Lateefah Simon: On Public Transportation, BART and Her Run for Office in Oscar Grant's Memory
Democracy in Color Podcast Episode 9
For the last twenty years, San Francisco native Lateefah Simon has fiercely and lovingly fought for the young, the poor, and those excluded from the halls of power. She is now running for Bart Board Director in District 7 to bring social justice into transportation policy. In this revealing episode, she shares the beautiful personal struggles that define her politics, and outlines her vision to transform a regional transportation system in the name of Oscar Grant, a young man killed by BART police; an incident that defined a generation of struggle and discontent in the Bay Area and the nation.
More about Lateefah Simon (link to http://www.lateefahforbart.com/bio.html)
Show Notes:
8:30 BART has it’s own police force, BART has land use opportunities. It is essentially, I believe, the spine of the Bay Area and how dare we have a body of nine people and there is not one woman of color, or not one young mother, or somebody with a disability making decisions about how that system is ran and how it respects not only it’s riders but the people who are in the communities around it.
13:53 …when you don’t have sisters and brothers from the conditions that I’ve seen and grown up with, making decisions about how people get to work and how they get groceries and how they pick up their children, something is wrong. I unequivocally think that not only is this the office that I have to run for and when I get in it’s about governing well. You don’t govern by yourself. I’m going to continue to do the coalition work that I’ve always done.
20:16 This is the generation of children who have lived mass incarceration. This is the generation of children who have seen SWAT teams storm into their houses over traffic tickets. This generation of young people, of young women, of queer folks, of trans folks, they’re uplifted in ways that our ancestors could have only dreamed about. They are free, even in their captivity, living in these neighborhoods, under these policies.
29:38 It is not just going to events with folks and taking pictures behind some kind of labeled wall in the back. It’s about building a community when things get super difficult and it is not sexy, it is not about politics. When it’s about those moments, those are the kinds of folks that I am blessed to be able to call community.
32:32 I’ve often thought about, “maybe I should be right back on the front lines with a bullhorn — there’s so much happening — blocking a freeway, like laying out.” And then I think, “I have done that and I’m good at it and I have some privilege in my life right now where I get to be at tables where I get to fund leaders who are thinking audaciously, who are thinking about ridiculous struggle.” And so my lane, in this moment in my life, is to be thoughtful and strategic about how we support institutions that are creating the most change.
