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(transcript below, video version available here)

DUCKWORTH: Not One More Girl is a groundbreaking initiative aimed at stopping gender-based violence and sexual harassment on public transportation. It's been developed and led primarily by girls and gender-expansive youth of color. BART has been a partner in the campaign that first launched in April of 2021. It's now recognized as a model in the transit industry. Not One More Girl just launched its second phase, which places an emphasis on enabling people to have a greater sense of empowerment in a harassment situation and exhibit tools that fellow riders can use to provide support when harassment occurs. Welcome to Hidden Tracks, Stories from BART. I'm Anna Duckworth, your host, for this episode, and I'm joined by Anyka Howard, founder and CEO of the Betti Ono Foundation, which partnered with the Unity Council's Latin X Mentorship and Achievement Program and BART for phase two of the Not One More Girl campaign. She's here to share more with us about its mission to cultivate a culture of care. Thank you so much for being here Anyka.

DUCKWORTH: So first, I wanted to talk about why Not One More Girl is needed in the first place. Some people may not even realize that gender-based violence and harassment takes place on public transit. So what's going on? 

HOWARD: Yeah. Not One More Girl is a black indigenous people of color, or a BIPOC, as the acronym is shown, youth-led initiative to address gender-based violence on our public transportation systems. What is going on is really well documented and addressed from youth participatory action research that took place in 2019 where girls of color were responding to and answering questions about what enables them to live and thrive in the Bay Area and what would be barriers to that. So they looked at a number of issues from what's happening at school, what happens in your neighborhoods, places that they feel comfortable, confident, areas of support that they were looking for. And one of the key places that they felt really impacted their ability to live and thrive and move freely was on public transit. Public transit bubbled to the top of their list in terms of the data they collected if interviewing one another as a place where they experience the most harm and challenge around issues of gender-based violence. They would talk about being harassed, walking to and from bus stops, or when they were traveling to school or from school, home on like a BART system or other kinds of transit systems where they didn't feel safe, they didn't feel protected, they felt alone, they felt targeted, and it really impacted their ability to move and sometimes even to go to school, to go to work if they were working or to travel, to engage with family, friends or community. And being able to move independently and freely without the threat of harm is a really serious issue for Bay Area youth, gender-expansive people and communities. And so this issue being lifted up by our youth, I think really underscores a culture of violence that is pervasive in our society. While they were able to map it to their experience on public transit, obviously we recognize that these same issues happen, you know, in other parts of our lives, in other areas of our life experience.

And so why is it, you know, taking place on public transit? What's going on? That's exactly what the initiative is seeking to answer and address and figure out. So those are some of the ways that we learned what was happening from the youth perspective and were able to kind of look at it and think about how we can help create safe and just passageways, you know, from our homes to work to school, especially for our young people.

DUCKWORTH: Let’s go back to the beginning of Not One More Girl and how it came to be, because I mentioned earlier that it launched in 2021 as a phase one partnership with Betti Ono, Alliance for Girls, the Unity Council, Black Girls Brilliance and BART. So it's a true collaboration. How did it all start? 

HOWARD: Yes. Okay. So, digging into that, as a result of a 2019 research report, it was called Together We Rise, alongside three other research initiatives that engaged 324 youth, Alliance for Girls, which is a member organization of girls serving direct service organizations. They learned that girls and gender-expansive youth frequently feel unsafe and are experiencing sexual harassment, gender-based violence on public transit. In their role as advocates for youth, they held town halls to really understand the issues of sexual assault and gender-based violence. And with the youth, they drafted policies with girls serving organizations to combat this, to look at what do transit agencies need to do to provide a safer ridership experience and to address this issue. When we think about sexual assault and gender-based violence and other issues like that, we're dealing with issues of oppression and inequity that create disproportionate effects for certain communities that are experiencing it. So with the policy and the data collected from those 324 young people, them in their leadership role advocating for themselves, Alliance for Girls and Betti Ono came together with our job at Betti Ono to take the data, take the findings, and design an arts-driven, narrative-driven public awareness campaign to really make it visible and to center young people, their voices, their experience, their faces in these campaigns, because they really should be able to speak truth to power about their experience and be seen and respected for not only their thoughts, but also their solutions and their ideas. So we came together, and because the Unity Council, Black Girls Brilliance and other community-based organizations were already a part of the Alliance for Girls Network, they all, we all kind of joined together as the core design team, and we started to meet regularly over the course of many months and years or so to kind of develop what this would be with our youth sitting at the table. So this was an initiative that had over 100 young people participate in leadership roles on our campaign design team as advocates, as policymakers and as strategists. That's how it all came to be. 

