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‘No transit cuts!’

Published Jun 15, 2005 8:32 PM

On June 13, at least 1,000 outraged people, the majority of them African American, packed a hearing of the Maryland Transit Administration at Baltimore’s War Memorial Plaza to protest the MTA’s “restructuring” plan.

Working and poor people in the United States have many issues to be angry about: the war in Iraq threatening their youth, the growing income gap between rich and poor, cuts in social services up and down the line, the disappearance of living-wage jobs, the lack of affordable medical care, and a threat to Social Security.

On top of this is police repression, especially in African American, Latino and Native communities, and a general repression against foreigners, especially those from the Middle East and South Asia.

So far this growing anger has had few open displays. Some protests in Black communities in Denver, Detroit and Somerville, Mass., have shown that fighting back is possible.

Now the people of Baltimore are facing what could be the last straw: proposed cuts in bus routes.

The MTA’s plan proposes to cut long-time, vital bus routes throughout the city. These cuts will impact negatively on workers’ ability to get to work on schedule, on youth going to school, and on the elderly and disabled, who need reliable transportation without long waits.

An estimated 52 out of 59 bus routes would be dramatically altered by this plan, which is scheduled to go into effect by Oct. 16. Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr., cut $5 million from the MTA budget in order to build a new highway.

Person after person, numbering in the hundreds, went to the podium to express their anger over this plan and tell how they and their communities would be affected by it. Even the MTA authorities, who often minimize public opposition to their management plans, said that 675 people had signed up to speak by 5 p.m.

Renee Washington and Sharon Black, long-time leaders of the All-Peoples Congress, garnered the most applause. They told the audience and the MTA officials that this hearing should be declared illegal because it was called on short notice. They put forth the demand that the MTA must call new hearings that will allow the workers and the poor to organize to attend and to put forth a united set of demands.

Washington and Black raised the idea of calling a city-wide bus boycott against the MTA, similar to the historic Montgomery bus boycott that was ignited on Dec. 1, 1955, to eliminate segregated buses there. The idea of organizing protests in front of the homes of MTA bosses also brought a roar of approval from the crowd.

When the MTA officials tried to cut off these two women organizers, the crowd told the MTA representatives that they supported their right to speak as long as they wanted to. The crowd joined the APC leaders in a chant of “Shut it down.”