Transit Equity Day

On Tuesday, February 4, Metro Transit will join organizations throughout the country in promoting public transit as both a civil right and a strategy to combat climate change.

Transit Equity Day is a National Day of Action commemorating the birthday of Rosa Parks by declaring public transit as a civil right. Parks was an NAACP activist who in 1955 demanded an end to segregation in the Montgomery, Alabama transit system by refusing to give up her seat on the bus. Her act of civil disobedience helped spark the Montgomery bus boycott as well as lawsuits that resulted in the 1956 federal court ruling that bus segregation was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment. Later in life, Parks received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the United States, from President Barack Obama, along with the Congressional Gold Medal.

Transit Equity Day is organized by the group Labor Network for Sustainability. They connect this act of resistance to the rights of all people to transportation that runs on clean renewable energy to confront the ongoing climate crisis.

Metro Transit plans to participate in Transit Equity Day and celebrating Rosa Parks by reserving a seat in her honor on a number of buses on Tuesday.