If you have some horror stories about T etiquette to share, and I know you do, drop me a line HERE. I’ll make you famous.

This just in from Lee Matsueda over at TRU:

At last month’s TRU Rox/Dot Committee meeting the group decided it was ready for an initial action. This is not the only way to recruit other riders, win service improvements, and stop the fare increase, but it is a start. To be honest the meetings are boring but we’re planning on having some fun and making our presence known during the public comment period at the beginning of the meeting. The details will be decided upon at the TRU Rox/Dot Committee meeting on Monday, July 10th.

There are 9 MBTA board members including the Secretary of Transportation for the State of MA and MBTA Board Chair, John Cogliano. Please consider if you can make this meeting (it is at a weird time of the day – 1pm) and if you are willing to “kindly” address individual MBTA board members during the public comment period.

REMEMBER to bring a PICTURE ID (we need it to go into the meeting)

Thanks,

Lee H. Matsueda
Community Organizer
Alternatives for Community & Environnment (ACE)
2181 Washington, Suite 301
Roxbury, MA 02119

You can contact Lee at lee@ace-ej.org — Mike.

This just in from Lee Matsueda over at T Riders Union (TRU) HQ:

“Join TRU at our next FARE INCREASE meeting Thursday, June 29th @ 5:30 pm @ ACE’s office, 2181 Washington Street, 3rd Floor (elevator accessible), here at our air-conditioned office in Dudley Square, Roxbury.”

Lee and the gang will be planning the next step in TRU’s NO FARE INCREASE campaign that will include service improvement demands.

He requests that you please RSVP via phone (617) 442-3343, ext. 229, or email lee@ace-ej.org if you plan on coming.

And remember, all public comments on the fare increase are due to the MBTA by June 30th. That’s next Friday to you and me. You can send them to fareproposal@mbta.com.

It’s a scorcher out there.

I got out to the garden early today, before the temperature began to climb, to water a newly seeded section of what will become a little lawn in a couple weeks’ time. Very excited about that lawn–it must be what’s left of the squishy suburbanite in me. Is this a chink in the urban warrior’s armor? I have instructed my neighbors in the Fens to clip me if I start to go all-out suburban on ‘em, and they have promised me they will.

But, honestly, once you become what you despise (and we all do to some degree or another), you often despise what you were before you did. It is the logic of metamorphosis that once we have transformed we no longer understand or sympathize with what we once were. We may, in fact, look on our former selves as our own worst enemies. Do you think the butterfly looks back wistfully on her caterpillar days?

If my lawn-pride warps me sufficiently, I may metamorphose into something I don’t yet understand. Like my new neighbor across the path, who is methodically removing all traces of the previous tenant, an old woman who had the plot for several years and was fond of roses, and replacing her sweetly and long-nurtured beds with…lawn. Her garden was idiosyncratic, with small paths only she walked on. Now it’s full of cement bricks and dyed nuclear-red mulch. It appears hideous to me now, but there is a kernel of fear in me that someday I may understand it all too well.

I have just a little lawn, a spot of grass among the flower beds, and I am proud of it, and it’s enough for me. For now.

So I’m riding home, and the left pedal on my loaner bike flies off. How do you like that? I’ll have to stop into the bikesmith’s tomorrow and have it mended.

I got home in time to nap. This is true siesta weather. And I do love my siesta. I love my twilight, too. Last night was cool and overcast, and there was a breeze blowing. And I lay down and listened to the sounds of the neighborhood, the gunshots in the distance, the little girl screaming bloody murder (we have a couple of little screamers in the ‘hood), laughter and tears, revving motors and screeching tires. And all the while the light fading, fading, quietly but insistently. That lovely subtle, inexorable movement from daylight to darkness. That extraordinary twilight time.

