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ChineseBRU Continues To Mislead Eager-But-Naive College Students
[tags]collge, students, valley college, bru, metro, los angeles, fare increase[/tags]
Aside from being a few months late, the Valley Star Online, the student newspaper of Los Angeles Valley College, spouts nothing but BRU rhetoric in an opinion piece about the Metro Fare Increase this past July. The article calls the fare increase “unwarranted” and claims that college students will not be able to afford the extra $13 per month come 2009 when the college pass increases from $30 to $43. It’s obvious the writer has been reading BRU literature, because the rest of the article is nothing but a reiteration of the same old BRU anti-rail/transit-racism argument. Check this out:
What is adding insult to injury is that the MTA will not use the increased revenue to improve bus services, or increase the size of their bus fleet. Instead, the MTA will use it to build another Metro rail line, running from downtown L.A. to Santa Monica. The MTA states that this new project will cost $600 million to build. What would make more sense is to build something similar to the Orange Line - Which cost only $349.6 million dollars to construct, and has been a runaway success for the authority.
What’s sad is how the BRU continues to prey on young students eager to get behind a good cause and attempt to indoctrinate their impressionable politically active minds with bad ideology. Hey freshmen! Don’t buy into the nonsense!
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Here’s my letter:
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Dear Editor,
To start, the Westside and Mid-City doesn’t want to make the same mistake as the Orange Line
by building the Expo Line as a busway. The Orange Line is already close to projected capacity of 30,000 riders a day and has no room for more riders unlike the Light Rail between two busy activity centers and many destinations in between.
The fare increases are rather modest considering in other transit agencies, there is no such thing as student discount passes. But despite the increase what’s a bigger threat to students pocketbooks are the runaway textbook costs and administration fees that are increased and funding for financial aid raided year after year by Governor Swartzenegger.
I went to school in out of state, the first few years there’s a U-Pass program to allow university students to use the transit system for a fixed rate each semester that is included in the price of tuition. For the first few years I attended we didn’t receive this benefit to the U-Pass program but myself and fellow students wrote to the adminstration and with the help of our student government and the transit agency itself lobbied to have the School purchase the
semester passes up front and charge them on our tuition. This worked out to be a win-win for everyone.
Maybe Valley College can lead the way in this movement if the student body is really serious about this issue and want to do something about.
This seems to be happening not just in LA but around the country. Folks in Austin and other places have tried to create bus riders unions to follow the ’successful’ campaigns of the LA BRU. When I tell them what they are really about they are shocked. It seems like there is more education to be had about transit, transit modes, and advocacy.
Jeff, the Bus Riders Union name is common. It’s still in free use, but there are cells formed by Eric Mann. One is in Vancouver, BC, and it is using the same rhetoric to stop Skytrain expansion.
There are other Bus Riders Unions. One is for Oakland’s AC Transit, but it has nothing to do with Eric Mann’s LCSC.
The net helped transit advocacy organizations share information, and many already treat the BRU/LCSC as pariahs.
Hmm, I have never heard of the AC Transit version. I’ll have to check it out. I’m sure there are many good versions, but i kind of cringe when the LA BRU is touted as a model.
My comment on the Valley Star website says everything I would say here.
College students should not join such a RACIST organization as the BRU.