The 200 block of Columbia Street is ground zero for Seattle’s labor organizing community. Working Washington and SEIU 775 hold offices there. However, on July 26, activists flocked to show solidarity with a different kind of union — transit.
The Transit Rider’s Union (tru) held its most well-attended event to date on July 26, bringing together organizers, nonprofit leaders and community members to break bread and share ideas on making Seattle more friendly to those who rely on public transit.
Attendees participated in a panel discussion in which speakers discussed the importance of affordable transit and their plan to achieve it by applying pressure to public institutions such as the city of Seattle and the University of Washington.
What emerged was a coalition that spanned socioeconomic and organizational lines such that each individual win counted as a victory for all.
Organizers wanted the event to educate people about TRU’s strategies and rally supporters to stay engaged, said Katie Wilson, co-founder of TRU.
“We were trying to rally and build momentum,” Wilson said. “ We want people to keep energized, recognizing that we have a lot of work left to do.”
TRU co-founder Scott Myers hopes to keep pushing the ball forward by taking the lessons of the labor movement and adapting them to fit the 21st century Seattle context.
“We did it before in the 1930s, we can do it again today,” Myers said. “It’s about figuring out how to organize in these new conditions.”
The event spoke to the union’s tactics. Not just flashy protests that capture the spotlight for a moment before the news cycle moves on, but deep organizing that builds coalitions and brings in allies.
So far, TRU hasn’t had the chance to do a direct action or protest. Members planned earlier this year to do a sit-in on the Link Light Rail to protest the lack of transfer passes from the bus system to the train, but county officials responded with a joint ticket that included two bus fares and one for the Light Rail before the event was to take place.
It turned into a celebration.
Transit represents a unique organizing opportunity in that it serves no single group of people, making it easy for people to come together. Tuesday’s event focused on groups that participants felt the system wasn’t serving, specifically low-income and homeless members of Seattle.
That was in part because the idea for the event emerged out of the TRU Homelessness and Transit Committee, chaired by Barb Balden.
The homeless and low-income communities rely on transit. Without it, they can’t make it to appointments for health care or housing, things they need if they want to move indoors.
“This is where you start,” Balden said. “You can’t do the simplest of things without it.”
TRU members discussed advocating for lower-cost monthly passes for low-income people, as well as cheaper bus tickets for agencies and nonprofit organizations that serve low-income clients.
Currently, those organizations can buy tickets at 20 percent of face value, but the number of tickets is capped and fares have risen, Wilson said.
John Yost agrees.
Yost was homeless for many years before eventually securing housing in the Seattle area. He loaded up a transit card at Bartell Drug Store using a disability discount that totaled $5 a month in the late 1990s, he said.
“It saved my life,” Yost said.
If he could advocate for a policy reform, that would be it: making it cheap and easy for the homeless to get around on local transit.
“A lot of people would be better off,” Yost said.