Transit Workers Union Targets Riders In New Campaign
Lila Shapiro
Posted: 03/20/2012 7:05 pm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/20/transit-workers-union-campaign_n_1368294.html?view=print&comm_ref=false


A Miami-Dade county Metrorail train pulls into a station
March 12, 2012, in Miami, Fla. With gas prices on the
rise, mass transit systems around the country have seen
a 2.31 percent rise in ridership during 2011.

This election cycle, the unionized workers that run your
public transportation system are doing something a
little different. They're not only turning out the votes
of their own membership, they're pushing for the riders
to vote as well.

The Amalgamated Transit Union -- the largest labor union
representing transit and allied workers in the U.S. and
Canada -- has at least two trends working in its favor:
With gas prices rising and the economy still weak,
public transit use is near its highest point in decades.
Last year, Americans took 10.4 billion trips on mass
transit -- including buses, trains, street cars and
ferries -- a 2.3 percent increase from the previous
year, according to the American Public Transportation
Association, a nonprofit advocacy organization. And the
people who ride buses and trains -- mostly urban, poor,
or environmentally conscious -- are more likely to share
the unions' preference for Democratic candidates, say
advocates on both sides of the issue.

In an age of unlimited spending by super PACs -- where
Republican groups have outspent their Democratic
counterparts -- the Amalgamated Transit Union's strategy
is part of a critical role that labor advocates plan to
play between now and November. The unions say they
cannot compete with Republican donors' money, but that
they do have an ample supply of bodies and plan to
deploy them in broader and more creative ways than they
did in 2008.

The ATU, like other unions, also says that it plans to
use this election as an opportunity to build public
support for big labor after several years of crushing
blows: attacks from conservative politicians across the
Midwest, budget cuts that further diminished public
sector union membership, and declining public support.

"We understand that we have a knife to our throat," said
Larry Hanley, who was elected president of the ATU in
2010. "We're even thinking about selling the office
furniture," he joked, and then quickly grew serious. "In
past elections, on our best day, we never went beyond
organizing our own members, but that's not enough now."

"What we understand completely is that the people who
ride the bus have the same interests as the people who
drive them," Hanley continued. "America has lost its
mobility."

As gas prices rise, public transit systems across the
nation have faced dwindling budgets and fewer routes. In
2010, nearly 80 percent of public transit systems were
forced to raise fares or cut service due to flat or
decreased funding from state and local governments,
according to the American Public Transportation
Association. And while the majority of bus riders may
not be seen as swing voters, they are more likely to be
citizens without driver's licenses, and thus more
vulnerable to voter suppression in states like Florida
that require a government-approved photo ID, said
Hanley, adding that the ATU will focus on that issue as
well. They may also be in need of a ride to the polls on
voting day.

Exact funding or staffing has not yet been determined,
but the ATU says it is hoping to mobilize bus riders and
sympathetic progressive groups to provide additional
bodies to work the bus stops and buses. These groups
have already begun to form in some key states, like
Florida, and have engaged in heated debates over public
transit issues since early 2010.

Ellison Bennett, a long time civil-rights activist based
in Pensacola, Fla., and an avid bus rider -- roughly 120
miles, back and forth to work per week, he estimated --
said he plans to join the ATU in its mission in the
coming months. Bennett has long viewed public transit as
fertile ground for registering voters and distributing
information.

"On the bus, you're getting a segment of voters who have
not been reached out to," Bennet said. "So that is my
mission this election year."

Bennett recalls a conversation he had on a bus ride on a
Saturday morning in 2004, when he was going to visit his
sister. He struck up a conversation with an 82-year-old
woman sitting next to him, and, before long, asked her
whether she was a registered voter. She said she used to
be, but hadn't been for a long time, and besides, she
had no car and the bus didn't go to her precinct's
voting location.

"I have never had anyone tell me, 'I don't want to talk
to you right now.'" But sometimes, if people are
hesitant about registering, Bennett turns to his civil
rights history. "I say, 'Picture South Africa when
Nelson Mandela ran for president. People walked for
miles, for days, to exercise their right to vote. We
should never take that right for granted."

Conservative operatives, meanwhile, seem resigned to the
loss of the transit riders' vote.

"If you're taking the bus to work, you likely live in an
urban environment, are on the lower half of the
socioeconomic scale or you have an ideological aversion
to cars -- all demographics that are far more kind to
Democrats," said Jonathan Collegio, the director of
communications for American Crossroads, one of the
leading Republican super PACs. "In the end, these are
voters who are unlikely to jump from the Democratic
ship."

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