To Ride the Public's Buses: The Fight That Built a Movement

By: Barrett Shaw and Mary Johnson

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Synopsis: How could you go to school, or go on a date, or volunteer somewhere if the only trips deemed worth funding for you were medical trips? How could you get a job if you could only get three rides a week? If you were never on time? How could you raise a family, shop for food, get your kids to and from school or wherever, if all the rides were taken up with work trips (and this for a population with a 70% unemployment rate)? Most of all, you heard the oppressive, overbearing message that other people -- from the transit authority CEOs and systems managers down to the drivers -- could decide better than you -- and would decide -- what it was most worthwhile for you to be doing. You simply did not count. . . . Who could forget Edith Harris's death grip on a bus windshield wiper? Cathy Thomas and George Cooper throwing "blood" stained money at the Dallas transit board of directors? Mickey Rodriguez's gentle, giant frame quietly refusing to move? Mark Ball's and Bob and Renate Conrad's political raps? George Florum and Mel Conrardy showing neophytes like myself how you block a San Antonio bus? Dana Jackson's chant of "Can you hear us, on the inside?" echoing off the walls of the Los Angeles County Jail at midnight? In DC, the Preacher intoning "We will be back again, and again, and again ..." as the crowd drank it in? Jim Lundville's silent smile as he "wandered out" in front of a Phoenix bus? . . .