Bus Riders Union

A 1998 editorial in Time magazine made the claim that the city of Los Angeles might just have the most inept publictransport system on the planet earth The neglected bus system which still handles 91 of all transit ridersis now roughly as efficient as travel by burro Academy Awardwinning cinematographer and director Haskell Wexler Medium Cool Latino has now fashioned a new documentary tracing three years in the life of a group of busrider activists passionately engaged in the struggle to bring affordable safe and adequate mass transit back to their city What might at first sound like a wellintentioned but rather parochial subject for a film has resulted in a truly inspiring lesson in how workingclass predominantly minority citizens forge an effective social movement and how like Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Alabama bus boycotters of the 1950s a group of committed individuals can successfully challenge the powers that seek to control their lives