Keep the Lowcountry Working, Protect Public Transit and Affordable Housing

Save Lowcountry Transit & Affordable housing, Contact Your Representatives

Charleston, SC, USA- Starting in February 4, (the Birthday of Rosa Parks, Feb. 4) we will  mobilize workers and employers in the region to motivate our representatives in the US House and Senate to protect local public transit service and future plans like the LCRT and associated Transit Oriented Development efforts to build transit serviced affordable housing within our urban core. This effort is essential to the long term survival of the Lowcountry's Tourism, Hospitality, F&B, Educational and Medical Care (including elder care) economic sectors.

Image, Right, Remount Road & Rivers Station on the planned LCRT

In January Donald Trump and Elon Musk attempted to cut the federal grant funding which keeps CARTA, LINK and Tel-A-Ride operating.

Please call your federal representatives today and demand that Lowcountry Public Transit be funded and protected in Trump and Musk's "big bill."

Rep. Nancy Mace (202) 225-3176 Mace website contact page

Rep. James Clyburn (202) 225-3315 Clyburn website contact page

Sen. Lindsey Graham (202) 224-5972 Graham website contact page

Sen. Tim Scott Phone (202) 224-6121 Scott website contact page

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Mobility, Housing and Prosperity for a Future Lowcountry

Map of Planned Lowcountry Rapid Transit System

Image, left - Current route plan for the Lowcountry Rapid Transit System (LCRT) See  a video on the LCRT

Trumps same cuts would end plans for the Lowcountry Rapid Transit System and affordable housing efforts. The courts temporarily ordered Trump not to shut down funding previously approved by Congress. Trump and Musk are determined to implement these cuts, called for in the project 2025 document. Given the chaotic nature of breakneck national politics, we'll have to refer you to the news for what is happening today. 

This report from Transportation for America has a map showing possible cuts by state and congressional district with over 146 million dollars in cuts expected in SC. https://t4america.org/2025/02/05/unflooding-the-zone-what-do-the-trump-administrations-latest-actions-signal-for-transportation/

All these sectors have and will continue to need large numbers of service workers who struggle with a rising cost of living here, bottomed on skyrocketing prices for housing within our urban core. Downtown Charleston, Mount Pleasant and North Charleston once housed many of these workers within walking distance or a very short bus ride from their jobs. Gentrification is rapidly consuming the affordable housing left within walking distance of our centers of employment. The most affordable areas to live in the Lowcountry are currently Ladson and Goose Creek, currently two hours or more from the downtown tourism district and medical center by Transit. Parking in our employment centers is still disappearing, while demand increases. 

When CARTA almost completely shut down due to a funding failure 22 years ago for two years, the impact was drastic. Employers and workers struggled, but that was a region where downtown, North Charleston and Mount Pleasant still houses many of our service workers. Hardships during that shutdown destroyed lives and even resulted in deaths as workers were killed walking or biking to work along inadequate infrastructure and at least one suicide when a worker found their bicycle stolen, lost his job and was abandoned by his family. 

This time the impact of losing our transit and failing to address our rising lack of affordable workforce housing will be much worse. We have a vastly larger tourism sector now. We also have an aging population and a falling local birthrate. Most of the people moving to the Lowcountry are coming to retire, not to work.  Many will move into nursing homes and assisted living as they age. They need services. These elderly residents won't be producing them. Flush with wealth accumulated in areas with more robust economies, these seniors are prepared to outbid our hotels, restaurants and hospitals for service labor. 

Image, Right, Best Friends of Lowcoutry Transit members fought for 7 years to successful return public transit to Charleston's Beaches, with service returning to the Isle of Palms in August 2020. 2018, Memorial Weekend, Folly Beach

Compounding this problem is the effort to deport undocumented immigrant labor, which composes a significant part of the workers in these sectors now, as well as local agriculture and construction. As immigrants are forced out of the area, the pressure on the local service labor market will increase. The costs of employment will rise. The struggle to staff existing business will grow more challenging. 

These are known problems. Local governments and organizations like the Chamber of Commerce have known about this looming problem for over a decade. However, a long standing determination to maintain plantation derived social power structures inhibits them from engaging the workers they depend on. Anything which might inform workers that they are valuable parts of the community, increases labor power and exposes the vulnerability of those in control. 

Image, Right - Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit's Transit Complete the Penny Campaign delivered the margin of victory to obtain local funding for construction of the LCRT in 2016. 