DUCKWORTH: The initial campaign also had a video on bystander intervention that urges people witnessing harassment to speak up and be an ally. It actually led to sexual harassment being a new reporting category on the BART watch app, which was amazing. And to sexual harassment being added to the list of prohibited behaviors on BART. So it's part of our code of conduct now, and they have the code of conduct posted in every single train car and at every station so everybody sees that sexual harassment is prohibited. The actions are now considered best practices in the transit industry for tackling sexual harassment outside of traditional law enforcement. So why is this, you know, variety of strategies and approached so important?

HOWARD: So when we're talking about black indigenous people of color, communities and gender expansive youth, we are talking about communities that are very much heavily policed and in many instances overpoliced. And there is a lack of trust with police and police presence, just certainly because of the harms that have come from those kinds of exchanges. There is a lot of data that does exist and that speaks to these concerns that oftentimes when police are called to address something like domestic violence or gender-based violence, it can often lead to ending of lives or like other kinds of really harmful impacts. Youth were concerned about that. Youth of color are very concerned about that, and they wanted to lift up ways that we could collectively address the harm and create this culture of care without police presence. And one of the recommendations that came out of our first phase with Alliance for Girls, Black Girls Brilliance, Unity Council and our youth was how can we have first responders not be police? What are other ways? There are community first responders. There are other models out there that maybe we could align with this work and the recommendation I believe if I'm if I'm telling the story, it has resulted in the transit ambassadors and the crisis intervention specialists, which are people who are the first responders who actually come from these communities, a community of riders. So obviously, they represent all the BART riders, but because they are non-police, there is less maybe anxiety about being approached or maybe the perception of their role is really one of supporting care. They're not, I don't believe, carrying weapons and they don't have the same responsibility in the same ways as police, but their responsibility is for the care of the rider. And so that has really been game changing. And even in this second phase, to see the recommendation come to life literally in the faces and smiles of transit ambassadors and crisis intervention specialists that we know are here for us is powerful. It is truly powerful. And I know our youth who've been a part of the initiative from the beginning are seeing their decisions, their choices, their solutions come to life. So that agency that they have and always have but now kind of have a tangible expression of it, is also a powerful way to see themselves. And I think that's one of the really amazing benefits of this initiative so far.

DUCKWORTH: Definitely and the ambassador program has become a national model as well. 

HOWARD: Yeah. 

DUCKWORTH: So phase two is underway now with new strategies. Tell us about what those entail. 

HOWARD: Building off of phase one and honestly, as the team, the Betti Ono team, which is the team that I lead, we design cultural-based strategies and community engagement-based strategies to be culturally responsive and to reflect what we believe our communities of concern need and want to experience. And reflects, you know, the values that exist within our communities, values of belonging, values of respect, values of care. So this phase, we really wanted to make sure that we talked about and talked to the bystander, the witness. What is happening to our youth and women and girls on public transit regarding gender-based violence and sexual assault can often feel in the moment very isolating and that you are responsible not only to deal with the impact of the harm that you're feeling in the moment, but then to also figure out how to get into a safe position or if anyone else is going to come and support you or like having to hold that space by yourself and still go about your day or continue on your path to wherever you're headed with that level of impact is quite challenging. It's emotionally riveting, right? It's mentally challenging. So we wanted to look at this issue, you know, in the round in a sense, first in the first phase, to say this is unacceptable. This has to stop number one, period, that this end there. No, this is not okay. And then secondly, to say, what is our collective responsibility to one another as individual people and human beings all trying to get where we need to go, to have independent movement free will and to like frankly just be able to move without any threat of harm like we should all have that, it should not just be a privilege. And if that is the case, then what does it mean if we're witnessing something and we don't feel like it's our responsibility to do anything about it? This whole phase is about having the courage to not pretend that it's not happening, not see it right, to make these things visible and then to know what to do. How do I safely intervene if I see it and I'm afraid, what is a pathway to still show support to someone, not put myself in harm's way, but still kind of link arms and stand together? And so the bystander intervention conversation is a critical one because there are many things that someone witnessing a harm can do that doesn't put them directly in harms way. You know, picking up their phone discreetly, quietly, kind of communicating with the person to say, come on, let's go, you know. Presencing, seeing that they acknowledge that something wrong is taking place is really important. And so Our Story of Courage is the theme for this phase. And it comes directly from our youth fellows who've been designing a campaign all year. We've been talking about what do you need? Like if this was happening to you? And many of them, I think at least 41% of the youth we surveyed said that they had experienced this on BART specifically and of all the youth we surveyed this time, 76% of them said that they write BART regularly so that's 1 to 5 times a week. So we're talking about transit dependent riders. And they told us these are the things that we feel like we would want someone to do if they saw, ask us, you know, if they can walk with us, almost like pretend like they know us and say like, hey, I've been looking for you, let's go to the first car. These are things where to go and what to do. We learned from our crisis intervention specialists and transit ambassadors during the listening sessions we held this year. Because if we're looking at it in the round, we need to understand what the teams that are trained to respond to these issues, what they know to do, what the young people feel inherently that they want and like putting these things together. 

