Join the Movement and Fight for Transit
Today we celebrate the birthday of civil rights icon Rosa Parks, observed across the country as Transit Equity Day to honor her legacy of resistance and inspire us to fight for transit justice.
Our spirits are lifted by the people power we’re witnessing in Minneapolis, and also by the example of a lesser-known civil rights and transit justice trailblazer, Claudette Colvin, who passed away just three weeks ago. As a 15-year-old member of the NAACP Youth Council, Colvin refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger – a full nine months before Rosa Parks – and helped animate the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Colvin and her colleagues focused their efforts on freedom of movement and dismantling the doctrine of separate but equal in transportation because they knew a segregated system can never be a just system. Sadly, segregation by race, class, and disability still remains a barrier to freedom of movement for far too many Americans.
Here in the Bay Area, our public transit system is rapidly approaching a fiscal cliff that threatens a radical resegregation. Without significant new funding this year, essential workers, students, seniors, and people with disabilities will lose access to reliable and affordable transportation – cutting our communities off from the people and places we rely on. Thousands of transit workers will lose good-paying green jobs, and small businesses will be impacted.
But there’s a path forward: this Transit Equity Day, the new Connect Bay Area campaign has just launched to place a game-changing regional transportation funding measure on November’s ballot. The measure is crucial to address the budget crisis caused by the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the shifting economic geography of our region.
The campaign needs to collect 200,000 signatures by June 6th to place this critical funding measure on the ballot. That means we need people power – and lots of it!
Join the Connect Bay Area campaign today and honor the legacy of Rosa Parks, Claudette Colvin, and the many freedom fighters from Montgomery to Minneapolis and beyond.