bus strike in LA

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[was: Re: [PEN-L:3350] model of organizing]

thanks for this story by David Bacon. Yesterday, the LA TIMES had a
headline that says a lot: "Strike That Nobody Noticed Hit 450,000 Transit
Riders Hard" The "Nobody" who didn't notice was the white middle-class
folks on the West Side (unless their servants had to take the bus). To the
paper's credit, they also talk about the 450,000 transit riders.  But the
paper's main emphasis was against the strike _period_.

At 03:13 PM 10/20/00 -0700, you wrote:
> Here is an excellent example of organizing for Peter
> D.
>
> LA TRANSIT STRIKE FORGES A NEW POLITICAL ALLIANCE By
> David Bacon
>
> LOS ANGELES (10/19/00) - For decades, Los Angeles'
> bus drivers and bus riders have looked at each other
> across the fare box with suspicion and distrust.
> Riders have been told by the Metropolitan Transit
> Authority that drivers' salaries were behind the
> pressure to raise fares. Drivers, in their turn, got
> the message that the only way to keep their jobs
> secure and make a living was to stick it to riders
> in the fare box. Yet when the recent 32-day drivers'
> strike ended, its most remarkable achievement was
> the new alliance drivers and riders forged against
> the MTA. In fact, not only was that alliance
> responsible for winning the strike, but it marks a
> new shift emerging in the city's balance of power,
> based in Los Angeles changing demographics. LA bus
> riders are the base of the city's new economy.
> Overwhelmingly immigrants from Mexico and Central
> America, riders are the room cleaners in downtown
> luxury hotels, seamstresses from the garment ....

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine