Ok, I’ve been watching people report in . . . and here’s what I’ve heard so far. I don’t ride the bus personally, I bike, Union Cab, or drive (got a different car last night! yay!)
First, a few weeks ago I heard:
I picked up a discarded Metro bus transfer on the lawn today and noticed that the flip side had military recruitment advertising by the National Guard. Apparently Madison Metro has accepted advertising from
the military . . .I predicted that one day we’d have Madison Metro buses painted to recruit for the Army, and seems we are partly down that slippery slope already. Federal aid to our local governments is cut, and so now local governments feel more pressure to take advertising money from any source, even if’s is a branch of the feds. Ironic. We don’t have to accept this in our city. The ad money isn’t worth it. Residents interested in talking to the National Guard have plenty of other ways to find out about it.
Military recruiting ads in the buses (or transfer tickets) is especially unfair. It targets disproportionately poor, disabled, and people-of-color. The poverty draft, once again.
And now . . .
Today in the bus I was riding, I saw a military recruiting ad for the WI National Guard . . . The ad showed a smiling teenager in shorts and a backpack, but left out some pertinent information. Most of our WI National Guard serves in a war zone nowadays, is my understanding. Many have been on multiple deployments in fact. Some have died there. There is also a lot of evidence that the lengthy federalization of our National Guard is not in accordance with our own laws, and therefore illegal.
I wonder if the Transit and Parking Commission is aware of this. This is one of many reasons I voted against ads on the buses over and over and over even tho we kept losing. It’s absurd that we have so many, mostly low-income kids riding our buses and having this message drilled into their heads. I wonder if they are on the buses used to get kids to school? It’s definitely on their transfer tickets. Is this what we want for Madison?