You know I used to live about a block away from where Hoagie Carmichael, who wrote “Stardust”–an American creation at least as great as the martini–is buried. He’s in Rose Hill Cemetery in Bloomington, Indiana, where I went to school. I used to walk through that graveyard on my way home every night, that perfect, mysterious song in my head…

Sometimes I wonder why I spend
The lonely nights
Dreaming of a song
That melody haunts my reverie
And I am once again with you
When our love was new
And each kiss an inspiration
Ah, but that was long ago
Now my consolation
Is in the stardust of a song…

After my nap, I switched on the TV. There was something called “White Shark Red Triangle” on GBH. I caught the end of it. It was about various disagreeable sea creatures feeding on one another. You expect bad behavior from killer whales. And sharks are naughty by nature. But even the cute ones, like seals, behave atrociously. You know that when seals are done birthing, after a brief period of nursing, the adults just up and abandon the young. How’s that for family values? The young are about fifty percent blubber, so they can survive for a few weeks while they learn (or not) how to fend for themselves. In fact, only about fifty percent make it to a year old. It’s no wonder adult seals are so cranky up close and personal.

They aren’t as bad as octopuses, though. I think octopuses are possibly the most unsympathetic creatures in the whole ocean. A while back I watched a documentary on octopuses, called, aptly enough, I guess “The Octopus’s Garden”.

What odious creatures.

Maybe I was a cod in my past life, because I could find nothing particularly redeeming in the octopus. When a shark came along and the octopus was lying very still to avoid being detected, I was rooting for the shark 100%. Same for when, after the starring octopus had hatched her millions of little eggs and was crawling out from under her rock in search of food, on her last leg, so to speak, and a couple of belligerent codfish came up to her and started nibbling on her (actually they grabbed hold of a leg, and did a sort of speedy corkscrew move, since their teeth are only good for grasping but not for pulling)—yes, I was rooting for the codfish, even though, technically speaking, the octopus was the underdog.

I found the starring octopus utterly unsympathetic, and I felt nothing when I saw her corpse wash up on a beach in the end, or even when the seagulls were pecking at her flabby carcass. They kept calling it a she. Are there males and females?

At one point in some underwater garden she’s seized by a bigger, uglier octopus. He grabs her up in his arms—meanwhile she has gone stark white with fear—and spirits her away into his lair. A moment later she is released, rather pink than white now, and torpedoes off into the sea as far from her assailant as she can get, no doubt. Talk about wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. Where’s the romance? This is the Stanley Kowalski school of breeding.

That’s probably why the octopus is so unsympathetic. Not just two arms with which to hold a lover tight, but eight! Not one, not two, but three hearts (!) with which to love, and yet it has never occurred to the octopus to love. They’re too busy sneaking up on crabs, and gorging themselves on unsuspecting lobsters, and even eating their own kind! They retain a mind-boggling eighty percent of the weight they consume, growing bigger with each and every meal! I mean, enough!

The filmmakers tried to drum up a little sympathy for our heroine in the end by saying, well, look at what an inglorious end she came to after three billion glorious years of evolution. But tell me, what has she got to show for those three billion years? An insatiable hunger for shellfish!

Never once did she stop and think of using all her faculties—and she is so extremely well-endowed—for loving. And don’t tell me she can love her young. There are about two-hundred million of them, and they all fly the coop before they measure two centimeters in length. Most of them to get snapped up by the marauding cod.

And thank sweet Neptune for that!

But enough frivolous, idle chatter! Back to the pressing issue at hand!

I have been corresponding lately with a gentleman by the name of John who has some interesting ideas about the fare hikes that I would like to put out there, for your consideration, too. One caveat on this. While I think this sort of deep thinking is valuable, it may be a flawed assumption that there has been any real momentum on the fare issue among riders and their various self-styled representatives. I love the suggestions, particularly in the penultimate (love that word) paragraph, but I am not a nonprofit organization, or any kind of organization, actually, and these suggestions would require investment, staff, and organization. That’s the biggest problem right there.

