Chima's Project Update & thoughts on advocacy

I have put at least 17 hours into my internship. I would like to say that I have not really encountered any challenges in my project. The few challenges I have faced is that I was unable to meet Mr. Kennedy on February 24, because he fell ill. I was also unable to check out the book Just Transportation from the library because it is in the binary. Because of this, I have been reading Highway Robbery instead. I have not seen or experienced any successful approaches to advocacy since I was not able to meet Mr. Kennedy. Nevertheless, I still see myself as an advocate for transportation and social justice after reading about the first 50 pages of Highway Robbery. The way we as a society can be more strategic about promoting sustainable transportation is to raise awareness, and inform our local politicians of the problems that people of color, and of lower socioeconomic levels have to contend with when it comes to public transportation. In Highway Robbery the problem of funding is discussed. Most of the funding goes to mostly white affluent suburbs and less funding goes to mostly poor communities of color in the inner cities. I remember how suburban areas have clean energy compressed natural gas (CNG) busses, whereas on the other hand, inner city inhabitants have to rely on older diesel buses. In order to better promote sustainable transportation is to make sure that all neighborhoods, communities, and cities would have access to busses that run on clean fuel, not dirty diesel. We can be more strategic about promoting sustainable transportation by focusing on the fact that roads and infrastructure in our inner cities are crumbling. Urban decay obviously has an impact on sustainable transportation. The problem of urban decay must be confronted. Little money is being spent on these neighborhoods. We must brainstorm the many ways we can solve this problem. How would it look to have brand new buses running on clean fuel driving on dilapidated roads, with cracks and potholes? It would take a lot of effort to solve this problem. It would require collaboration between city planners, politicians, social justice groups, public transportation groups, etc.