Valley Metro: Driving Us To Work

Phoenix Insurgent

Providing more evidence of the growing attack by the bosses on us workers (and highlighting the capitalist irony that we don't even want to work in the first place), various news outlets report the impending firing of four light rail operators. Using the (dubious) excuse of increasing costs, the bosses have imposed a literal speed up on drivers, forcing the remaining workers to produce more in the same time. That's nothing new: bosses commonly use bad economic times (although, do we workers really know any other kind?) as an excuse to broaden and intensify their attacks on our lives and the way we organize work.

In the New Times coverage, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1433 president Bob Bean lamented the false promises given to light rail drivers: "You held town hall meetings where you preached to these operators about how they were going to be treated, and when asked about continuous work you told them they had no worries."

Valley Metro is driving us to work.

I can certainly sympathize with the position the workers are in. When I was in the APWU, as work volume steadily fell thanks to increasing computerization, the bosses and union politicos called a joint meeting and assured us all that our positions were quite safe. "Don't go getting second jobs," I remember them saying. Of course, the predictable layoffs followed just weeks later.

That was twelve years ago and I was a young, naive anarchist at the time with an incomplete understanding of the true recuperationist role of union leadership and absolutely no idea that Capital used technology to shift control from the shop floor where we workers can use it for our own purposes into the hands of management and a trusted cadre of technicians. Considering Valley Metro's stated plans for a driver-less "sky train" system "connecting" to the light rail and circling the airport, perhaps this is a lesson worth learning. How much power and freedom will train operators have at work once those things take over the entire system?

Valley Metro's proposed driver-less "sky train".

But my union had marched in the Labor Day parade with one of those infamous "workers and bosses working together" banners with the shaking hands and all. That should have been the first clue about what was to follow, but I was glad just for once to be making a decent paycheck. The betrayal by the local as well as some by my so-called "fellow workers" certainly opened my eyes. I'd just signed a new lease on a new, better apartment a month before. The job I got to replace it paid half what the old one did. Of course, I'd still rather not have been working at all. But capitalism demanded I do so if I wanted such luxuries as a roof over my head and food in my body.

The funny thing was, we were losing our jobs to a sort of speed up. A speed up imposed by technology. The computers were doing more and more of the work that we used to do, leaving those of us low on the seniority ladder competing with the careers who regularly (out of proficiency and boredom) did the work of two or three lower level workers. We could have stopped those layoffs if we just stuck to our work quotas, but the union wouldn't have it. In the pocket of management, they lied up until the day we were booted out the door. Now, I wonder if those remaining workers can do anything at all to fight the boss, what with the bulk of the work taking place in the silicon chips guarded in far away server farms. Would a strike be noticed at all under those conditions?

I bring this up because when I hear Mr. Bean threaten to escalate things to a "higher level" if the union isn't satisfied with the reasons for the dismissals, I am deeply skeptical. Why accept the layoffs at all? Nevertheless, an escalation of this class war is exactly what is needed. One thing is for sure, regardless of the politics driving union leadership, the power to do something is in the hands of the train drivers themselves.

Light rail: All about the money.

As Valley Metro's own figures testify, ridership is way up and the light rail has become and integral part of many people's travel to work and back. I've written about the light rail before and the role it serves as both dutiful servant of Capital and handmaiden of the ever-expanding control grid. While we workers may use it on the weekends sometimes (if we have the time) to entertain ourselves, the primary purpose of the new train system is the re-ordering of our lives and the re-making of the city to be more efficient for the business class who sought primarily to link the yuppie parasitic colony downtown with what was hoped to be a complementary yuppie settler outpost in Tempe. The yuppies in the million dollar condos in Tempe could travel back and forth to their cubicles at work without rubbing shoulders with us common folks on the bus. Likewise with the downtown bourgeois class.

Like the trains that crossed the West, bringing war to native peoples and exploitation to workers trudging towards California to escape serfdom in Europe and drudgery in Eastern factories, and likewise moving Capital and resources (now summed up in the succinct phrase, "human resources") across the plains, the light rail remade our city and our relationships.

The yuppies moved in. The rents and house prices went up. Some of us were forced to move out to the dreary plastic suburbs to make room for them. The dreams of the new architects of the "creative class", now as empty as the twin towers that loom over Mill Avenue and the vacant storefronts of downtown Phoenix. They look ridiculous to us now. Of course, we never believed in them anyhow. I guess we were never "creative" enough to see it. Those of us who slaved away our 40 (or 50 or more) hours a week made up for our falling standards of living with credit card debt and rising home prices. Now that's gone too. And here we are, finally talking about a fight back. Let's get to it then!

So, while the fantasy has faded, the light rail is still there, taking people from place to place day after day. It is a weak spot in the capitalist armor. If local rail workers can strike at the local rail in way that disrupts the ordinary operation of Capital and at the same time broadens the opportunities for riders to control their own lives, they may have a chance at not only hitting back against the bosses' assault at work, but also at making connections that aid the larger fight to control our own lives for ourselves.

Under capitalism, our lives are a blur...

Creative thought is necessary. What if, instead of a slow down, rail workers offered a free day? Perhaps we could have a "general strike" in the form of a city-wide "take the day off and ride for free" campaign. If there's one thing the bosses understand, it's revenue. Deny them a day of their "taxation on movement" (i.e., fares) and offer everyone else a chance to disrupt the ordinary capitalist organization of their day. Watch the bosses cringe as their surplus value disappears for a day. Let's take back the control of our day with the gift of some free movement. Maybe take in a baseball game or something. Maybe go to a park. Maybe go to a museum or the library. Go visit grandma. Maybe hit some bars up and do some delightful day drinking. They all sound better than working. Let's turn this from a labor dispute into a dispute with laboring! If the union bosses don't like it, that doesn't mean we can't still do it!

How about linking demands for no layoffs to a reduction or elimination of the fare? If the train benefits the capitalists, why don't they pay for it? Or how about demand that anonymous travel is a human right and dispense with the security cameras and various other Big Brother technologies that have turned the light rail and it's park and ride lots into just another extension of the police state apparatus? How much would be saved by eliminating those jackboot security contracts? Let's boot Wackenhut from security! How about eliminating management? That would save a lot. No to advertising on the light rail: must every place be covered with the propaganda of capitalism? How about demanding the hiring of more drivers so that you all can work less for the same pay? 40 hours a week is tyranny. Use your imagination. Then think what else you can imagine imagining. What would you really want, if you could get it?

Find connections where possible. Grocery workers have authorized a strike, is there anything that can be done together? Think creatively about tactics. A few years ago I saw wildcat taxi drivers block City Hall by loading Washington Street up with cabs and then walking away, locking their keys inside. Think of the possibilities... and then think where it could lead. Maybe we can do without the boss entirely. Make a struggle creative and broad enough and there is no end to the possibilities.

Our lives belong to us, not the boss. Let the fightback start now! Occupy the light rail: Occupy our lives!

Every Day is 1984 on the Light Jail

By Phoenix Insurgent

Transporting prisoners on the Valley's shiny new light rail system? Yup. Sheriff Joe's at it again but, as usual, the media have missed the point when it comes to his publicity stunt. After initially reporting dutifully on Arpaio's "con rail" circus like the stenographers they are (quoting verbatim from the Sheriff's press release, for instance) and framing it as a safety issue (the only dialogue they are truly capable of having with us), the media have become quite pleased with themselves after they actually managed to follow up on something Arpaio said and discovered a possible contradiction.

In what passes for a journalistic scoop in this town of ever-shrinking newspaper payrolls, it was revealed -- mostly by Arpaio himself it should be pointed out -- that the Sheriff, despite claims to the contrary, is not only eligible for the airport's free cop parking lot, but is actually apparently currently taking advantage of the service. Oh, sweet controversy! After all, it's hard to claim you're saving money on the light rail at $2.50 a round trip per person when you can take advantage of free parking at the airport. Just as quickly as it appeared, the question of light rail as prison bus has become just another bureaucratic budget debate. And no one bothered to connect the $72,000 Joe has miraculously re-appeared into his budget with the slashing of health and other essential services at his jails.

However, at the same time the press was blabbering on about airport parking (it's a nightmare -- we know!) a much bigger point passed without comment. Namely, that the light rail serves itself as a sort of mobile police state. And it conveniently goes practically directly to the jail, thus making it the perfect tool for a fascist like Sheriff Joe. Try it yourself: Mapquest estimates the trip at .34 miles and 1 minute travel time between the light rail and the jail. It's utterly covered from nose to stern with cameras and other surveillance devices and policed by security and law enforcement. Plus, as Joe points out, the added deputies only add security. Truly secure, indeed.

Keep in mind, I'm not arguing in support of transporting prisoners on the light rail. What I'm saying is that the logic of the light rail as inmate transporter is a natural reflection of the design and concept of the light rail itself. Light rail meets light jail. They aren't mutually contradictory. That fact says something very important about the new train that has gone completely unremarked on in the media as it bends over backwards to do one vacuous human interest story after another about the new project.

I noticed that not one reporter I saw asked anyone if they were uncomfortable with the presence of armed police on the light rail! This despite the recent execution of an unarmed commuter on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. Is that because the police don't seem out of place on the train? Probably. But what does that say about the light rail?

In this age of increasingly strict controls on movement, from border cameras to freeway cameras to light rail cameras to jail cameras, it's surprising that it took Joe this long to point out what should have been obvious to everyone from the moment the first masked, machine-gun toting cops set foot on the light rail platform in December, if not before. Joe didn't have a stroke of genius! He just came to a logical conclusion based on an honest evaluation the nature and potentiality of the light rail itself: use it to transport prisoners.