Here’s what John has to say:

I know this is a frustrating issue, I am sensitive to it because I recently moved from Texas–yes the Traffic State–and am enamored of the concept of public transportation.

I did sign the petition, and have some positive thoughts. I think the rate hike may be a useful thing, hear me out:

- Public transportation is about to show its worth with rising gas prices. Cheap oil has made the economy-factor of the subways less important in recent decades, and subway systems have languished because of this. But Peak Oil is coming and the T may well become a real jewel for Massachusetts.

- A price increase will make the T create more revenue, which will increase its value to the city and state. So though this may be a cynical move to further burden a public asset, the ultimate result is that they are giving it even greater value. Unintended consequences, you know.

- Riders will become more motivated to pay attention as the T takes more of a bite out of their budgets. And also, more upset with delays and more receptive to calls for transparent governance. A group representing T riders will be set to gain from this increasing concern, since by raising prices the T is actually motivating people to pay attention. (Thank you MBTA!)

SO my optimistic conclusion is that now would be the time to kick into gear and prepare for the future. I would say let the rate hike take effect (it will do a lot for your organizing efforts) and turn attention toward solidifying the organization, with the expectation that events are converging to make the T more valuable to lawmakers, and make riders more apt to support a public advocacy organization.

As far as suggestions, I would like to help work to raise the profile of T-Justice in various non-threatening, non-confrontational, creative ways. Possibly one would be a “Subway Survey” of riders to ask what their concerns truly are, along with a petition. Sign/fill out and get a T-Justice button. A T-Shirt fundraiser (”T” Shirt!). More stuff on the website (I can help there) including a blog or chat for discussion/complaints (I can help there too). Setting up “T-Justice” recycle bins, for high visibility while doing a public service. Posters. Ongoing communication with the public, maybe even in the form of direct flyers handed to patrons, that shows T-travelers that there is a group honestly representing the public ridership.

Like everyone I don’t have a lot of time, but I am looking for a Cause or two, (Southerner’s love our Causes, especially if they are more or less lost) and this interests me a great deal.

I’ll say. So, any thoughts on this from the rest of you?

So I have had a few emails here and there, and a couple of phone calls from people asking what’s next in the fight for fair fares. The petition’s still up and running, so if you know anyone (and I know you do) who hasn’t signed it yet, tell them you are going to kick their lily asses if they don’t.

It’s at a pathetic three hundred signatures so far (not that the signatures themselves, or the signatories are pathetic–on the contrary!–only their number). I don’t feel all that bad about it, if you want to know the truth, since MassPIRG, with its 50,000 members could only rustle up 1,500 signatures for theirs.

But I think presenting the petition (and I will only do so if we meet a minimum goal of a thousand signatures–I still have some pride left) would be a nice coda to all this hooha and stuff and nonsense over the fares in the first place.

This week saw the last of the MBTA-sponsored meetings on the topic, and the official comment period will end June 30th. If you have not written an email about the fare restructuring proposal to the T, you can do so up to the 30th (send it to fareproposal@mbta.com).

Write your representatives, too, while you’re at it, if you haven’t already. You can find them HERE.

And, as always, encourage your family, friends, and colleagues to take a minute or two out of their day (really–that’s about all all of this nonsense takes) to do it, too.

That’s all I’ve got up my sleeve. But always willing to learn new tricks, if anybody’s got any in their bag.

The rally, my first and last (and I’m not pulling a Cher, here, either–this really is my farewell tour, folks), was an experience. It was actually much like I had feared it would be, but I have to say finally meeting Dani B. in the flesh was not at all dreadful. He’s a delightful lad, in his woolly way, so far as I can tell. There were other delightful folks I’m glad to have met (including Jen, who took the pictures below), and for me that was always the point. My Doctor says I should get out and mix more. “People,” he’s always saying, “not gin and Prozac.”

