The Bus Riders Union, a project of the Labor/Community Strategy Center, is a progressive civil rights and environmental justice membership organization. Our work begins with the mass transit and public health needs of the Black community, the multiple communities of the African Diaspora; Chicano, Mexicano, Salvadoreño, Guatemalteco, Nicaraguenses and other Latinoamericanos; Korean, Pilipino, Chinese and other Asian/Pacific Islanders; Indigenous communities; and working class whites who are transit dependent in Los Angeles.



The Bus Riders Union seeks to promote environmentally sustainable public transportation for the entire population of Los Angeles, on the premise that affordable, efficient, and environmentally sound mass transit is a human right. The organizing and public policy work of the Bus Riders Union reflects the principle that the needs of low-income people, and oppressed nationality peoples and communities – Black, Latino, Mexicano/Chicano, Asian/Pacific Islander and Indigenous peoples must be given priority since they suffer systematic racial and national oppression in our society. Our work frontally challenges racist policies, the corporate profit motive and management rights as the arbiter of social policy. For us, human and ecological rights are the leading social, political and economic priority for people throughout the world. We see ourselves as part of an international movement to stop the US government from intervening in the internal affairs of sovereign nations and to support the movements for self-determination inside and outside of the US.



The Bus Riders Union is committed to fight against racism, national oppression, class oppression, sexism and the oppression of immigrants. Our members include people with disabilities, gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered people, the elderly and youth. We will seek to defend and expand the social, political and economic rights of historically oppressed communities in the struggle for economic democracy and redistribution of wealth. We seek to build a democratic, multi-lingual, multiracial, gender-balanced organization rooted in the working class, whose leadership and membership reflect the racial and gender make-up of those committed to building a new society.