DUCKWORTH: Anyka, can we talk about what being harassed, especially on such a public place, you know like public transportation, what that does to a girl and gender-expansive youths’ self esteem and how that impacts their lives?

HOWARD: Sexual violence and harassment is like unwelcome right? It's unwelcome conduct and experience that are happening to women, girls, especially black indigenous people of color. They are disproportionately impacted by this on transit systems. What does it do? It's an interruption. It's an interruption. You know, mentally, emotionally, it is something that is happening to you. It is outside of your control and it generates like a whole ripple effect on your day in that moment. And many times it leads to physical harm where someone is now physically assaulting you, controlling again, your body. You are traveling on this public transit system that you know is supposed to be safe, accessible and affordable to you. You're a young person and you're leaving school on your way to work. You're going to work because you need to support your family or you need to support yourself. Sometimes you even have children yourselves. So being able to get to work is really critical to your economic empowerment, your safety, having housing Oftentimes with trying to get to school, you obviously you're going to school to be educated to, you know, better yourself, to live your life. You're going to doctor's appointments, you're going to see your grandparents, your aunts, uncles, your cousins. It is a complete disruption and interruption. And it is something that I think when it is occurring for you, it completely takes you outside of yourself, outside of your body. And that is such a jarring and dehumanizing experience. It suggests that someone else has the power to control what you do, what you're experiencing, and it impacts your well-being, right, in a completely negative and harmful way. There is a culture of violence in our society that enables this to occur in our public transit system and that culture of violence, it permeates almost every aspect of calm, like our everyday experience, we see it on TV and movies and films. We see it in media and it is toxic, right? It's toxic. Oftentimes and most times, while we know that this issue can impact people across genders, the majority of the reports and data that we have, we're talking about male identify people who may be bigger or larger, smaller, stronger. So you're starting to you know, having to deal literally with the physicality of that. And everybody in their body should have the autonomy to decide what is happening with them and to be free from that level of harm and violence like on their bodies. So it's unnerving and it's unhealthy and it's a pattern of behavior and a practice of behavior that we have to end, you know, we have to dismantle.

DUCKWORTH: And I know for phase two, you did outreach events, including some tabling at First Fridays. And you told me earlier that there were some surprising responses from men in particular. So we have some sound that we're going to play from that tabling event. And I want you to talk about the responses. 

SOUND: It takes all of us to be security guards and protect our girls from bullies and predators… What safety looks like on BART, when the most vulnerable can go on BART and feel as safe as I do, when they don’t have to worry, they don’t have to look over their shoulders. They can just feel comfortable riding and not be worried, you know? 

DUCKWORTH: So those were some of the people that you talked to at that First Fridays event. What do you remember about the responses?

HOWARD:  In that moment, I remembered well, listening and remembering, wow, they get it. They get it. And at that First Friday experience, we had more male-identified people approach the booth to read the data, to respond to Just Don't Do It, Hands Off, Eyes Off, Shut It Down. The campaign slogans from the first phase and want to share their perspective. 

DUCKWORTH: What were their perspectives? Was it a wide range? 