The Lowcountry can't indulge its delusions any longer. We already have commercial spaces sitting empty downtown because business operators can't find the staff to open. If businesses can't operate profitably, the value of the real estate they lease can't be maintained. The effort to staff tourism connected businesses this Spring will be exceptionally challenging. Other cities have been actively recruiting prime service labor here for years, offering better transit, a lower cost of living and superior schools to young, healthy capable workers. 

We can continue to operate and improve our transit and build affordable housing in the Lowcountry. We should be doing a better job. However without federal funding, these efforts will end.

 You must call your Federal Representatives today, or better yet visit their local offices and let them know you can't hire people, earn income, pay rent or pay taxes without workers. 

For More Information 

about Best Friends and our 15 year effort to build, fund and protect better public transit in the SC Lowcountry

• Call Executive Director William Hamilton at (843) 870-5299 or email him at wjhamilton29464@gmail.com
• Follow us on Blue Sky at https://bsky.app/profile/wjhamilton29464.bsky.social
• Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/BFLowcountryTransit

Charleston Must Fight for a Sustainable Future of Transit Equity

On Wed. May 15, 2024 we expect to be confronted by another large pressure group from the Fairgrounds Organization attempting to pressure the CARTA Board into giving up plans for a Lowcountry Rapid Transit Stop at the Fairgrounds. Last month a group of nearly all elderly, white men outnumbered Transit advocates 50 to 1. Politicians make decisions by counting noses. 

2018 Folly Road Freedom Campaign for transit to the beach. While not bus goes to Folly Beach, we did win a weekend shuttle to the Isle of Palms.

Please join us to demonstrate and make our voices heard during the public comment period of the CARTA Board Meeting starting at 12:45 pm at the Offices of the BCD Council of Governments on Casper Padgett Way in N. Charleston, #12 CARTA Bus Route. 

The Fairgrounds are now the last stop on the Northern end of the Rapid Transit line since the plan to go to Summerville was torpedoed by that Town’s good ole boy’s political gang. Ladson, the area around the Fairgrounds and Lincolnville (Charleston’s County’s historically black town) are the regions’ most affordable housing opportunities now. 

With over a million open jobs in the national tourism industry, skilled hospitality workers are in high demand. Recruiters from Charlotte, Miami and Atlanta have been seen in Charleston in the past. If you are young, strong, and mentally stable with skills in hospitality, these recruiters will help you move to a city where your rent will be lower, the schools will be better, and you’ll be a short, highly reliable ride on good public transit to work. As a transit rider, I’ve seen people I’ve been on the bus with for years, shake those recruiters’ hands, leave the bus stop to go to Starbucks and never be seen again. Other people have been recruiting for the healthcare industry in other cities.

In its 350-year history, Charleston has never really cared about the quality of life of its working class. From colonization, through slavery, the suppression of the mechanics, reconstruction and segregation Charleston’s rulers have always been able to count on people with little power or choice to do the hard work from cultivating rice to cleaning the toilets of tourists. Inadequate transit, along with poor education and overpriced, inadequate housing have been the tools which maintain the money machine which is greased by racism and class privilege.

However, the 21st Century has brought greater connectivity and mobility to America’s working class. Thirty years ago, finding a possible job in Atlanta, Denver or Orlando would have required poking through the want ads of days old newspapers purchased at the Book Bag on King Street, that, and finding an apartment, and knowing how the area’s transit worked can now all be done on a smart phone in minutes. Schools can be rated, local crime statistics found, and necessities priced in seconds online from a bench at a bus stop.  It is no longer hard to leave. 

In the bitter, divided politics of Trump era America, the belief that everyone should pull themselves up by their bootstraps and buy a car so they can sit in traffic for hours a day may satisfy the lucky retired person, who finished paying for their fifty Thousand dollars house a decade ago. They simply won’t drive to their next meeting of the fair committee until rush hour is over. When they’re too old to drive, they’ll disappear into the carless underclass that doesn’t matter. 

However, such delusions do not solve the problems of young families trying to build a life here as well as relocating to a good, transit served neighborhood in another city will. Those cities which have combined good transit with better paying employment, more affordable housing, better schools, and lower crime will claim the reliable, capable workers the future demands. 

Charleston will not be winning its long war against the future which has seen it decline from one of the leading cities in the American colonies to a tourist’s amusement park over the last 200 years. Rice cultivation, phosphate mining and the Navy Yard are all long gone. The real estate for retirees’ industry will eventually exhaust the available high land. The ocean is rising. The expectations of tourists for something authentic and friendly won’t be supplied by skeleton staffing or robots. 

For the first time in the history of the Holy City, it will be forced to value the quality of life of its working class or accepting the reality of an economy where the work does not get done. 