Now I plan to spend some time in seclusion, of course. Like Candide, at the end of Rally Road, I find I have come full circle. My inner Pangloss intones: “There is a concatenation of all events in the best of possible worlds; for, in short, had you not been kicked out of a fine castle for the love of Miss Cunegund; had you not been put into the Inquisition; had you not traveled over America on foot; had you not run the Baron through the body; and had you not lost all your sheep, which you brought from the good country of El Dorado, you would not have been here to eat preserved citrons and pistachio nuts.” “Excellently observed,” my Inner Candide answers; “but let us cultivate our garden.”

All I can say is I’m glad I didn’t spend more than about fifteen bucks on the thing. I had three poster-size copies made—reading, simply “Keep MBTA Fares fair” and bought some new underwear for the occasion (I needed some new boxers anyway), but that’s about it. Lee Matsueda of the T Riders Union provided amplification, and TRU brought signs of their own.

Shoogs met me around three on the Square, but we didn’t really have much to do until four. The first people to show up, around fifteen minutes before the rally was to begin, were these punk-socialists. Of course they weren’t serious socialists—they just chose the most hopeless political cause they could find and joined it. They’re more like impotent designer anarchists in the final analysis. Amateur provocateurs out to draw attention to no greater a cause than the rebels without one.

I can’t deny it pissed me off to see these protest parasites show up and actually outnumber the poor, beleaguered protesters themselves. Not that they weren’t protesting. Christ, their entire existence is a protest. But there are ways things are done—and I’m just talking about people things here. Common courtesy. You want to be pariahs, do it on your own time. Get your own damn permit, don’t glom onto mine.

I mean, seriously, people. Have some manners. Do you realize how many of our social ills could be solved–just like that–with simple manners? These guys were my age, and acting like the trenchcoat mafia. When I told them to stop scaring off potential protesters one of them (I’m not sure if it was Mo or Curly — Larry was hanging back at this point)–but one of them even sneered and said: “we can do whatever we want, it’s a public square!” I was like, right, whatever. How many times have I heard that one (in the form of “it’s a free country!” and “you’re not the boss of me!”) from my nine and ten year old nieces?

It was like a bad after-school special, where the square student council president confronts the rebel outcasts trying to crash the big homecoming dance. I felt humorless and absurd doing it, and realized immediately that they’d be perfectly happy to argue with me unto the apocalypse. I told them, look, just try to stay out from in front of the cameras, will you? And by the way, this is no way to get laid.

The protest rally parasite problem is one I have to admit I had not anticipated in the least. You want to come to a rally someone’s organized because you dig what they’re trying to do, why not contact them first? I mean, if you’re socialists that shouldn’t be that big a deal. Socialize a little. There were several groups represented, but everyone had the courtesy to call first and discuss their ideas and goals. These guys basically showed up in an ugly, pestilent lump, didn’t say anything to us, and just started accosting people right and left in front of us. They were chasing people down like kids chasing pigeons in the park. People were scrambling to get away from them.

But once the rally (such as it was) started, they drifted to the margins and disappeared, as is their wont.

I wish I could say the same of the Deval Patrick groupies. They were as disgusting in their way as the impotent designer socialists. A bunch of Barbie and Ken dolls with super-sized campaign signs who just showed up in a clump and didn’t mix with the rabble, either. In their favor, there was an adult representative from his campaign who found me and introduced herself, and asked if I minded their being there and if I wouldn’t mind also mentioning that Deval would have been there himself if he had not had a prior engagement.

She went on her merry way and left the kids to find the spot where they were most likely to get their super-size signs on TV. You can see them schlubbed-up behind Lee Matsueda in the last picture below. They were utterly disengaged, uncommunicative, and looked dreadfully bored throughout the proceedings.

You know, I would not have been so touchy about all these parasites if the beast itself they were feeding off of wasn’t so pitiful. I mean they easily outnumbered real, live protesters. It was like a twelve-mile long tapeworm feeding off a teacup chihuahua. And in the end none of the networks (NECN, CBS4, and WHDH-7 were all there), to my knowledge, used any footage from the rally.

