Transit to the Atlantic, Summerville to the Sea

What We Need to Do

Millicent Middleton, Sea Island Unit Transit Advocate

The people of Summerville, Ladson and Lincolnville (hereinafter LinLadSum) have been telling us they want the rapid transit line completed for three years. It is time for the people of the North to drive the glacial and obscure planning process to completion and yank the concrete, asphalt and metal out of government to see it constructed and running from Summerville to the Sea.

The people of Ladson, Lincolnville and Summerville have the rights to demand a Bus Rapid Transit Line to Charleston which runs in its own, dedicated lanes, has comfortable stations and completes the trip in 59 minutes as promised in the I26 alt study . We must demand that now, before July 10, 2020 through their “LCRT online meeting” and our own socially distanced advocacy. We’re asking you to submit your comments at their online meeting and paste copies of what you tell them into the comments here so we can share it with other.

Transit Advocates Discover Unrest in the Land of the Cars

Pendarvis Campaign working on Rivers Ave.

State Rep. Marvin Pendarvis pushed us into the area, where we had done almost no work, to see what we could find. The results from Carol Dotterer and Louise Brown’s initial canvass were a shock. (Note: Marvin Pendarvis has not approved the content of this blog. He doesn’t control us. We don’t control him. He is happy to talk about his own views on transit and transportation issues and has introduced five bills on the subject.)

Despite the fading exurban landscape (now turning into subdivisions and apartments) and abundance of pickup trucks, people along Highway 78 were ready for transit. In Lincolnville, we met people who had moved here from New York to take care of elderly family members and become imprisoned in immobility. We found the area’s largest business incubator, not in a shiny government subsidized building downtown, but in the Ladson Flea Market. They were ready. Nobody had even talked to Lincolnville about the project which was to pass through their town, but they were ready. They reminded us their town had been founded by African Americans who sought freedom with their own, independent town and mobility through their connection to the Railroad. In downtown Summerville we found a business district struggling with parking and traffic issues full of people ready to ride.

Transit Advocates in downtown Summerville.

Carol and Louise also found failure. Streets and communities lacked sidewalks. The existing LINK bus service was unreliable and infrequent even though they had delightful drivers who simply wouldn’t do impossible things with a bus. Attendance at the Coastal Carolina Fair had plummeted over the years due to traffic problems which had now cured themselves. In nearby Sangaree, we found an aging 1980s large scale development stripped of its bus service where poverty and immobility were reducing resident’s quality of life. We attempted to leaflet the Summerville Senior Center, where they called the Police Department to run our quiet leafleting effort off their property, we saw a man walk out to the edge of their property, old and frail, visit a tree alone and then struggle back with his cane. Had their been barbed wire around the perimeter, it wouldn’t have been a more effective prison for him.

Autocentric Oppression

Carol Dotterer with BRT Survey mark

The car is mandatory in LinLadSum. It dominates the landscape, the politics, and the lives of people. Those who have one, are slaves to it, spending as much as three hours a day locked inside it. Running simple errands might take an hour. They must buy more cars for their teenaged children in hopes they can escape the unending trial of parent as chauffer between the empty communities where nothing happens and the remote soccer fields and shopping centers where time can be somewhat better spent. The empty houses surrounded by the bare spots in the grass where all these expensive, sometimes broken cars are parked are barely homes. They’re places full of people so busy and exhausted trying to go somewhere that no one is really there. It’s cruel and stupid. It has to end.

For the elderly, poor, disabled, and young who don’t have access to the automobile. Survival is a humiliating marathon of begging for rides, calling Uber and doing without. There are desperately needed affordable apartments in Lincolnville sitting empty because you cannot survive there without a car and many elderly people have outlived or live far from their families. For the carless of Ladson, trip the grocery store is a goal requiring days of planning for the starts to align. A trip for pleasure or to explore the landscape tourists travel from around the world to see is an unimaginable luxury. The precious begged for rides must be conserved for the doctor, pharmacy and store. If you can walk to the LINK route, the bus may not show up at all or simply drive past. There is no bench or shelter to wait.

LinLadSum Does Not Have to be this Way

It does not have to be this way. Ladson, Lincolnville and Summerville have public transit which would embarrass a third world country. We’ve met people who know from personal experience that it is inferior to what they have in Ethiopia. Our Latino friends in Ladson assure it Brazil is better.