I am aware that the Exchange Club provides charitable donations. I’ve been informed that they intend to weaponize those donations to force their will on the community by forcing area nonprofits to support them. Their role in funding child abuse prevention is given prominence. 

Charity has not and will never solve the Lowcountry’s problems. The fundamental problems in our economy require major treatment and surgery, not band aids. Our private, child abuse prevention programs are often incompetent, tainted with racism and class bias and serve the needs of the people who run them. Families need jobs that pay, transit that works, safe places to live and decent schools. Without this, those families will fail. I know this from personal experience from 35 years of serving as an unpaid attorney in court appointed DSS cases. I have been in court where parents were threatened with the loss of their children because they couldn’t get to charity funded child abuse treatment appointments because we don’t have transit that works. 

I have been accused by members of the Exchange Club of being a know nothing woke do-gooder that meddles in public affairs. I’m white enough to get their approval, but I do the rest wrong. I have in fact been legally blind my entire life. I have never and will never be able to drive an automobile. I have been nearly killed crossing highways on foot and on bicycle to get to places I’ve needed to go. I fish for rides. I’ve paid fortunes for cabs, limos, and ride share. I have missed innumerable events because the cost to go there was simply too high, from my Senior Prom to the Mt. Pleasant farmer’s market. I’ve spent thousands of hours sitting at bus stops since the first SCE&G bus blew by me without stopping in 1977 on Coleman Blvd because white people in Mt. Pleasant did not ride the bus back then until last weekend’s delightful trip to Container Bar on the #20. I’ve done some of that waiting on bus stop benches I built with my own hands and paid for with my own money. I understand the cruel power of the car.

Left- Working for passage of the 2016 referendum on Highway 78 near the Fairgrounds. Campaign materials were handed out to passing cars stopped in traffic during the fair and delivered to Fair Management at the Fairgrounds. 

I have been told to leave the Lowcountry my entire life because I can’t drive a car. I probably should have, long ago. It’s too late now. My family arrived in SC in 1695. We’ve fought the Indians, the French, The Redcoats, the Yankees, the Germans, and the Japanese. We’ve built two schools two churches and one Town. I plan to stay. fight it out here and have my ashes interred beside those of my wife Julia who died after four years of helping me in this fight. I would like my ashes to be carried to Magnolia Cemetery on the LCRT. 

My decision to stay isn’t going to be too much of a disappointment to anyone. However, the young family packing up to take its energy, intelligence and capacity for hard work elsewhere will be missed. Their children and their grandchildren will be missed too. When the empty restaurant spaces and unopened hotel rooms are common enough, perhaps Charleston’s ruling class will grasp what they’ve missed.

The Lowcountry Rapid Transit Line should be built in the form promised to voters in 2016 in  the half million dollar I26 Alt Study with a stop at the Fairgrounds, all the way to Summerville, connecting with our train station, running outside of traffic into downtown Charleston. Less won’t resolve our region’s growing workforce deficiency. Charleston’s indifference to the quality of life of ordinary working people is no longer sustainable. It must end. 

William J. Hamilton, III, Exec. Director, Best Friends of Lowcountry Tranist, wjhamilton29464@gmail.com or (843) 870-5299 

Century Forward- City of New Charleston

North Charleston was founded on June 12, 1972. City of New Charleston will depart from the Lowcountry’s obsession with the past to imagine the possibilities of a Transit enabled, future adapted North Charleston at its centennial, fifty years ahead of now. 

Upcoming Events- We do more than talk about the future

See our Facebook Transit Events page for upcoming transit oriented events in this effort. 

See our Lowcountry Up is Good page for events involving the Schools, Affordable Housing, and the Living wage efforts. 

Sponsors and Background

Image, Left- Community Shrine Gazebo Bus Stop Shelter in Chicora Community Garden, North Charleston.

Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit, Inc. & Lowcountry Up Is Good, PAC, Inc. have now been working towards a transit enabled North Charleston with many other organizations for 10 years. 

Marvin Pendarvis has been a partner in our efforts since he stepped on the #11 Dorchester Airport bus during his first campaign. He was impressed by the number of people riding in N. Charleston and shocked at how long and slow their bus trips were. From that moment, he's joined us in working for something better. So have many other officials and organizations focused on planning, affordable housing, human needs and education. 