Why is this a natural conclusion? Because every day is 1984 on the light jail. Bristling with cameras inside and out and sporting the latest advances in the social engineering science of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (pioneered in Tempe as a means to advance the private/government/university directed gentrification of downtown and utilized by Phoenix in its bus and other public stations), the light rail cruises the city streets like a cross between a wage slave ship and a prison barge, delivering poor working saps to their cubicles and now prisoners to their cells without any modification required. Shouldn't this be something that we remark on? In the parlance of Orwell's 1984, the light rail panopticon watches both the Proles and the Outer Party members alike.

And when not shipping us out for the extraction of surplus value or incarceration, the trains deliver us to the tax-subsidized spectacle downtown. But any aberration from from the prescribed use of these public facilities will be detected, duly noted and reported immediately to security personnel. As we found out in the case of those kids who tagged up a station recently, the data and images are stored for some time, thus creating a searchable record of miscreant behavior. Truly multi-purpose. Or single-purposed, more like it, since the control grid is build right into the light rail itself, thus all applications of it reflect that reality. So, is the light rail a liberating transportation system or a control grid apparatus?

While it's creepy enough that Valley Metro is tracking our license plates at the park-n-ride stations, and that there are sixteen cameras on every train (six interior, ten facing out), there is worse to come. In an article in Security Director News, Larry Engleman, Director of Safety and Security for Valley Metro explained not only how Big Brother principles had been built directly into the light rail from the go, but how future legs of the project will go even further in their ability to track, regulate and control us.

"This project was typical with open, visible spaces [that needed to be protected]. We installed public address systems, an emergency call system and CCTV," explained Engleman. "Unfortunately, when we began this project, analytics was not a proven technology. We designed the future extension so that it will have analytics and if we have the money we'll retrofit it."

What is this 'analytics' that Engleman laments wasn't included in the first leg of the rail? Stuff like face and gait recognition technology, audio analysis, object location and behavior recognition. So, rest assured, citizen, the light rail of the future will be able to watch your every move from the time you get on (or even before that if you park and ride, since they can track you to your house by your license plate) to the time you get off, headed for work or the game presumably, but perhaps the jail -- it makes no difference to the light rail. It will deliver you there either way. And it will be able to analyze your behavior and even mark you as a security threat. Will there be a 'do not ride list' for the light rail? You didn't make an audible nasty comment about those sheriff's deputies transporting a prisoner, did you? Your travel papers have been revoked! Straight to jail without collecting a check at your cubicle!

It's truly a case of the accepted ideology covering up the truth, since the light rail is boosted in city ads as a liberalization of movement. But this assertion is only true if you ignore the political and control aspects of the surveillance technology deployed throughout the system. One has to believe that they exist for "security" and that "security" is neutral or even benevolent. But it isn't neutral. It reflects the class interests of the people who design and deploy it. On the light rail, it is aimed, for one thing, at people who take public transportation. And it is aimed at prisoners now. It's aimed at the poor. Yet there are no such surveillance systems installed in the luxury cars of box seat owners at Suns games. The control grid exists to regulate the poor and working class. And it's there to protect the capitalist and bureaucratic elite. In order to believe that the light rail surveillance grid is about mere safety, you have to ignore the fact that such a system by definition serves the needs of Capital first and foremost.

That is, it gets you to work to slave away for a paycheck or it gets you to jail when you pass a bad check. And it skips a large chunk of the poor, Latino part of Phoenix even as it gets you from one white yuppie colony in downtown Tempe to another white yuppie colony in Phoenix. Notice how it doesn't need to change form in order to accomplish all these things because it inherently expresses the needs of Capital. The train directs us in the pre-approved paths of Capital. The light rail, therefore, is the expression of Capital, and it's security grid is likewise the expression of the need to defend Capital.

But it doesn't stop there. The control grid stretches even beyond the light rail itself even as far as the border. How is that? Since Tempe and Mesa opted not to use their police forces to physically patrol the stations and trains, they opted to contract out to Wackenhut to the tune of a three-year contract and almost $4 million -- a company that also contracts with ICE and DHS for the maintenance of immigration detention centers and transportation. Thus, the police state we see expressed on the light rail is mirrored at the border, and vice-versa. The dollars from one flow to and from the other. And so do the logic and technologies of control. They are hand in hand, velvet glove and iron fist.

And while some, particularly working class white people, may think that exceptions will be made for them, and that they can support controls on travel for one group while expecting immunity for themselves -- even when it comes to crossing the border -- the example of the light rail shows that no such dispensation shall be granted. Such hall passes are temporary and tolerated by the capitalist class only in as much as it reinforces the over all project of control. The goal is total control, and if white folks will accept the experiments on folks of color, or migrants, then so much the better from the elite perspective. But the exception proves the rule, guaranteeing that it won't last.

Free people must travel freely. Without that right, whether when crossing the border or just crossing town, we are not free people. And supporting the extension of the logic of control in one place, such as the border, enables the extension of it everywhere else.