BLFT staff with transit planning activity

Bad transit preserves the political power of the men (they are almost all men) who fear what unleashing the creativity, citizenship and power of people in their region might do to their eroding grip on control. Parents who can show up for meetings. Seniors who can visit each other without being protected from transit leafleting. Young people who can explore and learn about the world. Freedom remains a dangerous thing.

The voters of Charleston County have already appropriated 250 million dollars to build and operate a Bus Rapid Transit Line to Summerville in their 2016 half penny sales tax referendum. The people of Ladson and Lincolnville have been paying for it with higher sales taxes since May of 2017. In Summerville, the tiny section needed probably doesn’t require a bond referendum.

We were promised a trip from downtown Charleston to Summerville in 59 minutes. Recently the Convil of Governments has proposed a system which runs in ordinary traffic from Charleston Southern to the edge of Downtown Summerville. Politicians in Summerville have proposed a Park and Ride lot on 5^th Avenue which would be five long blocks from Hutchison Square. The fact that someone might want to walk to or from the Bus Rapid Tranist system to downtown Summerville doesn’t seem to matter to them. They’re building a system for people to drive cars to parking lots to fit in the car saturated world they feel secure in.

Failure Alert

Lincolnville Town Hall

A Rapid Transit System which attempts to operate in regular traffic on the long, congested six miles of Highway 78 will fail. It won’t be rapid. It will be snarled in Traffic Congestion. It won’t be system because it won’t be able to keep a schedule any better than the exasperated drivers who can’t tell their wives, husbands and children when they might get home in their cars now. Finally, it won’t be transit because few people will ride it. Slow buses which wander around and maybe show up somewhere sooner or don’t work. In theory you can take the #1 CARTA Express to the Otranto Park and Ride and the LINK to Summerville and complete the trip (to the edge of town) in an hour and 28 minutues. In practice my best time, in several tries, has been two hours. It once took 2 hours and 45 minutes, when Ironcially, I attempted to take transit to a transit and road planning meeting at Azalea Park.

A few weeks ago, Lowcountry Up is Good, a locally based political action committee leafleted parts of Ladson in a lightening storm with the help of young volunteers organized by Linda Saylor. It was the last day before the election. When we told the kids there was no tomorrow, to just come back in. They asked if their efforts might decide the election. I told them they could. They hurled the doors of the van open and visited 250 houses in the driving rain while thunder and lighting blasted around them.

Those young people deserve a world they can grow in, explore, and prosper in. It we build a world which doesn’t do that, they’ll destroy us and build their own. The tired priorities of old men who like things as they are, slow, isolating and dysfunctional, need to get out of the way.

What LinLadSum Residents Need to Do Now

Go to their online LCRT meeting.Demand what you have paid for and been promised:

• 

  Help us get their attention
  

  Rapid transit operations in dedicated lanes on Highway 78 from River’s Ave to the edge of Downtown Summerville.
• Safe, comfortable, lighted stops which can be reached safely from the side of the road.
• A system which can complete the trip from Line Street in downtown Charleston to downtown Summerville in 59 minutes. 
• Service all the way to Hutchison Square in Downtown Summerville with a stop in the business district near there.
• Connecting Service in downtown Charleston at a safe, comfortable station on Line Street which connects to Folly Beach and the Isle of Palms.

If you want something more, don’t stop there. If you are in Ridgeville, tell them it needs to come to where you live. Linda Saylor and the lightning crew are working for you in Summerville, but they need a lot of help.

We have other blogs with more information on this project:

• Dhaka BRT Line 3 (Gazipur to Airport) If you think USA is #1, get a stiff drink before watching this. This is state of the art BRT. 
• Transit Enable the Lowline A look at the big mistake being planned for the South end of the BRT line.
• Progress is Possible (General Overview) 
• Lowcountry Futurescape
  
• Christian King answers 10 questions about transit, the best Candidate response we've ever received.