Best Friends helped win the Transit Complete the Penny Campaign to fund construction of the LCRT in 2016. We worked with Rep. Marvin Pendarvis to obtain the SCDOT’s commitment to a complete streets policy in 2019 and are currently working with him to pass his Transit Oriented Development bill, no pending in the SC Legislature. In 2017 we canvassed every business we could reach along the full length of Rivers Ave. with information on the voter approved rapid transit project, helping start the ongoing transit planning process. In 2016 we build and deployed the Tiny House Fit for a King as part of what ultimately became a short lived tiny house village of five residences attached to a group home on Carner Ave. We’ve worked to improve the quality of life of residents in North Charleston with demonstrations and political actions to win the living wage and defend the independence of the community’s public schools. 

While we continue to work in other Lowcountry Communities and have dedicated projects on the Sea Islands, in Mt. Pleasant, in Lincolnville, Summerville and Ridgeville, we have always seen North Charleston as the Lowcountry’s essential hub. It still has functional communities focused on the needs of its own people. It has a magnificent store of installed infrastructure and will have the state’s first Rapid Transit System. While it struggles with problems and a sprawling, diverse landscape it has the potential for greatness as a home for the varied families of the future. 

The City of Charleston, while still essential to the region, has gentrified its urban care out of relevance to the future. It has largely become a tourist-oriented city of the past. It’s decision to accept having no portion of the planned rapid transit line within its boundaries, but instead to merely have LCRT buses operating in traffic south of Reynolds Ave. in N. Charleston is conclusive proof that while the future will happen to Charleston, the pressures of sea level rise and the need to accommodate competing for tourism income will shape its future.

A Year Long Effort Has Started 

Citadel Cadets and North Charleston Citizen, North Charleston Public School Teacher Jennifer Saunders planning a transit system for the Lowcountry at Park Circle Creamery in N. Charleston in October 2016 as  part of the Transit Complete the Penny Campaign. 

City of New Charleston will be a year long effort to imagine the transit enabled community of tomorrow which can grow up along and within one walkable mile of the LCRT line. 

The effort began on Feb. 23, 2023 when SC State Representative Marvin Pendarvis (D-CHS) introduced bill H. 4013 in the SC House of Representatives to amend Title 6 of the S. C. Code by adding Chapter 39 regarding Transit-Oriented Development Projects.

On March 1st. a lobbying, outreach team from Best Friends and Midland's Transit Riders went to the SC Statehouse to help build support for the Transit Oriented Bill, talking to over 250 people, including 50 members of the SC Legislature and SC DOT Transit office about the bill and planning a SC transit enabled future. We also made contact with over a dozen organizations representing the disabled, the Governor of SC, the University of SC and attended and leafleted a reception for all the State's transit agencies at the Columbia Convention Center. Co sponsors began signing on to the TOD bill by the end of the day. 

City of New Charleston will continue by organizing and funding a youth driven visioning project for the City’s future involving College and High School students across the state of South Carolina. These young citizens will be charged with imagining what the city could best become by its North Charleston centennial in 2072 and South Carolina’s Quadro Centennially in 2070. The students will use the internet and wireless technologies which have been integral to their life experience to share their work with the people of South Carolina, beginning with a preliminary statement of scope and goals before the end of the Spring, 2023 school term. 

An informal group discussion of the project is planned for Sunday Afternoon at Emergence, the burning may style event outside Summerville in April. 

There will be events sharing parts of the work with the community throughout the summer and early fall. Online and real world conferences, meetings and workshops will be held to both formulate detailed plans and to develop the real world capacity of these young people to lead the state towards a future which rewards its citizens with mobility, prosperity and the gifts of creative patrimony. 

North Charleston resident, the late Mary Smith, appearing as our Transit Fairy at the Atlanta International Transit Exhibition in 2018

The initial effort will conclude in late Fall of 2023 with the New Charleston Future Festival, where to the extent that we can, we’ll share all that they have learned and dreamed with the community and the entire state with participatory activities which will extend the creative process of shaping the future to everyone willing to join the effort. 

Once we have begun the future with the Festival, we’ll continue to support our young planners and visionaries as they join the traditional, often challenging effort to drive government controlled planning efforts towards the future they dream of, in N. Charleston an d across the state. 

The target for funding this effort is Eight Thousand, Five Hundred Dollars ($8,500.00) in cash funding, and an additional contribution in kind support of supplies, facilities and transportation services. Fifteen hundred dollars has already been raised by a grant of support from Marvin Pendarvis and the project can launch as soon as we have Twenty five hundred dollars committed, which will be sufficient to fund the largest visioning unit composed of undergraduates at one of the State’s Colleges or Universities for the first half of the project. 

More Information

Support and Contact Us

• You can support our continuing efforts for better transit by making a contribution online on Act Blue
• Contact State Rep. Maving Pendarvis through his office at the State Legislature in Columbia
• You can reach us by emailing executive director William Hamilton at wjhamilton29464@gmail.com or by calling 843-870-5299.