In fact, there was hardly anything about the hearing, much less the rally, in the papers. Nothing in Metro (and this was a Metro-worthy rally if ever there was one), a tiny blurb about Deval Patrick’s cursory appearance at the hearing in the Glob, and a brief mention in the Herald, who put the number in attendance at the rally at one hundred.

That much-disputed number. In a few years’ time I guarantee you it will be in the thousands. It’s the Woodstock effect. People will be like, it was a conspiracy! A media black-out! And when you ask someone—just some random someone at some dinner party or at a pick-up bar–if they were there, they’ll be all like, hell, yeah. And you’ll be all like, well, I didn’t see you there. And they’ll be like, Well there were about fifty-thousand of us. They had all the streets all blocked off.

And then you’ll reminisce together about how those crazy socialists blew up an MBTA bus while Deval Patrick introduced Nelson Mandela to the ecstatic applaud of the revolutionary masses. And then how it was all wiped from the record because Dan Grabauskas ordered the Herald to report that only a hundred people were there. And no further mention was ever made, spirits were crushed, the MBTA Liberation Army was driven underground, and finally fled to the hills of New Hampshire to fight their guerrilla war, now in its twenty-fifth year.

And you’ll be like, it sucks we’re paying twelve-hundred- seventy-three bucks a month for a T pass, but I guess if that’s what the MBTA says it needs to get through fiscal 2031, what can you do?

Just between you and me, I’d put the real number at something more like 33, 34, maybe 40, if you count passersby who paused momentarily to take in the sad spectacle and rubberneckers in their passing cars on Dartmouth. And about 25 of the aforementioned were IDAs, Devalheads, or the media. Then there were three of my friends, and Dani B., like I said there would be, and I think three other kind souls I was very grateful took the time to come out and was very pleased to have met.

I’ll have more to say about the hearing when I get a chance to go over the audio recording I made of it. The quality of the recording is pretty bad, but I can just about make out most of it. I should have some juicy tidbits for you tomorrow.

Until then, here are some pics from the big-ass rally of ‘06. That’s me, at top, imploring an uncaring universe not to ignore the two-page list of demands I’ve just outlined, and introducing Senator Jarrett Barrios, who’s in the next shot. Then there’s one of the “crowd,” such as it was (two of my three friends, a cameraman, a couple of TRU guys, and some poor sucker from NECN who’s thinking, “what the fuck?”). And finally, that’s Lee Matsueda (rocking that mic) and a couple of those Devalhead slugsacks. (They couldn’t even stand up–the one on the left has his fat ass planted right on Kahlil Gibran’s mug. Talk about manners.)

In case you were wondering, everything’s still on target for this afternoon.

The rally will be held at 4PM today in Copley Square, Dartmouth-side (see MAP). We will have State Senator Jarrett Barrios and representatives from the T Riders Union speaking. Deval Patrick will be at the hearings to voice his opposition to fare hikes, as well.

So you are encouraged to come to the rally, make a little noise, and then go on to the MBTA hearing at the Boston Public Library immediately afterward, and present your own personal “impact statement” for the record to the T. You can make a real difference in the fare restructuring.

Tune in here, and to tjustice.info, too, for more you can do after the rally to keep the momentum up, and ensure that T fares remain fair for all riders.

Hope to see you this afternoon at 4PM in Copley Square, and at the hearing afterwards!

Where’s the story? That’s what you have to ask yourself, as a reporter.

I’ll admit I’m a little disappointed in Mac Daniels’ decision to highlight the “cancellation” of the T-boycott, an idea that never really got off the ground in the first place, instead of highlighting the rally itself which has definitely not been cancelled.