Proterra Electric Bus made in SC

Then take whatever you’ve told them at their online meeting and copy it into to comments to this blog post where the public can see it. The COG has already told Charleston County Council that all 1500 comments submitted through their online meeting are positive. Let’s put our demands where they can be shared and known. We’ll put hard copies of what you say here in front of your leaders and try to make them ready it. If that doesn’t work, we’ll set up banners by the roadway big enough for them to read when they’re not using their cell phone to tell their wives and husbands they’ll be stuck in traffic for another hour.

Written by 
William J. Hamilton, III
Executive Director, Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit
(843) 870-5299
wjhamilton29464@gmail.com

Public Transit, Politics and Protest in the SC Lowcountry Now

Signing the Community Commitment to Transit

Until recently, establishment power in the United States preferred to retain control by avoiding overt oppressive violence. One of the ways this was accomplished was by building a landscape and transportation system which marginalizes the poor, disabled, young and senior citizens. These people have time, energy and motivation to commit to social justice movements and keeping them immobile renders them silent. Please don't add to their oppression by making a car and driver's license the price of entry to your protest event or campaign. Don't be complicit and allowing our precious transit vehicles to become instruments of oppression.

Make Sure your Campaign or Event can Be Reached on Transit

We believe it is essential that protest and political activity be planned for times and places where transit riders can reach them. A campaign or organization which chooses to plan without regard to transit access tells tens of thousands of transit dependent necessity riders that they're not welcome sand they should vote for someone else. It also tells environmentalists and choice riders that they must use a car, with its attendant social and environmental damage, to reach their event. Many people find driving the Charleston's angry traffic full of stressed people to be very taxing and more and more people refuse to do it. Those that do arrive at your event already worn down by the cruelty and violence of traffic.

Get your Prius Coal Rolled or tailgated by a white pickup and you'll know what we mean. In these stressed, angry times the fight trough traffic is often not worth it.

The late Mary Smith, appearing at Gay Pride as Syphide

We worked with the Marvin Pendarvis campaign to design a day long event on Saturday which puts serious, change making political activity in places where it can be reached by transit (with the exception of Summerville, which has not weekend service.) We're also using Bikes as part of the effort. Every event of the day is within a two block walk, on sidewalks of a stop on the #10 Rivers Ave. Bus line. The 9 am breakfast is one block from Superstop.

Remember, being transit enabled includes a safe trip home afterwards. Transit service ends early in some places. Few of our bus lines run past 8 pm and some riders must make a connection to another route to complete their trip. All trips can planned on Google Transit locally now.

Superstop is served by six different bus lines and is the easiest place for a transit rider to reach in teh region.

We're ready to help any campaign, Democratic, Republican or Independent plan events which are transit enabled. Just call William Hamilton, (843) 870-5299. We can usually work through it on zoom or over the phone.

Here is the event announcement for the Pendavis event. https://www.facebook.com/events/1192814577724690/

Opposition to the Use of Transit Vehicles to Facilitate Mass Arrests

Transit Campaign, 2016 Roadside Pitch on Highway 78

Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit opposes use of CARTA and LINK Transit vehicles to facilitate mass arrests in the Lowcountry. Transit vehicles are for bringing freedom and mobility to people, not oppression. We joined with our national coalition of transit, labor and social justice leaders in issuing this statement. As of this time, we are not aware of plans to mis use our local transit vehicles in this fashion, but with major actions planned for this weekend, we want to be on record and will be issuing a statement to the press today. This detailed release has information on what has happened in other cities. If you are planning an action, you should read the accounts from other places. https://labor4sustainability.ourpowerbase.net/civicrm/mailing/view?reset=1&id=487&fbclid=IwAR0nthrsm9NoKUQEFxrjcd1KU4lmiH0bnMMaq1M5dbMDzroXaWgD5ObKL98.

Plans for May 4th. Progressive Community Circle Rally Advance in Charleston, SC area

Leadership for Nov. 4^th Environmental and Social Justice Community Circle Rally Stepping Forward

Charleston, SC, USA- Leadership for the East, Environmental Justice; the West, social and economic justice; and the the South, family and community have stepped forward to lead the formation of the Community Circle at the planned May 4^th rally in the SC Lowcountry.

