Transportation
Mass Transit Mobilizes Women. Why Don't Women Mobilize for Transit?
Voting against transit might save some people tax dollars, but it hurts women of color the most.
In a jam-packed subway car, riders were singing protest songs. A woman passed around sacks of peanut M&M’s to settle fidgeting children. Pink knitted “pussy” hats spurred laughter between passengers who kept bumping heads.
Despite backed-up trains and hour-long waits, a sense of solidarity and purpose filled the D.C. Metro the morning of the Women’s March on Washington. A remarkable number of people did, too: By 11 a.m., the system registered 275,000 riders, eight times busier than a normal Saturday. By the end of the day, ridership surged past 1 million, just shy of an all-time record set at Obama’s 2009 inauguration (and roughly double the count on Friday, President Trump’s inauguration).