HOWARD: There was a range. One person in particular, a male-identified person, must have been six foot six, looked strong, said to us, to myself and to other team members who are women-identified people, he said, I'm afraid. And if I'm afraid, and I just gave you kind of his stats, why wouldn't you know, a young girl or youth or woman fear for themselves. And it was powerful to hear these male-identified folks represent a level of accountability that I think then our whole entire community is looking for and wants to talk about and wants to presence, because no one should have to feel afraid and it's not the people who are targeted by this harms responsibility to, you know, kind of have to own all of that. And that's part of the story around, you know, bystander intervention and a culture of care. The other clip where the person speaking is talking about we all have to be security guards. Like the point is, we all need to show up for one another and take action. We're not promoting further violence in any way, shape or form. We do not want to make that be the focus. But having a consciousness, an awareness, that your presence can be harmful. The way that you're looking at someone can be considered sexual harassment, a lack of respect, right in how you are physically moving in the space, how close you are, what kind of proximity. You're taking up a lot of space. And if you're taking up a lot of space in these ways, then obviously someone else's space is being diminished and there needs to be an awareness of that and an accountability and a know-how, make an adjustment, adapt right and be accountable. So I think it was powerful the third phase of where we're headed is to talk specifically with male-identified people and allies who want to understand the privileges that they hold in a patriarchal society which we live in, that privileges men and male-identified bodies, voices, titles, presence, positions, you know, in our world. And part of what we're doing with this initiative overall is challenging that status quo, we're naming that that is no longer an acceptable way for our society to exist. It is not progressive and we're moving into the future. So we need everybody to come on and move with us and also do it in a caring, respectful way that recognizes the difference, the differences in our experiences, and to do it in a way that really respects and honors the voice of the people that are impacted, like we're centering the people who are impacted. Even as a bystander, your job is to listen to what the person who is experiencing harm is saying they need. It is not to project your idea of what they want or what you think is acceptable. It is to pause and to say what do you need right now? I see you. I see you. What do you need right now? What would help? And there's other, you know, steps in terms of that intervention. But hearing those male-identified voices, especially the one that said when the most vulnerable can move through this system and not look over their shoulder or even imagine that someone would be able to disrupt, or interrupt their, you know, self-determination, their mobility, that whatever they're doing is their business. Nobody should be able to interrupt that. Right. So that was really powerful. Yeah. I'm like hesitating to say I'm proud of this because we shouldn't have to be like that. We shouldn't have to say I'm proud. But it was a really powerful moment. 

DUCKWORTH: And let's talk about the artwork for the hundreds of posters that are going up in BART stations and trains, because I know art is like completely central to this campaign and to Betti Ono. So I remember in phase one it was photographs that were used. This time it's the Chicano-style, ballpoint pen art and the graphic novel, just amazing artwork from local artist Safi Kolozsvari Regalado. Just mind-blowing work. I mean, just really touching. So I want you to tell us about that collaboration, about Safi and you know how this amazing art came to be. 

HOWARD: Yes. Safi is an incredible, incredible artist of great talent. She goes by ChaCha in the Bay Area Mural Community. She does massive, you know, building walls, like up on a scaffold with, like, these really incredible narrative images of, you know, people empowered or representative of their ideas and beliefs and values in visual storytelling. And she's had a great, you know, amount of experience delivering this kind of work, working directly with community. So working with the community in this case, with our youth fellows, they are arts and civic engagement fellows, our BART frontline teams as well as our project teams for the campaign. So we all sat in this room together to explore this notion of a bystander intervention and to storytell. The youth spent days and days and weeks workshopping what it means to tell your own story. What is a narrative? What is a story of empowerment that you want to share about this experience that you think will truly reflect who you are, what you want to see, and what you expect from someone who wants to step in and help. And Safi was in the room as these conversations were happening, so the art was developed in response to the narratives and the stories that were shared in all of our listening sessions. Inclusive of the BART frontline workers, where they told stories of things that they saw happening to riders, what they responded to, and our youth and their specific experience. Safi also brought her own personal experience because as a woman-identified person, she has experienced sexual harassment and street harassment and harassment in various spaces. So the design style, because she is Chicana and Chicana-inspired artist, she used that style that is very representative of the LatinX community experience to deliver the designs because her work is centered on realism, so she's creating art that represents real people. It was really important to her and to all of us that the image we created was imagery of real people, everyday riders. And so we staged photos on the BART trains and staged these moments that have occurred with our youth. They described I was on a BART and I was just minding my business, and I heard someone like speak over my shoulder and whisper in my ear, and I didn't know why they were talking to me. And I felt so uncomfortable. So that was staged. It was photographed. And then from those photographs, Safi illustrated the experience and did it in such an incredible way. Like, again, her talent and her skill is so incredible, ballpoint pen. She wanted to make sure that what was represented felt authentic, that anyone looking at the work would be really drawn in. There's so much detail and so much specificity down to like nails, you know, certain style of clothing, really reflecting like this youth experience in a powerful way, and then also showing what the energy of that moment can feel like when someone is interrupting your space and it feels unsafe. And so all of the art, for these three illustrations speaks to that. But it also spoke to what to do and like gave a story of possibility. This story of a hope of how we want an experience like that to kind of end and what to do. So, you know, seeing a person experience, seeing the harm and then another rider noticing it. And in Safi’s illustration, you can see the look on this person's face as they're like witnessing it. And then there's like comic style thought bubbles where the person witnessing the harm is saying something to themselves like, Oh, no, this is unacceptable. I've got to do something. 