New Banner Illustration for Event Postings

Leadership in the Time of the Virus

Environmental activist Carol Dotterer will hold the Eastern Position on the Circle. To the South, Christian King, director of Pink House, a West Ashley neighborhood resource center will take charge. Erin McKee, Union Leader will coordinate the western quadrant of the circle. Jesse Williams, Charleston County Council candidate and North Charleston Community activist will lead the safety ranger team. William Hamilton, Attorney and Executive director of the Up is Good, PAC will provide overall leadership. Off site social media will be coordinated by Todd Chas, founder of the Goodsharing.net social network for Charleston area progressive activism.

Wendell Galliard, SC Legislator, has stepped up to work with local community leaders to find an appropriate location for the socially distanced demonstration in Charleston or North Charleston with proposed locations including Brittlebank Park on the Ashley River, the greensward at Riverfront park in N. Charleston, locations around the Felix C. Davis Center in Park Circle and the front lawn of the old Navy Hospital.

6 pm, Monday, May 4 has been selected as the time for the rally. A new graphic for social media postings has been prepared. A new summary event and social distancing plan for the event has been issued, dated. April 27. Previous versions are now out of date. A more more detailed operational plan is being drafted and will be reviewed during a Thursday, 9 pm zoom conference.

Possible Rally Footprint at N. Chas. Riverfront Park

Plans for social distancing at the rally are being refined now. Over 200 people will be able to gather without making contact which might transmit the Covid-19 virus. A group of ranger volunteers have been assembled to patrol the demonstration to prevent the sort of careless, instinctive social actions which can transmit the virus. The rally will gather separated household groups around a circle with a radius of 98.6 feet with speakers and musicians in the center. Stations, marked by surveyor’s flags will be spaced 12 feet apart around the circumference of the circle and participants, who must be in a household group isolating together must stay within arm’s length of their assigned flag during the event. Music, speakers and leadership will emanate from the circle’s center.  Input from the stations will be facilitated by FRS radio links provided by the rangers.

A team of off site social media experts has been organized who will work from their homes or places of isolation during the rally to capture and transmit content generated on the ground, in the center of and around the circle. The event will be live streamed on Zoom and Facebook.

Local Effort Connected to Continental #EarthDay2Mayday Mobilization

Lowcountry Up Is Good, PAC 2016 Referendum Campaign

The rally is part of the #CHS #EARTH RISING, a 12 day series of over 20 virtual and real world actions to reenergize the struggle for Environmental and Social Justice in the SC Lowcountry (USA). All planned events comply with social distancing guidelines and best practices. Organizers are challenging what they see as a right wing takeover of the civic square and free speech space in SC society. The effort is part of a continental #EarthDay2MayDay mobilization running from the 50^th. Anniversary of the 1^st Mayday to the 50^th Anniversary of the Kent State Shootings and Charleston’s own Right to Ride Day commemorating Mary Bower’s reconstruction era victory in her fight to desegregate Charleston’s horse drawn streetcars in 1867, considered the first Civil Rights victory in Charleston’s 350 year history.

Other events included in #CHS #EARTHRISING are community participation in CARTA’s online board meeting Wednesday, immediately followed by a community response on Zoom. On Thursday, a masked avenger will deliver handmade, artisan face masks to local leaders. On Wednesday evening Millicent Middleton will webcast a session of Wine Down Wednesday from Johns Island and local socialists will present a night class on Marx.

Carol Dotterer discusses transit with community member.

On Friday, May Day, a banner demanding a return of public transit to Charleston beaches will be pitched along a major roadway and a live stream will be offered. Legislator/Chef JA Moore will sell lunches which include a gourmet snack provided to local healthcare workers and first responders on Friday called "Feed it Forward." The East Side Community Pot Luck is being supported on Sunday. The effort concludes with the Community Circle Rally on Monday at 6 pm. All events are on the calendar at https://www.goodsharing.net/events on Goodsharing.net online.

Updates and More Information

Updates on planning are posted several times a day to the #CHS #EARTHRISING group on Goodsharing.net, Charleston’s new social network for progressive activism, at https://www.goodsharing.net/groups/2218670/ online. Those wishing to contact the organizers may call (843) 870-5299 or email wjhamilton29465@gmail.com.

