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call (213) 387-2800 to order
Publications:
A
New Vision of Urban Transportation: The Bus Riders Union's Mass
Transit Campaign
-- by The
Bus Riders Union
 The
Center and its Bus Riders Union (BRU) are fighting for the future
of mass transit in the most auto-dependent, air-polluted city in
the U.S. based on a Four Pillars strategy: 1) Ridership needs; 2)
Air quality, public health, and energy efficiency; 3) Job development
and economic conversion; and 4) Community revitalization. "A
New Vision for Urban Transportation" documents the strategy,
tactics and accomplishments of this struggle in a way that could
only be done by the organizers themselves.
"New Vision"
also analyzes "The Labor/Community Strategy Center v. the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority," a civil rights suit to dismantle
the separate but unequal transit system maintained by the Los Angeles
Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). This successful suit
led to a consent decree in 1996 that grants many of the demands
presented by the BRU.
The settlement
requires the agency to correct its racially discriminatory policies
by lowering fares, preserving and expanding bus passes, and improving
bus service through the purchase of additional buses and by initiating
new lines in underserved communities. Of equal importance, the settlement
gives the BRU the right to co-governance with the MTA on a committee
charged with implementing the specifics of the agreement. The BRU
has now grown to more than 1,500 active, dues-paying members, with
influence and recognition among bus riders and in the press throughout
the city and nationwide. This publication describes the organizing
theory and practice behind the most successful civil rights organizing
campaign seen in this country since the 1960s.
Order #11. $10.
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