Bus Riders Union Facts
3/15/08 (fixed several external links that had changed, added link to 2005 news article on legal costs of the consent decree)
The Bus Riders Union is part of the Labor/Community Strategy Center and is a far cry from the "grassroots" organization they have created the image of for the media.

In fact, they receive a tremendous amount of funding from grants and charitable contributions ($1,023,021 in 2000). Their executive director, Eric Mann, is well paid for being their "fearless leader"; in 2000. for example, his compensation was listed as $95,000 plus $113,640 deferred income and $10,000 in benefits. His wife, Lian Hurst Mann, received compensation of $54,000 that year.
Philanthropic Research's GuideStar has copies of their 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006 IRS Form 990 filings. (Guidestar documents require Adobe Reader and free registration, which only covers the last three years; we appreciate the Transit Coalition allowing us to link to their copies of the earlier filings.)

On June 4, 1999 Eddie Rivera of the Los Angeles Downtown News wrote a profile of the organization which described how the BRU stonewalls when asked for information on their funding. Rivera did a follow-up article on June 18, 1999 with details the BRU wouldn't give him before. (Sadly, the Downtown News no longer archives its old articles on their website.)

Some other media outlets have been critical of the BRU; Metro Investment Report published "A Pasadena Blue Line Roundtable" in their November 1998 issue in which L.A. County Supervisor Michael Antonovich blasts the BRU. Marc Haefele's "City Limits" column in the February 3, 1999 edition of the LA Weekly questioned the BRU's claim that the Pasadena Blue Line project is racist. That same newspaper published an in-depth profile of the BRU in the article "Hell on Wheels" by Erin Aubrey on July 18, 1997 (articles prior to 1998 are not available online, although we did unearth a letter to the editor by a former BRU member rebutting parts of that article) which included negative comments from past allies and some anonymous criticisms. Charles Rappleye's March 27, 2002 column in the Weekly was extremely critical of the BRU (the letters to the editor on the article were overwhelmingly anti-BRU as well). Richard Stanger, transit consultant and former executive director of Metrolink, debunked five contentions of the Bus Riders Union in disparaging rail in a Los Angeles Times op-ed article from 1999. And Richard Risemberg criticized the BRU's "shortsighted anti-rail rantings" in his March, 2001 column from the New Colonist.

They have made it clear that their goals are more political than transit-focused. A flyer they distributed (and e-mailed) said their goals are to "stop the right-wing Supreme Court from overturning more federal civil rights laws" and "ensure that our movement is strong enough to win no matter how it goes in court".

An insight into the Labor/Community Strategy Center's philosophies can be seen in Eric Mann's resumé, which is posted on the Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement's website.

Do they act as advocates for the passengers? In 2000, they publicly supported the MTA drivers' union, not the inconvenienced transit-dependent, during the strike that disrupted service. At the same time, Eric Mann authored an op-ed article in the Los Angeles Times on the strike in which he was more interested in the LCSC "consent decree" than about restoration of bus service. They did the same thing in 2003, publicly supporting the mechanics' union, which the Daily News pointed out in an editorial during the strike. And BRU "organizer" Manuel Criollo did show a lack of genuine concern for passengers when he was quoted in a L.A. Weekly article during the strike, on November 6, 2003.

The LCSC has made available both the text of the consent decree and other court documents at the BRU website, although they have conveniently omitted all of the documentation of the last year of the decree, when they were losing their battles in court. (They also conveniently managed to "lose" the previously-posted copies of the documents related to the 2000 and 2003 MTA strikes during their last website redesign.) An article published by the Daily News in 2005, archived on the City Project Blog website, outlined the more than $11 million dollars in legal costs to the MTA, as well as quoting former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan as saying "entering into the consent decree was a mistake."

In fact, Eric Mann, in a posting on the Los Angeles Independent Media Center website after the 2005 death of L.A. County Labor Federation head Miguel Contreras, included details about the evolution of the relationship between the Bus Riders Union and organized labor.

BRU "organizer" Rita Burgos got nowhere spouting their rhetoric in a roundtable discussion published by the L.A. Weekly March 18, 1998. Three years later, an article in the Weekly on the BRU's claims of racism (June 20, 2001) drew at least one letter to the editor the following week which started with the writer's statement of being "sick and tired of hearing the Bus Riders Union call the MTA racist" and then went on to point out how many non-Anglos ride Metro Rail.

The BRU continually used the consent decree as a weapon against any proposed MTA service changes (scroll down to "Appendix 5" at page 9). (Adobe Reader required.) They have consistently done this even when MTA is operating within its parameters. (My Los Angeles Times op-ed article on the BRU outlines this.) Their response to a So.CA.TA member's e-mail shows a willingness to leave passengers stranded. And they also steadfastly refuse to acknowledge any facts that undermine their position, even when they were involved in the fact.

Eric Mann contradicted himself to defend that position when he rebutted his own statements 24 hours after he made them in November of 2001.

The BRU also attacked Metro Rapid in a reply to an editorial on KNX, claiming Metro Rapid was an excuse to funnel money to rail projects (and later made similar allegations of racism in a reply to a later KNX editorial on the MTA strike). This is typical; they will claim racism whenever they can get away with it (for that matter, they are so focused on racism, they show paranoia about it being within their own organization, as this letter to their members proves), they frequently show their lack of knowledge of transit planning and they openly show contempt for MTA's planning and scheduling staff. (While the BRU happily posts PDF files of various "press releases" on their website, the text of the KNX editorial replies referenced in this paragraph were also "lost" in their last site redesign, like their op-ed articles on the 2000 and 2003 strikes.)

Further, in Summer 2005 some young East Los Angeles activists, concerned about MTA service change proposals, attended a monthly BRU membership meeting in hopes of working with the organization. They were not allowed to speak or hand out their flyers regarding their concerns and eventually were told if they didn't leave the police would be called to forcibly remove them.

Their ability to ignore facts that cannot be made to fit their position is incredible. In an unpublished op-ed article, I debunked their arguments against the MTA fare restructuring scheduled to take effect in January of 2004. Their flyers said that fares would go up (the cash fares went down, actually; only non-discounted pass categories went up) and that the full cash fare would have to be paid at every boarding because transfers would be eliminated (no mention whatsoever of the new daypass allowing unlimited all-day ridership for a single payment). They also claimed that the new pass prices were outrageously high (they actually are increasing by a lower percentage than inflation since the last increase).

They also rejected the membership application of transit advocate Dana Gabbard, saying that they would not accept any member who disagrees with them.

The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles reports that -- oddly enough -- in 2002 the BRU handed out flyers denouncing the state of Israel's position against Palestinians. (What this has to do with Los Angeles transit is beyond me, and apparently beyond those who wrote letters to the Journal, published on August 23 and September 27 of that year.)

Meanwhile, their position on bus-based transit is losing ground, as Special Master Donald Bliss admitted in a Metro.net report on consent decree compliance that adding more buses to overcrowded routes is not the entire answer.

However, in a letter to the editor in the September 2, 2005 issue of the L.A. Weekly by long-time transportation insider Francine Oschin, it was revealed that Bliss is being paid $450 an hour by the MTA to monitor the decree’s compliance; Oschin pointed out that "if he rules MTA has satisfied the consent degree, his income is gone."
Oschin's remarks came after an article in the Weekly included a brutally honest description of the Bus Riders Union which, among other things, called Eric Mann "an activist who knew a lot more about Maoist theory than traffic patterns."

Is this who you want representing you?


The Form 990s and the MTA 2001 service change are formatted in PDF Format.
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