END END END

For more information contact W. Hamilton (843) 870-5299 or email wjhamilton29464@gmail.com  

West and South Point Leaders for May 4th. #chs #EARTHRISING Community Circle Rally Selected

West and South Point Leaders for May 4^th. Community Circle Rally Selected

Charleston, SC, USA, April 26, 2020- Erin McKee (West, Social and Economic Justice) and Christian King  (South, Community and Family) have stepped up to the Circle.

Cardinal Point Leaders for South and West Selected

The Good Old Day, We don't do this anymore

Erin McKee is a local union leader with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. The electrical union has a long and necessary history of dealing with safety issues with physical proximity elements. McKee has spent decades working as a union leader. Earlier in her career she worked as a flight attendant, dealing with safety issues, including the transmission of illness on aircraft. She’s a determined advocate for a $15 an hour minimum wage and workers rights in SC. Erin will take up the West position on the circle and be responsible for supervision and organization of those demonstrator’s stations between the Western point and North where people working for Social and Economic justice will stand at numbered stations along the circle, 12 feet apart.

Christian King, Executive Director of Pink House, a community support organization located West of the Ashley will take up the South location, dedicated to Family and Community. Pink House provides tutoring for children in their area, enrichment activities, food support and labors to build up human dignity in the neighborhoods East of Citadel Mall. King is also a Christian minister and leads the West Ashly unit of Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit.

Leaders for the North and East Locations are now being selected. William Hamilton, Attorney and Executive Director of Lowcountry Up is Good, PAC and Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit and a technical team from Up Is Good will run the center of the circle, where speakers, art and music will originate. A separate team of online communicators, off site will amplify and retransmit elements of the event to virtual participants. Spring 2020, a new song by local activist Sharon Robles has been selected as the Anthem of the gathering. It’s part of the nationwide #Earthday2Mayday mass mobilization.

Plans for and Reasons for the Rally

Piston Cap from Best Friend

Plans for the May 4, Community Circle Rally, a socially distanced real world gathering for renewed work to rebuild family, community, social and economic justice, environmental justice and Government and world leadership is currently recruiting leadership to take up the cardinal leadership points on the 197.2 feet in diameter circle of community that participants will take up stations around at 6 pm on Monday, May 4^th, the anniversary of the day Charlestonian Mary Bowers gained the right to ride the City’s Horse Drawn Streetcars in what may have been the Lowcountry’s first Civil Rights victory in 1867. It is also the 50^th. Anniversary of the Kent State shootings.

The Community Circle Rally has been conceived as a way to enable renewal of a progressive presence for Social and Economic Justice in the public physical and mental space. Our public squares have been monopolized by armed groups of anti science reactionaries focused on weapon ownership, anti-immigrant activities and resistance to public health measures implemented to contain the spread. These gatherings have been characterized by a dangerous and unconsidered disregard for the likelihood of biological hazard transmission of the Covid-19. A summary version of the safety and operation plan for the rally is now online in the Goodsharing.net event listing for the rally as text and a downloadable PDF.

   

More Information

We can't do this anymore either. 

For more information about the rally see postings on Goodsharing.net, the Lowcountry’s new social media platform at https://www.goodsharing.net/groups/2218670/ or you and contact William Hamilton at wjhamilton29464@gmail.com or (843) 870-5299.

Stand for Better Transit

Come Stand With Mary in Defiance of the Redneck Reactionaries in SC or
How a Square White Guy & Jesse are Trying to Build 
a Big Colorful Circle While People Get Sick

Sidewalk Pitch for #CHS #EARTHRISING and #HEROESMOVINGHEROES. Part of #EARTHDAY2MAYDAY

Jesse William talks to drivers waiting for the light to change.

Charleston, SC, USA, April 24, 2020- There were two demonstrations in South Carolina today. One was about the future, human dignity and saving  the planet in Charleston. The other, around the Statehouse, was a gaggle of violent ignorance, demanding that the workers of SC be fed into the grinder of the Coronavirus epidemic in the service of Donald Trump’s tiresome cortege of fear and hate.

Since stupidity and prejudice gets more publicity than it deserves, I thought I would tell you about today’s street corner banner pitch for better public transit that was part of #CHS #EARTHRISING and #HEROESMOVINGHEROES.  At the intersection of Meeting Street and the I26 onramp, Jesse Williams, activist and candidate for Charleston County Council and William Hamilton, Attorney and Executive director of Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit. This location was half a block from the former site of Charleston-s tent city of homeless people, cleared out four years ago.

