PAT supporters fast, hold vigil Downtown

Steve Donahue was tired and hungry, but after 25 hours of fasting on Liberty Avenue, the… Steve Donahue was tired and hungry, but after 25 hours of fasting on Liberty Avenue, the constant honking of buses and cars kept him in good spirits.

“They’ve been beeping their horns all night,” he said. “It’s a great feeling of satisfaction.”

Donahue, who is active in both Save Our Transit and the Thomas Merton Center, was one of 13 people who stayed up outside the State Office Building from Monday at 11 a.m. until Tuesday at noon, many with no food, to draw attention to the pending cuts in funding for public transportation in Pittsburgh.

“We’re very serious – that’s the whole point behind staying out here for 25 hours,” he said. “We feel like we’re building a movement here in Allegheny County.”

Merton Center Executive Director Tim Vining arrived Tuesday morning to support the activists still camped out on the Downtown sidewalk. He said he’d received several phone calls in support of the vigil, including at least two from people who used ACCESS, a Port Authority program for senior and disabled citizens.

“The people that are the most affected are moving and pushing this fight,” Vining said.

The Merton Center has been involved for years in local activism on a myriad of different issues, including the war in Iraq. In that instance, their involvement led to a regional convergence and brought 5,000 protesters to the streets of Oakland last February. Activism for public transportation, though, is different from protesting war, Vining said.

Millions can die because of poverty imposed by sanctions on a country like Iraq, but it’s only when bombs fall and everything happens at once that large-scale activism occurs, he said.

Vining compared the difference to a frog in a pot of water on the stove. If you turn up the heat just a little bit – in this case, hike the rates 25 cents or cut one bus line – the frog will get used to the new temperature. Continue doing it slowly, and the frog – or the public – won’t get very upset.

“Before you know it,” he said, “the water’s boiling and the frog is dead.”

Donahue wore a sandwich board with the words “No rate hikes No service cuts” written on it in black marker. After the each “no,” the word “more” had been inserted.

“It can lull us into a sense that things are okay,” he said. “They’ve got us to a point where we’ll take rate hikes if there’s no service cuts.”

Sean Glass, a Pitt senior who had stayed the night, said that he expected the outcry to grow if PAT service is cut.

“The people are the source of the power that the governor wields,” he said. “If our needs are not being met, we are prepared to lobby the people and vote him out of office.”

According to PAT spokesman Bob Grove, PAT’s fiscal year follows the state’s, which ends on June 30. He said that, occasionally, the state continues into July without an approved budget, and, consequently, there was no way of knowing when the PAT budget would be finalized. The vigil and other forms of public response effectively drew attention to the problem, he added.

“We at Port Authority appreciate the efforts of the Save Our Transit folks,” he said. “I think they’ve done a tremendous job.”