Bus Riders Union (Los Angeles)

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Bus Riders Union and BRU redirect here. There is also a Vancouver-based Bus Riders Union, working on similar issues.

The BRU banner has its name in three languages. (From March 3, 2006 antiwar march in Hollywood.)

The Bus Riders Union (BRU)/Sindicato de Pasajeros (SDP) (also called 버스 승객 조합 (버승조) in Korean) is a United States civil rights organization originally formed in Los Angeles, California in 1991. It claims 5,000 dues-paying members and is the class action representative of 450,000 bus riders in Los Angeles through its Civil Rights Consent Decree against the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).

The BRU was formed as a subsidiary of the Labor/Community Strategy Center, in association with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates. The BRU was represented by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. The impetus for the BRU's formation was the elimination by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the monthly pass, and allegations that money going to construct the Los Angeles County Metro Rail and Metrolink were racist because Metro Rail and Metrolink had a greater percentage of Whites in the service area than the MTA's bus service, thus discriminating against Blacks and Latinos.

The BRU has a multiracial base, with a core black, Latino, and working class coalition, with the addition of a Korean faction since 2001. BRU conducts its membership meetings with simultaneous interpretation for English, Spanish and Korean and the same is done for nearly all of its written works.

The Bus Riders Union was able to achieve relatively quick success. Soon after formation, they were able to obtain an injunction on the elimination of the monthly pass. With the MTA, they came to an agreement to a consent decree in 1996, which called for the creation of a semi-monthly and weekly pass, reducing prices for the monthly pass, holding fare increases to the level of inflation, and providing new services designed to connect minorities and the poor to job and medical sites. However, the most important part of the consent decree is a restriction on the number of standees on a bus. MTA could not allow more than a "load factor", or passengers on the bus divided by number of seats, of a certain amount.

The BRU was unable to reach an extension on the 10-year decree and as a result, the decree expired on Sunday October 29, 2006.

Recently, the BRU has branched out into other civil rights issues. The BRU was one of the sponsors of the Great American Boycott demonstration in Los Angeles on May 1, 2006. [1] The current campaign is "1,000 More Buses, 1,000 Less Police", as the BRU is advocating that policing be reduced throughout the city because of past abuses by the Los Angeles Police Department of minority civil rights. The BRU has not received much support from the minority community for this campaign, since the majority of law abiding residents welcome the added police presence, and the LAPD is popular among elected officials. [2] The BRU has also taken controversial stands on other issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict [3], including alleging that the Palestinians are in the same situation as Jews in Nazi Germany [4].