Leaflet of the Fight or Walk campaign against bus fare rises, from late 2004 or early 2005.
THEY AREN'T JUST
ATTACKING TRANSIT
THE CTA
The Chicago Transit Authority has been complaining about their budget problems for a long time now. They keep raising the fares, and have been threating massive service cuts and layoffs for almost a year now. But at the same time that they don't have the money for service and to keep the fare down, they are spending lots of money on other things. They recently bought a new headquarters on Lake Street that cost them over $100 million. The CTA and the City are in the early stages of building a whole new "L" line in a circle around downtown that will cost $2 billion. They are also building a huge superstation downtown that will have express trains running directly to O'Hare and Midway airports. This is not a plain and simple issue of the CTA not having enough money. The problem is that they spend their money on making things nice and convenient for tourists and businessmen, while at the same time cutting back and making more expensive the service that we depend on.
THE CITY
But this isn't just an issue of the CTA not having enough money. Frank Kruesi and Mayor Daley are old college roommates, yet the City gives only $3 million a year to keep the CTA running (as opposed to smaller cities like Boston which gives $65 million and San Francisco which gives $94 million). Instead, Daley prefers to spend City money on cleaning up graffiti, on security cameras and on shining up expensive sculptures.
THE COUNTRY
It's not just in Chicago that our daily commute is under attack. In New York, Boston, Indianapolis, Atlanta, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and many other cities, service is being cut and fares are being increased. In many of these cities, new service is also being built that lets tourists and businessmen get from the airport to downtown to the shopping districts faster. The point is not that these priorities are messed up at the local level. There's a whole web of agencies, bureaucracies and governments that don't give a damn about working people. Think of what all the money spent on the Iraq War could do for transit funding. The point is that we have to stand together and fi ght them, or things will only get worse.
THEY'RE ATTACKING US!
Comments