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Indybay Feature
MUNI FARE HIKE RESISTANCE
Despite the fact that we suffered a large fare increase in fares for San Francisco buses and trains (SF Muni Railway or Muni) just over 1 year ago, we are again threatened with a fare increase from $1.25 to $1.50 with admittedly no increase in service. We need your protests now to demand that the large Financial District Corporations pay a profits tax to Muni.
See SF Chronicle, 11/30/04, Bay Area section, at:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/30/BAGODA3ECF25.DTL
A meeting of the MTA was held on
DECEMBER 7, 2004 at 4 p.m.
at City Hall, Polk & McAllister, Room 400.
The calendar of meetings is at:
http://www.sfmuni.com/cms/brd/mta/mtaindx.htm
We need you there to demand:
(1) NO FARE INCREASE
(2) The MTA or Board of Supevisors set up a transit district consisting of the Financial District to tax the profits of the large corporations. This was on the ballot a few years ago, but not a large enough campaign was done to have it passed. It is very feasible and has lots of support.
(3) The Board of Supervisors, which oversees all departments and decides the budget, cut the 2200 member police budget to the minimum the law requires, and transfer those funds to Muni.
(4) The MTA be told to have Congressperson Nancy Pelosi, now House Minority Whip, Congressperson Lantos, and Senators Boxer and Feinstein, get the federal money we need to run Muni, without which there is no San Francisco.
(5) The Board of Supervisors set up a progressive city income tax for all those who earn over $125,000 a year from employment in San Francisco, whether or not they live here. San Francisco is providing transit and many other city services to thousands of people who work here but do not live here, and many of those people have high incomes and can easily afford to pay a 1% tax to the city. San Francisco is in fact the largest business center of the region of 7 million people known as the San Francisco Bay Area. If people are going to commute, and take their income earned here out of the City, they have to be taxed 1% if they earn at least $125,000 a year to help make this business center possible. And, of course, those who live here and have high incomes can also pay. There are sufficient people making that kind of money residing in and/or working in San Francisco that all of our budget problems will be eliminated by this small progressive income tax on the rich.
Incredibly, the president of the Transport Workers Union (Muni transit operators), William Sisk, supports the fare increase! Somebody needs to tell him real fast that fares are a regressive tax on the workingclass, that our federal tax dollars pay for most of the public transit budget while fares are just a small contribution, and that we must have unity of the Muni transit operators and Muni bus and train riders if we are to stop all fare increases and make the rich corporations pay, of which there are many in San Francisco, and which benefit the most from public transit which brings workers to their offices!
As to the service, it is polite to say it is stuck on being on time only 70% of the time. I have seen buses packed like sardines during rush hour evenings on Sutter Street (4 to 6 p.m.) for which there is no excuse since that is a regular commute run for several buses with predictable greater need at that period of time, Monday through Friday. Some lines are some times of the day are very frequent, others are not, and many are packed during the rush hour. Be sure to bring your stories of inadequate service to the MTA meeting.
http://www.sfmuni.com/cms/brd/mta/mtaindx.htm
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Comments
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City income taxes are illegal under California law. There is no way around this; calling it something else will still get SF sued and the city will loose. A transit tax on "downtown corportations"? Sorry, but most of their workers don't even live here. Most live in the East Bay, the Peninsula, or elsewhere. Reduce the police budget "to the minimum allowed by law? Yeah, right. And when the Board of Supes is recalled due to out of control crime, you'll get a much more conservative Board to deal with it. Please think these things through.
1. If you think petitioning the people who are going to move for a fare hike will make a difference, then you are very, very badly mistaken.
Don't have illusions about the character of power, and how the decision-making process is craftily stage-managed in a democratic society by hustles like electoral politics and farcical public hearings.