At the North end of what was once Charleston’s now forgotten street car system that Mary fought to ride (her story later) and a few hundred feet from the planned route of the long promised, mostly paid for, over planned and as yet unconstructed bus rapid transit line, we made our stand while the rednecks surrounded the statehouse.

This banner faced the I26 on ramp

We pitched large banners declaring that it would be “Better on the BRT” an long delayed rapid  transit line between Summerville and Charleston we helped win voter approval of four years ago. Since then we’ve been fighting to force our elected leaders to spend the sales taxes we won for them on the transit system they promised to build. We have that promise in writing, incidentally.

The other banner, painted by the transit deprived people of the Johns and Wadamalaw Islands, declared “Sea Island Transit, There is Power in Togetherness,”  That one was so well received in it’s outdoor debut that Christian King of West Ashely started a project to create a large banner for their campaign to increase transit frequency there. We also have a twenty foot monster that demands bus service be returned to area beaches. That one is going up somewhere appropriate on Mayday.  We have tool boxes of bungee cords, rope, tent stakes and zip ties to put these up and keep them up in the wind.

Sticking It by the Side of the Road

Every pitch is different. This one’s curse was hidden concrete underground. Plastic tent stakes cannot be pounded into it with a rubber mallet. We finally found a soft spot. Jesse put up the chairs and cranked up our sound system and we were ready to go online.

Meta demo- This passerby  livestreams us livestreaming him

There are lots of people better at livestreaming that we are. Most of them aren’t putting up banners, greeting traffic and trying to manage a phone attached to the tripod with medical tape because the phone clip on the tripod broke. Tape is not an adequate substitute.  We finally got a shaky stream running shortly after 3 pm, as planned.  Then we had to finish staking up the other signs and banners. After that, when the tent stakes got pulled out in the wind due to soft ground, we put them up again.

It took us a while to get everything working but we get it all happening about 45 minutes into the stream. We call out our US Senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, greet bus drivers, meet the public and wave at all the cars slowing down for a peek at the resistance.  You can see how we did on the record. The first 45 minutes are full of putting stuff up and the phone falling off the tripod. It isn’t exactly Avatar or Casablanca after that, but we hold it together for about 45 minutes until our failure to connect the booster battery to the phone catches up with us and we go dark.

https://www.facebook.com/BFLowcountryTransit/videos/2540528476220419/?t=2773

Jesse worked at it hard, pushing through the mask and helping  out. We got it done. We threatened non- one. People smiled. The young people walked by reveling in the spring with the soulless pleasure that their doctors prescribe for them. They seemed unworried, but they should be. We were that small, persistent   voice among the noise warning the redneck army the future has it supporters here, even in reddest, most backward South Carolina.

Not Staying Home, Managing the Social Distance

Folly Beach Hates sent the Police to take this banner down. 

We wore masks and gloves and got out of the house.  We’re going to pitch our big “Bring Buses Back to our Beaches” banner on Mayday, to remind the community of the fierce injustice of relying on the low wage service labor of thousands of transit riders to keep it’s tourism economy working while refusing, year after year, to offer those without a car a way to take their children to the beach. 

The angry men with guns in white pickups demanded the beaches be reopened to them. The governor gave that to them. The people who own the governments that control access to those beaches then closed them again, sort of. That was injustice, the white pickup army declared. The people on the beaches and the shite pickup guys still remember the time when there was a gate on folly road that black people were only allowed to pass if they had a job cleaning a white person’s beachhouse. They want that world back.  We’ve got twenty feet of hell no to put up on the workers day. We’ll be livestreaming then too.

We couldn’t stand by while the white pickup rednecks for the exurbs started their government takeover in SC. We gathered the weary, frightened survivors of our long, mostly losing struggle here on the phone and cajoled them into putting on their masks and picking up their flags. We begged, we promised and occasionally, we lied. Some came. More are coming. We’ve put together 12 days of struggle in the Lowcountry and Charleston and branded it #CHS #EARTHRISING, a part of the larger #EarthDay2MayDay celebration. Ours goes past Earthday because we needed to reach an anniversary in a city where the past from Francis Marion to the Civil War casts a long, dark shadow in our shared lives.

