Published in the Philadelphia Public Record, May 2005
Someday—I hope it won’t be long—we will be talking about how, where, and when political activists associated with the Democratic Party revived first themselves and then their party. When we do, I would not be surprised if we point to the victory for advocates of public transit in Pennsylvania last years as one important step towards this revival.
Those of us who recognize how important public transit is to economic development, equity and the environment in our region may not be surprised that, at the very last minute, Governor Rendell took steps to avert massive fare increases and service reductions. But, seen in both a state and national context, Governor Rendell’s actions were extraordinary. Transit fares are going up everywhere. In just the last year, fares have gone up in New York, Chicago, Boston, Houston and elsewhere. Opposition to subsidies for public transit is quite strident in parts of the state. Politicians from these areas are not happy to see federal highway money used to bail out SEPTA rather to build and repair roads and bridges. And, as recently as a few weeks ago, even our suburban legislators were saying that a fare increase had to be part of the solution to the funding crisis.
So how did we draw the line against fare increases in Pennsylvania? Credit goes to Governor Rendell. But credit also goes to the broad coalition of labor unions, community groups, civic activists, religious organizations and businessmen who fought for public transit. The efforts of the Pennsylvania Transit Coalition (PTC), including our massive rally in Harrisburg in February, made it politically impossible for Governor Rendell to allow fare increases to go forward.
Central to the PTC was organized labor. The PTC would never have come together without the extraordinary leadership of Pat Eiding, President of the Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO and Tom Paine Cronin, President of the AFSCME District Council 47. Most of the money that paid for the trains and buses that brought people to Harrisburg, and many of the citizens who made the trip were brought to the PTC by labor unions such as NUHHCW Local 1199c, TWU Local 234, ATU Local 85, UFCW Local 1776, SEIU Locals 3, 36 and 1201, UNITE HERE Local 274, the Laborers’ District Council of Philadelphia, Jobs with Justice, as well as the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO and the state and national offices of many of these local unions. Community groups were represented by Citizens for Consumer Justice and groups that represent many areas of the region.
This kind of coalition has the potential to re-create a broad, progressive movement in our city and state and eventually beyond. For it is precisely this coalition that stood behind every piece of progressive legislation in the 20th century, from the Pure Food and Drug Act to Social Security to Medicare to the Civil Rights Bills of 1964 and 1965 to federal aid to education legislation to the Clean Air and Water Acts. All this legislation, and more, would have been impossible if organized labor had not focused on the broad interests of working people as well as the interests of their own members. That enlightened self-interest placed organized labor in the lead of the liberal coalition that did much to make the US a more just political community.
The liberal coalition has broken down. Perhaps this collapse began with the Vietnam War, which much of the leadership of the AFL-CIO supported. (The AFL-CIO has changed and is now in the forefront of opposition to the Iraq War.) The collapse accelerated when middle class liberals began to focus so much attention on issues such as environmentalism and feminism that they had little time or energy to oppose the conservative assault on the social welfare programs that serve working people and the poor. They had even less time to come to defense of the fundamental right of workers to organize. Under this assault, many unions became defensive and, understandably enough, focused their attention on holding on their members and what they had secured for them.
So we members of the liberal coalition lost our habit of working together. And then we lost the memory of our triumphs. For all the talk of tenured radicals in the universities, it is hard to find courses about the achievements of the labor movement or social scientists with good things to say about organized labor. When I teach my students about the coalition that, among other things, enabled them to go to Temple, I am too often greeted with blank stares
The Pennsylvania Transit Coalition is more than a campaign for public transit. It is a recreation of the old liberal coalition. (I should add that is was built on the work that many of the good people who helped create the PTC have been doing for a number of years.) Our focus will remain on transit issues. But the PTC can be a model for other efforts to make this old coalition new again and relevant to a range of political struggles. Only such a coalition can serve the vast majority of people in the United States whose well being depends not just on their own efforts but, also, on public policies that embody social justice.
One day in March 2005, I brought my twelve year old daughter to the AFL-CIO Headquarters, where I was working. We met Pat Eiding in the hall. I said to my daughter, “Someday you are going to go to college and have teachers who have nothing good to say about labor unions. I want you to remember that you met Mr. Eiding, who, with Tom Paine Cronin, is most responsible for saving public transit for everyone in the city.” With a little luck and a lot of hard work, by the time my daughter goes to college she will find a better political environment and a revived liberal coalition with which to march.