Simple justice in L.A.

• Author: Thornburg, Gina K.
• Position: Bus Riders' Union, Los Angeles, California

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Los Angeles

At 1:10 A.M. in downtown Los Angeles, Aura Estrada leaves her $6.90-an-hour job as a janitor and walks to a nearby bus stop, where she waits until 2:30 A.M. She is frightened to stand there alone. If the first bus is late and she misses her chance to transfer to a second one, Estrada has to walk twelve blocks home. She pays $1.60 for her commute. If she wants to take her two small children anywhere, they also have to pay full fare.

To help people like Estrada, the Labor/Community Strategy Center decided to organize bus riders to work for a cleaner, safer, more affordable bus system. The Bus Riders' Union was born. In two years, more than 1,000 Angelenos have become members, and are joining the cause at the rate of fifty per week.

"We have a chance to represent 350,000 people, people nobody cared about, people nobody thought could be organized," says the Center's director, Eric Mann. "Because we have a little bit of power, [the transit authority] can't dismiss us anymore."

Even though the 350,000 people who ride the bus account for 94 percent of those who use local public transportation, the county's Metropolitan Transportation Authority spends only 30 percent of its budget on them. The other 70 percent funds the rail lines, used by 6 percent of public-transit commuters, the majority of whom are white, middle-class suburbanites. The vast majority of Los Angeles bus riders are low-income, working-class people of color, whose transportation needs have long been ignored.

The Labor/Community Strategy Center and the Bus Riders' Union are suing the...