Pendarvis Introduces Bill to Accelerate Transit Oriented Development in SC

 

I

Image left- Representative Marvin Pendarvis rising the #11 CARTA Bus stopped at the Charleston International Airport. Since this image was taken a lighted shelter has replaced the basic outdoor bench at this stop.

North Charleston, SC- Legislation introduced Public Transit carefully fitted into SC communities which are allowed to leverage the mobility it offers to everyone will help create walkable, urbanized areas with lower crime, higher incomes, more rewarding civic and cultural life and less traffic congestion.

On Feb. 23, 2003, SC State Representative Marvin Pendarvis (D-CHS) introduced a bill H. 4013 in the SC House of Representatives to amend Title 6 of the S. C. Code by adding Chapter 39 regarding Transit-Oriented Development Projects. It has been Referred to House Committee on Ways and Means.

Image, Right, PlanningMap for N. Charleston Community improvement Meeting, 2018.

The district Pendarvis represents contains most of the separated busway section of the State’s first planned rapid transit system, the Lowcountry Rapid Transit System (LCRT) https://lowcountryrapidtransit.com/ online.  Charleston County voters approved funding for construction of the LCRT and other improvements to bus transit in November 2016. The LCRT is a Bus Rapid Transit system based on operation of articulated electric buses in dedicated bus only lanes, accelerated boarding and advanced electronic enabled wayfinding and fare payment.

The legislative findings set out in the bill begin by stating that, “Public Transit is a valuable element of providing mobility to the people of South Carolina and functions best in communities where density, walkable infrastructure, cycling and short distance transportation services can connect residents and workers efficiently between home, work, shopping, civic opportunities, recreation and education.” It goes on to note that transit benefits drivers by reducing congestion and making use of the existing roadways more efficient.

Image, Left, Children at N. Charleston Farmer's Market plannng model transit system for the Lowcountry on 12 x 16 foot map, October 2019

The bill notes that Transit benefits the disabled and other groups not often considered in making decisions about transportation planning, including “those who have lost their driver's license or lack insurance, reducing the number of illegal drivers on the road the costs of the collisions in which they are involved, which increases the cost of uninsured motorist insurance coverage.”

Unlike many bills introduced in the legislature which have been drafted by national special interest groups, this bill was drafted by Representative Pendarvis with the assistance of Lowcountry Transit riders, people who actually ride transit on a daily basis in his district. Research failed to find similar legislation in other states, so laws from other countries such as New Zealand and Canada were reviewed to help complete the proposed law. The law allows for establishing district and a district authority that can work with government and the private sector to build or redevelop neighborhoods, commercial properties and manufacturing facilities in areas where transit is or will be available.

Image, Right Jennifer  Saunders and the late Dave Crossley rampaging with Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit for passage of the half penny sales tax for Transit, Transportation and Greenspace during the Coastal Carolina Fair in October 2016.

The Berkeley Charleston Dorchester Council of Governments, The City of North Charleston, The City of Charleston and the Town of Lincolnville are already planning for improvements to the areas along the LCRT to create a safer, cleaner and more rewarding community where car ownership will not be a necessity. While this type of development can’t be constructed everywhere and may not be desired in other areas, its critical to the Elderly, Disabled, workers in Charleston’s critical hospitality Industry, Students and those otherwise unable or unwilling to drive to have some areas available in a region which are adapted to their needs.

Representative Pendarvis will now work with transit advocates, organizations working to build affordable housing and local governments to help the bill H. 4013 get the necessary committee hearings and votes in the house to cross over to the senate and ultimately be ratified by the Governor’s signature over the rest of the current two year legislative session. The LCRT is currently planned to begin rapid transit operation between the Fairgrounds in Ladson and MUSC in downtown Charleston in 2028.

Image, Left, Pizzeria Owner Ben D'Allesandro posting banner supporting improved transit in downtown Charleston, April 2017.

For more information on the Transit Oriented Development Bill see the full text at https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess125_2023-2024/bills/4013.htm or see the Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit, Inc. at www.bfltransit.com online. Representative Pendarvis can be contacted through his legislative office at (803) 212-6716 or via https://www.scstatehouse.gov/member.php?code=1457812326 online. Pendarvis is planning community forums to discuss this and other issues related to improving the quality of life in his district and elsewhere in SC in the future.

