Regular bus catchers, ferry riders, urban cyclers, and streetcar surfers: allow me to introduce myself!
My name is Adelaide, and I am so unbelievably excited to be on board as Ride New Orleans first Lead Organizer. For the past four years, I’ve organized students and non-student youth for climate and environmental justice on the state, regional, and national levels with the Coalition of Alabama Students for the Environment, the Southern Energy Network, and the Sierra Student Coalition.
While I hail from Alabama, growing up, I ventured to New Orleans many times on our yearly family trip, so this fine city has always been my home away from home. Since making NOLA my permanent home, before finding Ride New Orleans, I worked as a semi-professional closet organizer, and ate my weight in crawfish, while volunteering to organize restaurant workers with the Restaurant Opportunities Center.
History has proven that organizing people for power is the greatest way to bring about just, long-term, transformational change, and as Lead Organizer, I plan to do just that: organize transit riders to gain power in the transportation decisions that affect them the most.
Transit riders: I am accountable only to you.
My job is to listen to YOU, to hear your stories, to learn about your experiences and frustrations. What would you like to see more of? Less of? Together, we will rally around a central set of rider-led priorities to ensure that all transit policy decisions are made with your input.
Right now, ferry riders are counting the days until they’ll be forced to find another way to cross the mighty Mississippi, and LA Swift riders may be left on the side of the road in Baton Rouge unless we work together to find funding for these vital services. Stay tuned for action alerts over the next few weeks.
To ensure we never face this kind of transportation crisis again, we must get organized.
Over the next few months, we will be hosting a handful of film screening and discussion nights. We will watch a documentary about the Los Angeles Bus Rider’s Union and begin to discuss what a transit riders union can accomplish in New Orleans. After that, with your input, we’ll launch this city’s first Transit Riders Bill of Rights.
So, if you’re reading this, you’re a regular transit rider, and you have something to say, PLEASE: Give me a call, send me a text, or write me an e-mail. I’ll catch a bus, streetcar, or ferry to come meet with with you in person.
In solidarity,
Adelaide