Sol Legare Island Transit Activists

May  4, is the 50^th. Anniversary of the Kent State shootings. It is also the 153^rd anniversary of the date Mary Bowers, a free woman of color, won the right to ride for all in Charleston. It was a month-long campaign that proves Mary would have consider us wimps. Mary’s approach to change was breaking things and setting them on fire.  Riots surged around police stations ended by shaky alliance confrontations with ex Confederate white police officers and very black Civil War Veteran US Army occupation forces. Mary wanted to ride the new horse drawn streetcars. They represented the future. So did her new freedom. The campaign began after a mass organizing meeting for the black reconstructionist Republican party in SC on Marion Square.  Mary decided to ride even though the “colored cars” were still allegedly on order. The conductor put her off. She said she would dismount, but there would be trouble.

Mary Does Not Do Zoom, She Summons Stones

Mary did not convene a zoom meeting to propound the value or her online petition and beg for donations for her new nonprofit on act blue. Mary did not beg for permits and pester Susan Dunn over at the ACLU. She went out and found a crowd. They found cobblestones. There was shortly a grave shortage or window glass. Charleston was then a city which had only two years before had so many windows blown out by the union bombardment that a yankee reporter, walking  through the weed wild streets South of Broad said the wagon ruts appeared to be paved in diamonds. After a month, General Scott commander of the Freedman’s Bureau suggested the street car company allow everyone to ride without discrimination as the new reconstruction act required. The board of directors held a meeting and concluded the implied idea that black federal troops would be riding streetcars with bayonets to increase the racial sensitivity of the conductors would be bad for business. On May 4^th the affirmed the right of all to ride.

Talking to a Member of the CARTA Board

It has taken me ten years of advocacy to get new bus shelters up in Charleston and the long promised rapid transit line that votes agreed to fund in 2016 is still only a plan after four years. We need to be shovel ready now.  It took Rosa Parks and the mighty Martin Luther King over a year to desegregate the buses of Montgomery Alabama. It took Mary only a month to liberate the Holy City’s streetcars. Of course Mary broke and burned things, lots of them apparently. So many, in fact, that the conservative newspaper refused to admit it had happened.

Evidently breaking things accelerates the rate of progress on social justice in Charleston. I suppose that’s why they don’t tell the tourists about Mary Bowers and why she doesn’t appear in our kid’s school books. I still don’t advise setting cities on fire to change them. However, it apparently works.  If the redneck army wants to escalate, Mary has warned them about where we can go and who wins we do.  Perhaps our elected officials should listen to people who don’t bring assault rifles loaded with thirty round clips of live ammo to their rallies. I and Jesse saw police officers all afternoon, every one of them glad to see us. Let’s keep it that way if we can.  We buried nine friends here after Dylan Roof shot up a prayer meeting at Mother Emanuel Church five years ago. Violence has no charm for us.

Mending the Circle, Claiming the Center

On May 4, her day and the day of the martyrs of Kent State, we’re planning a socially distanced demonstration in the Lowcountry, a great circular gathering. The circle has a radius of 98.6 feet and family groups will gather around the 300 foot circumference 12 feet apart. Speakers and musicians will take the center and the noise we make will move out through those gathered to the community and across the World Wide Web. We will restore the fractured circle of community and reclaim the center. The North axis will be dedicated to leadership and Government. The South axis point to family and community. The East will be dedicated to environmental justice. The west to social justice. To learn more, see the #Earthrising Rally event listing on Charleston’s new social network for Activists www.goodsharing.net

Even in the midst of this epidemic, we cannot surrender access to the roadside and public square. We can’t agree to stand on the street while our transit system serves the priorities of tourists instead of the hard working people who serve them. We can’t stand quietyly playing TV on Zoom while people are forced to return to work without even the flimsy protection of an 80 cent disposable mask. We are not their children, we are not disposalble pieces of meat and as Mary Bowers knew, we should not be slaves.

