real exciting place to go.  Some local unions are run by a clique but the members have the right to vote them out. Some union meetings are run top down but the workers have the right to yell out their ideas and get the floor. Some local unions—like the one I was in, UAW Local 645 in Van Nuys California—were hotbeds of political discussion where...

As news of our "truancy" ticket victory rolled through local and national media. the Community Rights Campaign carried the momentum of our coalition into City Hall on Monday, where Councilmember Cardenas presided over an unprecedented meeting where community voices were heard, and councilmembers were moved.

LA Times columnist David Lazarus fights against bus cuts and advocates for designated bus lanes, commuter routes, and a commitment to public transit in order to ease street congestion.