DC Rallies vs. Racist Attack on Transit Workers

WASHINGTON, DC, September 12 — Today 60 anti-racists, transit workers from Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689, community residents and others, picketed the transit authority’s monthly board meeting to protest its racist hiring and firing policies. Some challenged the transit authority’s board directly in the public comment time. We demanded they hire and retain workers who’ve been jailed in the past and “done their time.”
We explained that many former inmates have already worked successfully for years at Metro. Now that opportunity is gone. Communists, lawyers, civil rights activists, returning citizens and public health workers demand the policy be reversed!
Metro workers are also under attack. The DC region officials are gradually breaking up the unified transportation system to create multiple non-union systems. Privatization in transit, as in schools and hospitals, is aimed at making profit at the expense of the workers by driving down wages and benefits in a “race to the bottom.” Signs calling for “One System, One Union” signaled the transit-worker fightback.
Power of Multiracial Unity
The rally’s multi-racial alliance of workers and other anti-racists exemplified the power we can exert to win this demand, build our strength and eventually create a communist system where the working class actually controls transit systems, along with all aspects of society.
 The Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association’s Health Disparities Committee (MWPHAP) organized the rally along with Progressive Labor Party, Metro workers, returnee organizations, community residents, civil rights groups, and workers’ rights coalitions. For months, we’ve had community meetings on the issue of jobs for returning citizens (former prisoners returning to the community). Workers have eagerly signed petitions in Wards 7 and 8, at health outreach efforts, Metro garages and on-line.
We’ve met several workers who’ve been fired or refused hiring under this policy. Some spoke to the Board and joined the rally. In a growing movement, others are working with progressive lawyers to challenge the policy as well as their individual firings.    
Metro workers have the power to overturn this current hiring ban and to stop Metro’s plans to sell bus lines to a for-profit company that will lower wages and break the union. To build for this rally, we struggled with our co-workers at Metro to see these battles as everyone’s fight. This is an important step in raising broader issues and class consciousness among Metro workers. In the recent contract the policy was not even debated by the union leadership, which still does not want to defend its members or fight for jobs for all. In fact, the union president attacked the rally against racism as a diversion from their focus on opposing privatization. If they were serious, they would instead see how the issues and struggles are interrelated and can strengthen each other. But bascially they defend the bosses’ system.
The New Jim Crow
Our discussions at the garages exposed many contradictions besetting workers. Some thought it was okay to have harsher hiring practices, even though they themselves might have a criminal record. As we spoke more about the “New Jim Crow” criminal injustice system, many workers changed their minds and agreed that people in our communities shouldn’t be shut out of a decent job because of a criminal record.
People agree that the jail system is inherently racist, but it is still a struggle to win current Metro workers to care about those who might be hired after them. One co-worker at the rally said people must see that this struggle affects all of us, even if it doesn’t seem so right now. He had a true class outlook and took a CHALLENGE and a handful of flyers to take back to his garage. Another co-worker spoke about the bravery of the civil rights marchers, which we need to emulate.
The mass imprisonment of black and Latino workers since Nixon and Reagan instituted the war on drugs results in millions of people with records for minor drug possession. The police arrest black and Latino workers at much higher rates than whites. White residents in DC use drugs at the same rate as black people, but 8 out of 10 people arrested for drug violations are black.
Metro’s refusal to hire people with convictions makes this racist inequality in criminal justice much worse since returnees are prevented from getting relatively high-paying jobs when released. A Metro speaker said that Trayvon Martin’s killer walked away free while black people are locked up on a daily basis for much less!.
MWPHA will continue to pressure Metro to overturn this policy. PLP members invite our friends to our study/action groups to organize to overthrow the entire capitalist system, which only enriches the top 1% while driving down our wages and living standards to the lowest possible levels.