END END END

By William J. Hamilton, III
Attorney, Executive Director
Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit
wjhamilton29464@gmail.com
(843) 870-5299

Charleston Toots a Salute to Transit Drivers Friday Afternoon

Charleston Toots a Salute to Transit Drivers Friday Afternoon, Apr 24

Due to expected high winds and storms, this event has been moved to Friday

Charleston, SC- Friday, April 24^th. From 3 to 5 pm (note new date due to weather) Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit, is asking the Charleston, SC community to join us in saluting our Transit Operators, #herosmovingheros as they take our medical care workers home at the end of the work day on CARTA’s buses. We'll pitch our Power in Togetherness Banner (above) at the intersection of Meeting Street and the I26 onramp, a block north of Huger St.) where several major bus routes taking people to and from our Medical Complex pass. We’ll be positioned on the NW corner. The closest nearby address is just to the North at 623 Meeting St, Charleston, SC 29403-4222, United States.

Transit drivers across the US are moving people to work in our emergency response, healthcare facilities and volunteer organizations at the grass roots national response to Covid-19 evolves. Transit vehicles have been repurposed to deliver emergency food supplies and meals for children who are not in school. Operators have been exposed to the virus, many of them senior drivers with millions of miles driven behind them. Several have already died. Locally riders are asked to wear masks. CARTA drivers are now protected by a plastic curtain. Buses are being sanitized daily. Riders are being asked to limit travel to only essential trips.

You’ll be able to follow the effort and help us spread awareness online by connecting to the Facebook Live video stream well be sending out from the corner. You can obtain updates and get background on Charlestons now social network for activists at  #CHS #EARTHRISING discussion group on www.goodsharing.net  This effort will operate at our strict social distancing standard of 10 feet.

You’ll be able to follow the effort and help us spread awareness online by connecting to the Facebook Live video stream well be sending out from the corner. You can obtain updates and get background on Charleston’s new social network for activists at  #CHS #EARTHRISING discussion group on www.goodsharing.net    This event is part of #CHS #EARTHRISING, a twelve day series of events planned to reinvigorate the struggle for Social and Economic Justice in the South Carolina Lowcountry.

Have ideas, give us a call at (843) 870-5299 or Email wjhamilton29464@gmail.com

Transportation Equity after the Pandemic by Charlie Smith Video Online

We've just posted a video version of Charlie Smith's great article on the future of Transportation here in Charleston and the Lowcountry. We asked him to cut his message down, record it in his own, authentic voice of local leadership and made it the soundtrack of a video. If you want to read his original column. you can find it on Charleston Currents, titles FOCUS, Smith: Pandemic lesson: Time to stop the asphalt gravy train

Everyone maintained radical social distancing during the production of this video. A musical video with the theme Together, We Go Forward is now in development.

Charlie Smith

Smith's article is well worth reading and sharing. He writes in part, "When the corona virus quarantine is over, let’s be sure to remember one of the most important lessons that we have learned: Let’s remember what it was like living in Charleston without traffic. The lesson we should learn from this experience is that it’s time to stop building bigger and bigger roads that only invite more and more cars and trucks that divide our community and diminish the health and well-being of our citizens."

A major national infrastructure bill with hundreds of billions of dollars for transportation is being drafted in Washington now. Signals from both sides in congress about when it will be introduced range from April 20, 2020 to after the fall election and are conflicted and changing. As a community, we need to be prepared to be informed and active citizens in this locked down world where most of our traditional methods of making ourselves heard aren't available. CARTA is already approved for over ten million dollars in emergency funding, most of which will be used to replace lost farebox and sales tax revenue.

Sign our online petition, Be Heard. 

Sol Legare Transit Advocates on Folly Rd.

You can sign this online petition about how Corona Virus funds should be used to improve Lowcountry transit now. In the absence of being able to organize in the community with traditional outreach, online activity is very important. We can't ask our congressmen to fight for something we don't ask them for. We have been in contact with both Clyburn and Cunningham's staff, but they need to hear from you as well. Telephone works best.

• Joe Cunningham (202) 225-3176, ask to speak to Jose’
• James Clyburn  (202)225-3315

Contact Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit

Please feel free to contact Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit with your ideas and input. Contact Executive director William Hamilton at (843) 870-5299 or by email at mailto:wjhamilton29464@gmail.com?subject=Public Transit in the Lowcountry