Campaign success
After gathering the research, UYC leaders spoke about the MetroCard issue at our monthly Student Union meeting in November. The meeting was attended by about 150 students from all over the city. At the meeting it was decided that we needed to run a campaign to save the MetroCards. Because of the three-way responsibility, the targets of our campaign were the city (Mayor Michael Bloomberg), state (Governor David Paterson), and MTA (Chairman of the MTA Board Jay Walder).
At the meeting, UYC core organizations and UYC Student Union members decided to form a coalition named Students for Transportation Justice (STJ) to work on this issue. Together we developed a plan that included many different actions demanding MetroCards for students. UYC/STJ held rallies outside of the MTA offices where we had members of the Transit Workers Union, city council members (including Speaker Christine Quinn), and student leaders speak. We mailed letters to the governor, mayor, and chairman of the MTA requesting a meeting with students to hear how these cuts would affect them and their families. After no response, we hand delivered the letters personally to the mayor’s office and to the chairman at an MTA meeting.
We held daily protests at the subway station Mayor Bloomberg uses to ride the train to work. We rallied outside of Governor Paterson’s office in Manhattan. We had a sit-down meeting with Jeff Kay (at the time, he was the director of the office of operations for the city). We mobilized a couple of hundred students to attend the public hearings the MTA held in all the boroughs. At the Manhattan hearing, as a result of not getting a response to our letter, UYC/STJ leaders demanded a response from the chairman in front of the packed auditorium, where he agreed to a meeting. On March 17, UYC/STJ leaders became the only group that we know of to ever have a sit-down negotiation meeting with the chairman of the MTA. At this meeting, we were able to persuade him to not cut the MetroCards (as was planned) until after the state and city budgets came out.
We also took the fight to the state capitol in Albany. We mobilized about fifty students and parents to go to Albany and speak with twenty-four state assembly members and senators about saving the MetroCards. We also held a rally in Albany. Finally, On June 11, UYC/STJ coordinated a school walkout of more than 1,000 public school students to protest their MetroCards being cut out of the budget. The decision to walk out of school was not an easy one. But we had gone through all of the appropriate steps: meetings with policy-makers and elected officials, testifying at hearings, holding rallies, building alliances, and using the media to tell our story. The deadline for the city budget was looming, and we still had no commitment to fund student MetroCards. Instead, the MTA, city, and state continued to shift the blame. In an attempt to increase the pressure, we planned and executed the walkout. We had learned from past successful youth organizing efforts that sometimes civil disobedience is necessary when all else fails. UYC leaders believed that time was running out and that more “drastic” action was needed.