DUCKWORTH: She said, Nope.

HOWARD: She said nope, right. So all of these pieces are in there and it felt real, right? If felt real and authentic. And I think that those are two important words for this work and even for Betti Ono, because our movement building strategy, our cultural strategies and way the way that we work with our artists and residents is to address real civic issues that are about the material condition of our day to day lives and what solutions we have for them. And narrative-based storytelling that we're doing is truly about honoring and respecting the lived experience of the communities that we're working with and honoring, and respecting their ideas and solutions, and visibly representing that in the artwork uncensored. So there are three illustrations that tell this story about what is happening. The first one kind of like, okay, I see something as a bystander. I'm going to walk up to this person and say, Hey, let's go to the first car. The second illustration, someone's witnessing it and they say, Oh, I wonder if this person that I see experiencing this harm knows about the BART Watch app. And you can see the phone and you can see the BART Watch app. And so that’s helping the riders who are seeing these illustrations think about, oh, there are tools available to me to report something or to get support for myself if I'm experiencing it. And then the third illustration is kind of like coalescing to this moment where all these actors and characters end up in the first car together with the train operator kind of smiling at them like you made it. And this is our community and this is our culture of care and this is what it looks like when we all recognize our connection, our humanity, and show up for each other. So it's like it's powerful and we do want to do a full, like comic book on this. So we hope that we can actually tell even more of the story of all these characters and show that this young person actually made it home or made it to their destination unharmed. Because that's the vision.

DUCKWORTH: I’d love to see that full comic book. That would be amazing. Yeah. You're talking about tools and resources. Artwork is also featured on something brand new in this phase, and that's the bystander intervention cards. They're the wallet sized cards that are just amazing because they're made for both the harasser or the person who they may be being harassed and the person who thinks somebody might be being harassed. So can you tell us about those? Because we have them in our station agent booths. Now we're handing them out for people to use as a tool. 

HOWARD: Yeah, absolutely. And guess who designed them? Our youth, our Ace fellows. This came directly out of a question that was asked of them. Like, if this is what it means, you know, for a bystander to speak up and you can ask somebody to help you, why don't you just ask them to help you? And we heard from them that they felt that, you know, there is a distinction between the youth culture and non-youth or adult culture and a perception around agency and voice and respecting young people's voice. Oftentimes, young folks are diminished, you know, when they're speaking up. And there can be a practice in terms of that differential between being a young person and an adult, where there the perception is like we're not listening. And they felt like for them having a card and something a little bit more discreet like this, that one of the cards has a question you got me question mark. And it describes I'm being harassed. Someone is interrupting me like I don't feel safe. Can you help me? And they could discreetly hand that over to someone close to them to ask for support because they're afraid in the moment. They don't want it to escalate. They don't want to be further harmed. They're not sure if the other people watching them are going to step up for them. Right. They don't often feel seen, heard, respected and cared for in the ways that they need. And they are mistrusting a bit of like, well, will they even listen to me? So this card for them, they spoke to it in that sense of having more agency. It gave them more agency. They designed it. So one says, You got me question mark, and the other card, they said, and now what we should have is another card for someone who might be witnessing and they should say to the person that they see experiencing the harm, I got you. And that's what the other card says. So if you are witnessing it, you can hand this card to someone to say, I see what's happening. And on the I got you card, it names the harm, it validates what the other person is experiencing and it includes other steps that they could take together or singularly depending on what the person being harmed wants to do. Do you want me to call you now for a transit ambassador? Do you want me to call BART police? Do you want me to put this on the BART Watch app? Do you know about it? And vice versa on the You Got Me card. So it's a really powerful expression of engagement that the youth designed. And I'm curious to see how it will all play out and what impact it has. The response has been really positive for this tool. 

DUCKWORTH: Yeah, and you know, talk about impact, what impact in the broader sense do you feel like the Not One More Girl campaign has had to this point? 

