Can a bus bring joy? A year ago, it would have been big news to me if one did. But St. John’s recent support of the local bus com-pany helped bring joyful results for thousands of people. The local bus company, of course, is Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District, the Oakland-based, public system which serves 12 other cities and many East Bay suburbs; alto-gether, a 364 square-mile area which 1.5 million people call home.
On a typical weekday, AC Transit has some 236,000 customers, including 60,000 school kids. Its paratransit division annually caters to 662,500 elderly and disabled persons who oth-erwise have no means of getting about. Last year, a total of 24.6 million revenue miles was logged by the system’s fleet. The district’s man-agement hasn’t estimated the size of the carbon footprint all this travel would leave if it were made instead by private automobiles, but my guess is it would dwarf Godzilla’s.
No surprise, then, that regional transportation is a big concern of the faith community. That’s a long story and there is not enough space to tell it here. Suffice it to say for St. John’s, about 50 members turned out at meetings of the gatekeeper board, Metropolitan Transporta-tion Commission, which controls federal funds flowing to AC Transit, BART and other sys-tems. This visibility was a milestone of sorts for the church. What’s more, dozens of other St. John’s members who were unable to be at the meetings instead made phone calls or sent let-ters to officials.
These actions made a difference. With other church partners in Genesis, the advocacy proj-ect for regional policy-making, St. John’s as-sured some $155 million contained in new fed-eral economic stimulus grants was used to sus-tain local transit. Our effort not only helped conserve the environment; it also preserved bus routes and schedules used by thousands of Bay Area workers and students to get to and from employment and school.
A bus certainly can bring joy. So now, when you see AC Transit’s orange-and-green machines, re-flect for a moment how much this basic, work-aday service adds to our collective well-being; and reflect how, because you uphold the vows of Baptism to “strive for justice,” thousands of people you don’t know and will never meet got a much-needed reprieve from service cutbacks.
Many of you asked what’s next for Genesis and transportation. The first thing to know is that the AC Transit campaign caught the attention of key transportation policy leaders. Not long after 150 folks turned out at one Metropolitan Transportation Com-mission hearing on the transit issue, MTC Executive Director Steve Hemminger contacted me to ask for a meeting. With Genesis’ staff members, I was skeptical at first of the invitation’s purpose; but when we met, Mr. Hemminger made a commit-ment to ongoing dialogue with Genesis and expressed a desire to work together. We are scheduled to next meet with MTC in May. Several congregations’ Genesis members now are working on agenda items to make that meeting productive.
Important things really do happen when people of faith choose to work together for the common good. Another example is St. John’s very own confirmation class. In the process of exploring their values, class members confronted the reality that many people go hungry all the time in Oakland, their hometown. The class elect-ed to raise funds for the Alameda County Food Bank. They put together a proposal and presented it to the Vestry, asking for a matching funds grant of $2,009. They picked that figure to memorialize their confirmation year as well as the year they pledged as individuals to make a differ-ence in the world. When the class collects donations equal to the Vestry’s gift, they will present a total of $4,018 to the food bank. And of course, since the food bank can buy more effectively than individual consumers, you see how working together multiplies the impact for good.
I can’t conclude this column without mentioning the desire of so many at St. John’s to find ways of helping other church members cope with the stumbling econo-my. As a result, in April there was a wide-ranging group discussion on the forms mutual support might take. A number of measures were identified and some al-ready are going forward.
Again, joy and power were found by working cooperatively. The future of the church depends on this kind of work; and given what I see these days at St. John’s, the future appears bright, indeed.