Similarly, going into all the little details of how MUNI might be able to solve its funding problems is useless. Funding problems are a problem for the managers of the system -- not for the working people who ride MUNI. It makes it seem like you ultimately see yourself as being on the same side as the people who are going to impose a fare hike against us, and I know you're not, but that's how you make it sound. The US government itself wouldn't be able to function without running up huge deficits -- their deficits are their problem. Only an aggressive, collective, direct effort outside of and against the conventional decsion-maiking structures of this society can fend off attacks on us, and win gains against them.
2. You are under some big illusions about what labor unions are all about by thinking it is "incredible" that a functionary of a capitalist labor brokerage -- oh, whoops, excuse me, a labor union -- would call for an attack on the wage levels of working people. What do you think the UFCW did in the Southern California grocery store strike? Or look at the history of the United Autoworkers Union; see the film "Roger and Me;" the UAW oversaw the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of relatively-well paid car plant jobs, then helped re-train some of it's members for jobs as prison guards! Go talk to combative MUNI workers; a lot of them know who's side the union is really on.
Unions are no longer defensive mechanism of the wage-earning class -- they are transmission belts from capital to labor who help adjust working people to capital's needs.
Effective resistance means attacking the union apparatus, among other things. That's what we did a decade ago, and we lost nothing by doing it.
The last effort to oppose a transit fare hike, "Transit Justice," was a total flop, not just because it failed to stop the hike, but more importantly because it totally failed to effectively draw attention to the issue.
A better example of how to go about resisting a fare hike was mounted in 1993. I can't claim that our efforts sank that attempted fare hike, but they helped make the fare hike a fighting issue and gave the issue a public visibility that "Transit Justice" (a name that only a social worker could love) failed to do. And the attempted fare hike, in the form of the abolition of transfers, was ultimately rescinded, and they didn't try a similar stunt until ten years later.
Here's a doc examing the strengths and limits of our efforts:
http://www.infoshop.org/myep/love2.html
A fare hike can be derailed by aggressive action -- not by venting at City government meetings.
Don't have illusions about the character of power, and how the decision-making process is craftily stage-managed in a democratic society by hustles like electoral politics and farcical public hearings.
Similarly, going into all the little details of how MUNI might be able to solve its funding problems is useless. Funding problems are a problem for the managers of the system -- not for the working people who ride MUNI. It makes it seem like you ultimately see yourself as being on the same side as the people who are going to impose a fare hike against us, and I know you're not, but that's how you make it sound. The US government itself wouldn't be able to function without running up huge deficits -- their deficits are their problem. Only an aggressive, collective, direct effort outside of and against the conventional decsion-maiking structures of this society can fend off attacks on us, and win gains against them.
2. You are under some big illusions about what labor unions are all about by thinking it is "incredible" that a functionary of a capitalist labor brokerage -- oh, whoops, excuse me, a labor union -- would call for an attack on the wage levels of working people. What do you think the UFCW did in the Southern California grocery store strike? Or look at the history of the United Autoworkers Union; see the film "Roger and Me;" the UAW oversaw the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of relatively-well paid car plant jobs, then helped re-train some of it's members for jobs as prison guards! Go talk to combative MUNI workers; a lot of them know who's side the union is really on.
Unions are no longer defensive mechanism of the wage-earning class -- they are transmission belts from capital to labor who help adjust working people to capital's needs.
Effective resistance means attacking the union apparatus, among other things. That's what we did a decade ago, and we lost nothing by doing it.
The last effort to oppose a transit fare hike, "Transit Justice," was a total flop, not just because it failed to stop the hike, but more importantly because it totally failed to effectively draw attention to the issue.
A better example of how to go about resisting a fare hike was mounted in 1993. I can't claim that our efforts sank that attempted fare hike, but they helped make the fare hike a fighting issue and gave the issue a public visibility that "Transit Justice" (a name that only a social worker could love) failed to do. And the attempted fare hike, in the form of the abolition of transfers, was ultimately rescinded, and they didn't try a similar stunt until ten years later.
Here's a doc examing the strengths and limits of our efforts:
http://www.infoshop.org/myep/love2.html
A fare hike can be derailed by aggressive action -- not by venting at City government meetings.
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