Bus Rider's Union

2000 · 87 min · ★ 9.0 · Documentary

A 1998 editorial in Time magazine made the claim that the city of Los Angeles "might just have the most inept public-transport system on the planet earth. . . . The neglected bus system, which still handles 91% of all transit riders,is now roughly as efficient as travel by burro." Academy Award–winning cinematographer and director Haskell Wexler (Medium Cool, Latino) has now fashioned a new documentary tracing three years in the life of a group of bus-rider activists passionately engaged in the struggle to bring affordable, safe, and adequate mass transit back to their city. What might at first sound like a well-intentioned but rather parochial subject for a film has resulted in a truly inspiring lesson in how working-class, predominantly minority citizens forge an effective social movement and how, like Rosa Parks and the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycotters of the 1950s, a group of committed individuals can successfully challenge the powers that seek to control their lives.

Directed by Johanna Demetrakas