LETTER FROM
THE EDITOR
HUFFINGTON
11.11.12
Bridging
the Divide
N THIS WEEK’S ISSUE of Huffington,
Peter Goodman puts
the spotlight on one
of the under-discussed barriers
to employment around the country: the fact that “getting a job
and getting to a job are two different things.” Peter illustrates the
predicaments and paradoxes that
affect the nearly 40 million Americans who live in parts of American cities that lack public transportation: work has shifted to the
suburbs, yet many of those who
need the jobs cannot afford cars to
make the necessary commute. We
meet Lebron Stinson, of Chattanooga, Tennessee, a former delivery truck driver: “The jobs are in
one place,” writes Goodman, “he
ART STREIBER
I
is in another, and the bus does not
bridge the divide.” Like so many
of our country’s infrastructure
failings, the lack of public transportation is rooted in a harsh
political reality. As Tom Dugan,
the Chattanooga Area Regional
Transportation Authority executive director, puts it, “Most of our
people are the working poor. In
Chattanooga, no elected official is
going to win an election based on
a transit issue.” In the meantime,
people like Lebron Stinson are left
waiting, as he puts it, “to feel like
I’m part of the world again.”
Elsewhere in the issue, Lynne
Peeples writes about one man’s
environmental awakening, as
he realizes just how many toxic
chemicals he and his family come
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