When we unify communities for real benefits, we win. Read our new Release with Narrative initiative!
We know that Transit (just like housing, healthcare, and food access) is an issue that impacts both rural and urban communities – whether it’s a van ride for a senior in Venango County or a subway ride for a dad in Philly. We can win more funding to improve transit everywhere when we build a movement led by both Rural and Urban communities.
Transit for All PA! is proud to release a new playbook with our friends at Narrative Initiative. In it, we show how our campaigns for transit improvements are unifying communities and building strength to confront the powerful interests. These interests want us to stay divided and think that we have nothing in common with people outside our communities. But we won’t fall for it. There is so much that rural and urban communities have in common, whether it’s disinvested public transit systems, schools, inadequate healthcare, or ever-higher housing costs. This case study, and the full Rural Urban Unity series being published by Narrative Initiative, shows that when we organize across difference, we can win investments that transform our lives.
Here’s more from Narrative Initiative
Transit for All PA! has built a grassroots movement to win the policy solutions that fund critical transportation in rural and urban communities. It draws on the individual expertise of local activists and brings them together for statewide campaigns to win statewide solutions to local transit issues. Nearly 100 community organizations and businesses, 17 labor unions and labor councils, including eight different Pennsylvania locals of the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents bus drivers in the state, and over 60 elected leaders have signed on to support Transit for All PA!’s platform.
One of Transit for All PA!’s most significant narrative interventions was to bring a disability justice lens into the conversation on public transit. By bringing organizers with disabilities into leadership roles into their base, the campaign amplified the experiences of disabled riders and made more urgent the need for public transit in both urban and rural areas of Pennsylvania. Their organizers also highlight the importance of public transit to civic engagement, including voting.
The coalition has empowered local transit activists to tell their stories and has created a database of individual stories about public transit across the state. If a policymaker claims public transit is not a problem in their community, Transit for All PA! can turn to their storytellers to share their real experiences. They draw upon their trusted networks to identify trusted spokespeople, including locals of the Amalgamated Transit Union all across the state, who can help identify the right people to tell a specific story from a particular area – the people to whom state and local elected leader will listen closest.
The case study highlights the work and policy impacts achieved by a group in Pennsylvania to support public transit access across the rural-urban divide. Narrative Initiative did not engage in the advocacy activity discussed below.
Here is a link to the full case study. If you have any feedback for us or questions, please send us a message at content@narrativeinitiative.org.
