It started with a bus ride

Keith Bedford for The New York Times. Signs with Rosa Park's photograph were posted on city buses to keep a front seat empty Thursday.

Dennis Jaffe, a member of the Metro DC Sierra Club Transportation Committee, led the campaign to get WMATA to create a Riders' Advisory Council (RAC), serving as the first chair of the committee.

He writes:

I can't believe in 2007, a public agency is without the ability to do much of anything about an employee using the "n-word" or the "new f-word." Currently, Metro management is without either the legal authority or the intestinal fortitude to create an environment in which it's clear to everybody that intolerance will not be tolerated. I think this is a fundamental issue requiring the conversation of a community, and one in which members of the community voice their opinions directly to Metro's Board of Directors.

Dennis has an op-ed piece about this in the Washington Blade, "Setting the bar too low: Metro's response to driver who called passenger a 'faggot' reveals need for higher conduct standards."

The Blade ran a news story on this issue as well, "Man called ‘faggot’ by bus driver seeks apology."

Aboard an Annapolis Transit bus, Chanica Massey (right) talks to Shawana Williams after handing her a brochure containing tips on resolving conflicts peacefully. (Sun photo by Kenneth K. Lam) Jan 15, 2007

Apology? Why not a civil suit against the driver , WMATA, and the Union representing the driver? Intolerance by government officials should not be tolerated. A bus driver for WMATA or any other transit system is a public official.

I love transit, but that doesn't trump tolerance and civil rights.

Rosa Parks is escorted by E.D. Nixon, former president of the Alabama NAACP, on arrival at the courthouse in Montgomery March 19, 1956 for the trial in the racial bus boycott. Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man sparked the modern civil rights movement, died Monday Oct. 24, 2005. She was 92. (AP Photo/Gene Herrick)

To me, transit is deeply intertwined with civil rights. Rosa Parks! Freedom Summer! It's a challenging, troubling, and proud history that shouldn't be so easily forgotten today.