Help Summerville Escape Racism and Congestion Thursday, April 14

 Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit, Inc. and the Alston Foundation spent Monday preparing for Thursday, April 25’s 5:25 pro transit demonstration in Summerville by doing outreach in Dorchester County, reaching over 500 people in Summerville and Ridgeville.

Summerville Town Council

We were followed by the police. We learned that a cabal of government and government sponsored private sector nonprofits were devoting their Monday to deflecting our effort to restore Summerville’s link to the transit system in hopes of maintaining Summerville as a white flight refuge from the racially and economically diverse communities growing up around them. We encountered a pair of delightful Ukulele players.

The leadership of Summerville and their institutions gather around the campfire of racism and class hatred often without consciously realizing it. They describe it with code words like crime and quality of life. Sometimes they don’t even understand what they’re doing, like someone who toasts marshmallows over the coals left from a cross burning after the Klan has returned to their fish camp to drink beer.

Fifty years after desegregation, the practice of suburban racism is engrained the muscle memory of places like Summerville. The kids now running around blowing coal rolling filth on pedestrians probably don’t associate their “rednecking” with their Grandfather’s parking a burning cross in front of Linda Saylor’s Grandfather’s home while he kept them at outside the fence with a loaded shotgun informed by the certainty earned in WWI that he could, if necessary, kill people.

That’s why Linda’s home is surrounded by a Sears installed six-foot chain-link fence with the pointy fence top. I don’t know if Linda still has her grandfather’s shot gun. She keeps that fence locked. You do not what to encounter the psychotic pit bull she has chained in the back yard at night when it believes you aren’t welcome. It is from behind that moat of steel and teeth that Linda runs the Dorchester Unit of Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit and is planning Thursday’s demonstration. She’s also fighting a three woman war against the forced gentrification of Brownsville with her mother, aunt and Civil Rights hero Louise Brown. Linda makes excellent French toast. The house needs a dumpster, but her mother insists they must keep it all.

Original Southern terminus of the Transit Line

Our opposition in Summerville and beyond is powerful, well organized and backed by the Koch brothers. Americans for Prosperity is reenergized and working with Congresswoman Nancy Mace to help get her reelected. They’re not holding meetings about what they want Summerville to be. They prefer to work from behind the curtain. It’s hard for liberals and social justice activists to comprehend what politics is like when thousand-dollar contribution checks can be summoned by a single email. They can purchase control of Town Councils and School Boards for a few ten thousand of dollars, peanuts for the organizations which fund them from other states.

They've been able to get Summerville, Lincolnville and Ladson cut out of the transit line which has been in planning for 25 years. The planned line now ends at the Fairgrounds, miles from Summerville along  a road which lacks sidewalks.   

What these billionaires want in Summerville and throughout the South, is a culturally grounded bulwark against the rise of a racially and economically diverse culture of town and city living in the South. The Southeast is their racially grounded citadel from which they will make war against the rise of an America defined not by the color of people’s skin but by the content of their character. They want to be sure that the music of the song mentioned in King’s great speech, “Free at Last,” never rises from a racially diverse celebration on Hutchison Square or even Doty Park. If they can keep racism at the center of our shared lives, they can make America safe for the rich, two things intimately, but not necessarily connected.

Most of the people in Summerville don’t have a clue this is happening. They just know they spend more of every day trapped in their cars, desperately awaiting their weary reunion with their children who are waiting for a ride to a playdate or a takeout dinner because nobody has time left to cook. Those people hate developers and minorities because they’ve been taught to. They don’t understand that better, different types of development, supported by transit would work. They don’t get a chance to learn and know that all minorities are not criminals. Since they spend three hours a day trapped in their cars, parent with their cars and run the endless creeping errands with their cars, they’ll never learn otherwise.

Since they’re angry, they’ll vote for Trump and when he implodes whoever the Koch organization funds to replace him. Their funeral parades will crawl through the congestion suffocating Summerville with their survivors still believing what they really need are more lanes and lower taxes. The ukulele players sitting on the square on a sunny spring day getting pestered by my transit advocacy on Monday are just an inconsequential distraction, not the revolution they do not comprehend they need.

We’ll see you at Town Hall in Summerville on Thursday, April 14. It’s a significant day, the memorial of the Last Supper, Christ’s last stab at building community and his betrayal by someone funded by the billionaires of that time with 40 pieces of silver. We’re shooting for the shared and blessed supper. We’ll try to shut down the betrayal and return the promised transit line to Summerville. The demonstration starts at the opposite end of the square, near the location of Summerville’s lost train station and moves across the Square to the music of Eyes on the Prize to a short rally in front of Town Hall before the march upstairs to participate in the Town Council meeting, with the hope of putting the body and blood of democracy back into Summerville Town Government. Wear red. Bring your drum.

