Image Description: NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani smiles at a podium reading “Zohran for New York City”. His hand is on his heart, and behind him are graphic blue, red, and yellow stripes. There is a crowd gathered and a colorful banner behind him.
The most dynamic public figure of our moment has lessons for us about transit organizing!
Two years ago, the then little-known Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani had a conversation with the national coalition of transit rider unions – the TRUST – of which Pittsburghers for Public Transit and the Philly Transit Riders Union are members. He shared his observations from a grassroots campaign to win dedicated, expanded state funding from the New York State Assembly and Governor to stop a funding cliff and improve services and lower fares on the NYC Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA).
Today, he is the Democratic frontrunner for mayor of New York City.
Check out Zohran Mamdani’s clip from 2023, addressing transit rider organizers from across the United States, on strategies for organizing (and winning!) statewide funding fights:
We are excited to hear the resonances between our current transit fight and the rider organizing in our neighboring state of New York! Some of the key lessons we took away from Mamdani’s talk were:
1. Be Bold: Lead With an Ambitious Set of Demands
Mamdani points out that we are charged with expanding the perception of what is possible to win, and in fact, it is that ambitious vision that energizes the public for the fight.
We LOVE Mamdani’s observation that the public is eager to invest more to make our buses faster, more affordable and more available, and not just prevent further draconian cuts to our already inadequate public transit systems. It’s hard to motivate riders to fight to maintain a status quo that does not meet all our needs. That’s why Transit for All PA has been organizing for service restoration to 2019 levels for ALL communities statewide, and an additional 10% service expansion on top of that to all non- Pittsburgh and non-Philly regions.
Riders and workers are inspired by this demand! As a result, just in the last four months, more than 15,000 people have joined the Transit for All PA campaign, with hundreds of people joining the Transit for All PA statewide calls to develop and ratify our collective agenda.
2. Take the Budget Fight Out in Public from Behind Closed Doors and Call the Question on Where Politicians Stand
Zohran Mamdani urges riders to make the budget fight public, and to call for politicians to say where they stand on the advocates’ transit demands.
This year, we brought a whopping 350 riders and transit workers from all around the Commonwealth to Harrisburg, for a massive press conference and meetings with legislators from across the Commonwealth. Transit riders in communities large and small thronged the halls of the Capitol, bringing information and their stories to every single legislative office. They called the question on where each of those legislators stood on the issue of funding transit, to ensure that our systems would not merely survive, but thrive.
Through rallies and legislative visits in all corners of the state, our weekly participatory research, monthly communications calls, and regular statewide organizing discussions with hundreds of riders, we’re building a culture of transparent and collaborative community organizing and daylighting the budget processes that profoundly affect our lives but are often hidden behind closed doors.
3. It’s All About Effective Conversations
Mamdani describes how organizers in NYC developed a powerful communications strategy to complement their campaign. He highlights the importance of these tools to help riders easily plug in to the organizing, and a simple and clear message that connects what is happening in the legislature to people’s needs and experiences on the bus.
As Transit for All PA, we’re training all of our members to be organizers and effective communicators of our message: better transit is possible, better transit is necessary, and better transit is transformative. Good organizing starts with a good conversation, in which we ask questions to hear the needs of other riders, and to understand what their vision is for better transit. We then help draw the line between that vision and our shared statewide solutions, as well as the action that must be taken to achieve those solutions.
Like Zohran Mamdani suggested, canvassing with QR codes that allow riders to easily fill out letters directed to their own legislators has been a powerful tool to allow folks to take action in the moment, and get plugged into longer term organizing efforts for transit funding. As a result, we organized tens of thousands of riders to send over 190,000 (!) letters to our state elected leaders to fund the transit service we deserve. We empowered riders from across the state to lead their own canvasses and connect with their own communities and legislators with a Transit for All PA organizing toolkit.
Effective communications tools have been game-changing, but even more important are training our members as organizers and having a clear message to communicate. Through these efforts, we have successfully propelled transit to the top of the agenda in this year’s state budget negotiations.
4. Organize with Transit Riders, Everywhere.
Mamdani points out that we are nowhere near exhausting the communities we should organize alongside to win the transit we deserve!
We must organize with transit riders in all 67 counties of Pennsylvania, because transit is available in some form – as fixed route buses or shared ride paratransit services for older adults and people with disabilities – and needed in all 67 counties. Our small town and rural neighbors have been denied quality transit service for far too long: we aim to change that. Through our monthly Transit for All PA calls with small cities and rural communities, we are building solidarity across geographies to understand every community’s distinct needs and develop a shared statewide funding solution.
As Transit for All PA, we are also supporting a coalition led by and for disabled riders across the Commonwealth (Public Transit Access Coalition), to ensure that their needs are central to our demands, as well as a coalition focused on the intersection of social services access and public transit (Transit Resources to Access Care).
And finally, we cannot minimize the importance of solidarity and shared leadership with organized labor. Our transit worker sisters and brothers, who run our systems day in and day out, are the people who are most expert in the issues our current transit systems face. They are also the first to speak up about opportunities to make our transit service better. Moreover, there are millions of dollars in direct economic benefits generated from workers that manufacture the goods and services that support public transit. Those workers, too, have much to offer our organizing, and they have a lot at stake in this transit funding fight.