I think what I said to Mac about the boycott was, if people wanted to boycott, they certainly could. He told me he, himself, was definitely interested in the idea of boycotts–not because he wanted to participate in this one, or thought it would be effective–but because boycotts are so hard to organize.

Exactly. And who’s got time for the tears? Life should be a banquet, not a beggar’s ball.

But I don’t think that’s the story, here. And I tried to stress that moving beyond the boycott (I don’t think I ever used the word “cancelled,” myself) wasn’t some big bureaucratic decision in the Star Chamber—it was really just about the best way to get people mobilized to do something productive with this thing, hook people up, show the world we’re mad as hell and we’re not gonna take it anymore, and blah blah blah, yeah, whatever. That kind of thing.

At least the headline in the Glob was somewhat informative: “T farehike protesters hold rally.” And just one little sentence in that first paragraph, detailing exactly when and where the rally would be held, and maybe even why, would have been helpful. But we’d all rather kick each other in the balls whenever the opportunity arises, so, yeah, whatever.

The Metro also ran the story, with a headline screaming “Boycott against proposed T fare hike cancelled.” Yes, the first paragraph mentions “a short rally before the first in a series of public hearings” (it’s the same exact story the Glob’s running, but with a more sensationalistically distorted headline, of course), but then the rest of the story is, again, about how it won’t be a boycott. Presumably, if you are reading the Metro in the first place, you are on a train or a bus and aren’t boycotting the T anyway.

Still there’s no doubt that a headline like that will confuse some poor Metro readers into thinking that the rally itself has been cancelled. They don’t provide any details about the rally, either: exactly where or when it’s happening, just that it’s not going to be a boycott. Which is very informative.

Of course, I woke up this morning with a dread thought: what if it’s just me and three of my friends and Dani B. who show up? It could be uncomfortable. We obviously should have stuck with the boycott idea.

Mac Daniel called me today, and will have a little blurb in the Globe about the rally tomorrow. We will definitely have some media coverage, so be sure to feather your hair and wear your best tubetops, visors, and red-white-and-blue sweatbands!

As I may have mentioned, one of the first people I contacted about the rally was Mike Dukakis. He finally got back to me this morning, sending regrets that he would not be able to attend, and suggesting I contact Deval Patrick, who will be at the hearing.

But I was way ahead of him. About a week-and-a-half-or-so ago I sent all the gubernatorial candidates an email asking for comment on the proposed fare hikes. None felt the urge to respond except Deval Patrick, and he is by far the cutest of them all, so we know who’s getting whose vote come election day, don’t we? Anyway, a spokeswoman from his campaign informed me that he was already planning to be at the hearing to make comments. She sent his regrets that he would not be able to attend the rally beforehand because of a prior television engagement. Fair enough. The point is that his campaign obviously views the fare hikes as a serious enough issue, that they’ve got him putting in an appearance at the hearing. Bravo, I say.

I will be in Copley Square, Dartmouth side (MAP) from 3PM. The rally will start promptly at 4PM and will be over by 4:30. Please plan to attend the hearing, not to rabble rouse, but to give your testimony on the fare hikes. A big showing outside will be good, a big showing inside at the hearings will be even better.

Take a moment before the hearing to prepare a short statement. Try to keep it sharp and focused and don’t ramble or monopolize the mic. Trust me, there will be enough crazy people on hand who go to all these freaking meetings who will. Just don’t be one of them.

But don’t let that keep you from actually stepping up to the mic and taking your turn. It’s important that the T hear from as many people willing to go on the record against the current fare hikes as possible.

I want to take a minute to thank Sarah Shugars for dragging me into this with her idea of a public action of some sort. And Lee Matsueda of the T Riders Union (TRU), whose materials and encouragement have been invaluable. I hope that Lee will speak at the rally tomorrow as well. And to those of you who read this blog and intend to show up, and to those who don’t and do, too, my thanks in advance to you all as well. Please be nice to me. I am not as mean in person.

And big fat raspberries to everyone else.