Full details on the April 14 protest and rally at https://www.facebook.com/BFLowcountryTransit

Information on the entire Summerville to the Sea effort at https://bfltransit.blogspot.com/2022/02/transit-equity-demands-for-sc.html

To Contact us call W Hamilton at 843-870-5299 or email mailto:wjhamilton29464@gmail.com?subject=Summerville%20FOIA%20Request%20Materials

When Honeysuckle and Crepe Myrtle bloom, We will rise!

 When the Honeysuckle and Crepe Myrtles bloom, we will rise! The coming end of the Pandemic and the end of the Trump administration this summer makes it likely that the energy and activity of the Lowcountry's progressive community will increase and an opportunity to recruit new resources and participation will arise.

Lowcountry Unity Flag honoring the late Mary Smith.

The losses of the last year and a half are drastic. We have buried some of our best people. Others have lost their homes or income. Our mental and physical health has declined. Personal relationships have ended and failed. Some of us have been forced into seclusion. Others have pressed on in their activism with little support and incredible levels of stress, confronting opposition (sometimes armed) of incredible aggression. We have lost crucial elections for US Senate and Congress with most of our grass roots organizing capacity siezed up in lockdown. The local progressive effort is more fragmented than ever. 

If we are to renew our struggle, we must refresh our courage and community. Our conservative opposition is deeply entrenched and remains empowered by it's culture of cruelty, perverted religion and vast economic support. 

If we are to retake some of the civic and social space we need to operate and live in, we must gather up the mutual support and joy that gives us power. If we do so, this summer presents the greatest opportunity to regenerate ourselves presented in our lifetimes. 

Starting in May

A series of community events, some already planned, give us the chance to take in the fresh air of hope.

It appears likely that at least a limited Spoleto Festival will take place in late May and early June and the Memorial weekend (marred last year by a Trump boat parade) may be our first real community Holiday in 15 months. Something coordinated with the Piccolo Spoleto Finale in Hampton Park Sat. June 12), a shared picnic would be simple and practical. 

Juneteeth celebrations across the Lowcountry give us an opportunity to bring people together. Several are already planned. We'll need to consciously emphasize the need to include and affirm the people isolated by the pandemic and to celebrate, as oppressed African Americans did in the first Juneteenth celebration, our survival. 

July 3, a major opportunity

Holiday memorial concert for Julia Hamilton, Musician Activist, 1958-2020. 

The Independence Day Weekend provides an important and necessary opportunity to redefine patriotism and America with a celebration which provides an alternative to the jingoistic, militarized and often politically weaponized gatherings most of us find ourselves joining family at. 

We would propose a diverse celebration on July 3 at a relatively secure inland location within Charleston County that combines food, art, dance, music and activism in ways which connect us in the manner we've been unable to enjoy for the last year and a half. This event would begin in late afternoon and conclude shortly after dark. Rather than emphasize speeches and express political and policy oriented activity, this would be a celebration of creativity, relationships, mutual validation and hope. If you can't do it on Zoom, this would be the place to try it. This should be a celebration which engages the hands, the body and the physical presence of each other, which cherishes the reality that we can share each other's space again. 

We're fairly confident that the pandemic will be largely resolved by July, with most of the population having it's second dose of vaccine. The July 3 event would be sponsored by a coalition of local organizations, with coordination being facilitated by Up is Good, Inc. 

If we have a strong, community affirming event on Saturday, July 3, our friends will either be equipped to move through their family celebrations with their Qannon uncle or have support to continue the celebration on July 4 while avoiding them. 

Hopefully other events can follow in July and August, including something celebrating the fact that transit service has been reestablished to the beach here for the first time. However logistical and strategic considerations make the beach an unattractive location for large scale progressive activity in an atmosphere where right wing groups might target the activity. Other groups will have the opportunity to step forward into leadership and the transformation of our remembered pain into love, courage and will. 

Finish with Pride

Food and clothing collection for pandemic victims, Dec. 2020.

The arch of events can wind up with Charleston Pride in the late Summer, an event which has long functioned as a well organized celebration of diversity and an opening for the Fall civic season. Like all local efforts, Pride will be recovering from the stress of the Pandemic and benefit from our organized support. It's parade and festival don't really require any adjustment from their established model to serve as a great finale to this effort. 

We hope to carry through this effort with branding that includes T-shirts, Buttons, Stickers and Flags so our presence can be seen and joined. We would present this to the Lowcountry with a simple, socially distanced press / social event in May. 

