Home Title Index Topic Index Sources Directory News Releases Sources Calendar

Transit Riders Unions vs. Climate Change, White Supremacy and Disaster Capitalism

Hellegers, Desiree
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/19/transit-riders-unions-vs-climate-change-white-supremacy-and-disaster-capitalism/

Publisher:  Counterpunch
Date Written:  19/06/2017
Year Published:  2017  
Resource Type:  Article

On May 28th, 2017, two men were killed while intervening to stop the harassment of two young Black women aboard Portland city's light rail. These events occured at a time of growing debate about the militarization of public transportation.

Abstract: 
-

Excerpt:

Nationwide, state and local governments are facing increasing pressures in the wake of the manufactured debt crisis, to include public transportation among "assets" to be liquidated in corporate fire sales. The Willamette Week story, and the prospect of the Democratic governor selling off state agencies met with a predictably celebratory response in the conservative Weekly Standard, which responded gleefully to the prospect of the governor "burning the [state's] household furniture to say warm" , and "rechristen[ing] the University of Oregon 'Nike U.’" The prospect of the privatization of Portland’s light rail system is a barometer of Brown's willingness to pursue neoliberal austerity measures, and the power that corporations like Nike and Intel exert in a state with one of the lowest corporate income taxes in the country.

The possibility of privatizing light rail ought to send shock waves throughout Portland. The city, after all, is at the forefront of the national battle to divest from fossil fuels and convert to more sustainable forms of energy. Few cities nationwide are better situated, then, to form a united front to push back against this regressive proposal, given the intersectional organizing already at work in a city that has been profoundly shaken by the resurgence of white supremacy and creeping fascism.
Sources-journalists use the sources website to find you


AlterLinks
c/o Sources


© 2023.