Students, transit workers rally outside MTA

A dynamic student movement has risen up against the bank-controlled Metropolitan Transit Authority’s provocative proposal to eliminate free student MetroCards. For the second time since this serious cut was announced, hundreds of high school students protested Feb. 1 outside the MTA’s headquarters, chanting “MTA, we won’t pay!”

A blatant attack has aroused a fightback in NYC’s middle and high schools. WW photo: Tony Murphy

The outrageous proposal has also prompted greater collaboration between students and Transit Workers Union Local 100, whose officers addressed the crowd and the media at the action. Along with student activists, speakers represented Sistas and Brothas United, Desis Rising Up and Moving, the Northwest Bronx Coalition, Make the Road New York, and Youth on the Move, as well as a handful of elected representatives.

The campaign to save student MetroCards is also a movement to defend public education — the MTA’s proposal is the New York equivalent of cancelling school buses. This campaign is growing alongside the one against Mayor Bloomberg’s attempt to close 19 schools and the March 4 Day to Defend Education, whose multiple actions at college campuses around the city will culminate in a march that ends at MTA headquarters.

The proposal to cancel free transportation for students is just the tip of the iceberg in a long list of cutbacks the MTA is planning — from layoffs of 700 transit workers to drastic cuts in Access-A-Ride, the program that serves disabled riders. Cancellation of bus routes all over New York and drastic cutbacks in subway service are also planned.

The MTA announced its proposal to cancel student passes immediately after its attempt to block the transit workers’ raises failed in court. It has kept up an anti-worker campaign of propaganda in the media. This campaign claims that the workers’ pay and benefits are too high, and this high cost is responsible for the cutbacks and fare hikes the MTA is imposing on riders with increasing frequency.

The MTA is the fifth-largest debtor in the country. The real source of the MTA’s budget deficits is the crushing debt service the MTA keeps paying to banks and Wall Street interests — the same interests that have just rewarded their top officers and brokers with tens of billions of dollars in bonuses.