Mary Smith, in costume as Sylphide, Charleston Pride, 2017.

Each of these events should build on previous efforts and support the next. As the only major progressive enclave in South Carolina, a robust Summer season is essential to rebuilding the impulse for Equity, Equality and progress on the coast here.

We invite input and discussion about these ideas on the Lowcountry Up is Good Facebook Page.   You can also call William Hamilton at (843) 870-5299 or email him at wjhamilton29464@gmail.com. 

Black Rides Matter- Together We Go Forward!

Fighting for Better Transit on Folly Rd.

Fight for Better Lowcountry Transit before July 10.

In 2016, black voters in Charleston County delivered the margin of victory in the vote for the half penny sales tax. They were promised a rapid transit system to serve their communities in our urban core and improved bus service all the way to area beaches. They agreed to pay for this with a regressive sales tax, the burden of which falls most heavily upon the poor, disabled and elderly. Four years later, the promised improvements to bus service made in the half million dollar 2015 I26 alt study haven’t materialized. Over 40 million dollars of current transit funding has been diverted to a “Pay Go” plan for road construction, an interest free loan from transit riders to privileged drivers.

Six miles of the planned rapid transit line on highway 78 have been downgraded to in traffic operation. In Charleston a 1.5 mile abandoned railroad line will be wasted on a yuppie puppie partially privatized dog walking park with café’s for tourists and the rich while transit struggles to move on Meeting street. A Lincolnville resident will lose an hour a day sitting on a system which wasn’t what they were promised, voted for, or have paid for. The resulting system will be a waste of over 300 million dollars, not rapid, not a system and barely transit.

We have until July 10. Join us in the fight for transit which liberates us from the suffocating oppression of the automobile. Force our leaders to build a safe, reliable, fast transit system from Summerville to the Sea.

Summerville, Ladson, Lincolnville and Sangaree should Demand:

See our detailed Memo on BRT issues in this area- Summerville to the Sea

1. Rapid transit operation in dedicated lanes on Highway 78 from River’s Ave to Downtown Summerville.

2. Safe, comfortable, lighted stops which can be reached safely from the side of the road.

3. A system which can complete the trip from Line Street in downtown Charleston to downtown Summerville in 59 minutes.

4. Service all the way to Hutchison Square in Downtown Summerville with a sheltered stop in the business district near there.

5. Connecting Service in downtown Charleston at a safe, comfortable station hub on Line Street which connects to Folly Beach and the Isle of Palms.

North Charleston Should Demand:

Children in N. Charleston building a model transit system.

1. Affordable housing walkable connected to major stops in and around the old Navy Hospital and other locations.

2.  Improved bus service throughout N. Charleston, including half hour frequencies on major routes as called for by the Charleston Area Justice Ministry.

3. Build “Complete streets” through N. Charleston so riders can reach transit safely on foot, by connecting bus or by bike. Delay construction of a wider I-526 until after improved transit is constructed and operating.

Charleston, James Island, Mt. Pleasant and West Ashley should demand:

1. The BRT should operate on the abandoned railroad line into the city out of congested traffic to Line Street, through and as part of the Lowline Park System and include space therein for high quality stops and a regional transit hub at Line Street. Read our position on how the Lowline park system should be built to accommodate and be more successful with transit. 

2. Reliable and efficient service on the BRT and regular bus lines to allow the working people of Charleston to access employment without having to pay the city’s exploitive rents or struggle with downtown’s declining quality of ordinary life for working people.

3. Transit service prioritized over car traffic be established and maintained to the beaches at both Folly and Isle of Palms.

4. A memorial to Civil Rights and Transit Hero Mary Bowers and others who forced integration of Charleston’s streetcars in 1867. Read our Reconstruction Transit Equity history.

5. Planning for a coastal transit line along Highway 17 to begin immediately with operations to commence no later than June 1, 2025 from Awendaw to Red Top.

Act Now, Before July 10

· Go to our online version of this page for links, background and organizing tools at .

1- Contact us: 
www.blfltransit.com; 
wjhamilton29464@gmail.com or
Phone (843) 870-5299

2- Make your priorities known during the BCD COG’s Online Meeting until July 10, 2020. 

3- Copy your statements to our public blog post comment pages, this page is best. See below.

4- Join us on our Zoom Conferences Monday, July 6 and Wednesday, July 8 at 9 pm

Monday, July 6 at 9 pm.

Join Zoom Meeting
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Meeting ID: 827 4002 1976
Password: 666375
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Topic: Black Rides Matter Together We Go Forward CHS Wed. July 8

Time: Jul 8, 2020 09:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

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