HOWARD: Well, according to the data that was shared very recently, I know that there's been somewhat of a percentage decline in like incidents that have been reported. That could be good right to say that the narrative-based campaigns that are centered around challenging the status quo and like the experience of what it looks like to ride over the last couple of years has had an impact. We get calls and also emails and we've had over the last couple of years from people who are, you know, considered the aging population. They may be grandparents at this stage in their lives, remembering their own experience. I mean, they'll even say, oh, in the seventies and eighties I was riding BART and this happened to me and I didn't realize until I saw this campaign two years ago, like how deeply it affected me. I'm so happy that we're doing this, that BART is doing this. We’re seeing again, like with pop-up safety booth we held recently in June, more male-identified people that could be considered, people that would perpetuate the harm, recognizing the issue it’ss being explicitly named so there is language around it. People are learning more what these terms mean, what is gender-based violence? What is sexual harassment? Unfortunately, there is a lack of true understanding of like, Oh, I didn't realize that that act, you know, could be considered harassment. So there's a lot of education taking place also. And we know that this is going to take time to undo and to help build new practices and new ways of being and understanding each other around issues of gender based violence for it to really end. But the data is showing that it is working. We still have a long way to go when we hear, again, like 40% of youth saying, I have experienced this. And so we need to deepen the engagement and over time continue to build education and awareness and a practice on what to do that is life affirming and keep pushing that story out. Stories of empowerment and a vision of the future that we want to get to.

DUCKWORTH: And so we're in phase two, phase three as you already said, you know, you want to touch on more bystander intervention from male-identified people. Where do you ultimately hope Not One More Girl goes in terms of transit agencies and maybe other places? What’s the vision?

HOWARD: Yeah, the vision from the very beginning, even when we first joined forces with the collaborative team, was for all transit agencies, especially here in the Bay Area, where our primary, like work exists in our communities. We want every transit agency to adopt this model and framework. We want every transit agency to adopt a gender equity action plan. We want every transit agency to partner with organizations like Betti Ono and community-based organizations that directly serve and respond to the needs of these communities that are disproportionately impacted. We've been helping to steward a process of change and transformation with our community because we know our community and our community knows us and trust us. That's a critical piece. Many transit agencies may have done things like put up a poster or like throw some facts out there. You see it even in airports. But they're missing some things because they cannot just be a poster with data. It has to be a complete full-service engagement where you're building relationship and there is an open dialogue and exchange happening where transit agencies are listening intently, responding to and taking actions that their ridership is saying that they need in order to feel like they can safely ride and continue to participate in this transit system experience. That's really critical. Culturally responsive and authentic engagement with your riders is for us the only way that we can end this epidemic of an issue that has been going on for a very long time within our public transit system. We need safe, accessible, affordable, you know, passage ways to live our lives and to participate fully in our society. And this this issue is a major barrier to that. So we know that working with BART, I believe, is like the fifth largest transit agency in the natio,n to do initiative like this has never been done before, is truly influencing the transit space. We got to speak to a whole conference full of transit industry professionals not too long ago and had several agencies in the Midwest and other places approach us to say this is a major issue. We really want to try to do something about this. What can we do? How can we learn from what you all been able to accomplish? And so that's what we want. We want to see it spread like wildfire. We want to call us up. We can come collaborate with you and make sure that it is truly representative of the needs of your constituents. It is not something where you could just say, Hey, let's get that artwork and throw it up on your bus system, because those people may not look like or have the exact same experience as your ridership. So you need to make sure that it is truly something representative and reflective of your riders and spend the time, spend the time building the relationships and building the trust and making sure internally you have departments and groups that can actually handle this very sensitive, culturally sensitive, racially sensitive gender, you know, equity sensitive issue the right way, you know, and invest in it, have the resources and direct the resources to the teams that really are needed to deliver on this.

DUCKWORTH:  It’s been a pleasure, thank you so much. Thanks for coming in. Anyka Howard, the founder and CEO of the Betti Ono Foundation. 

HOWARD: Thank you for having me. Thank you so much.

DUCKWORTH: And thank you for listening to Hidden Tracks, Stories from BART. If you'd like to listen to more, you can download our podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play, or on our website at BART.gov/podcasts.

In celebration of Transit Month 2023, the Bay Area transit agencies and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) are hosting a third “All Aboard with Transit CEOs,” a ride-along and social event giving the public a chance to ride with and meet regional transit leaders. The event is also an opportunity for transit leaders to call for on-going financial support for transit operations and to showcase the coordination happening among agencies to improve the rider experience in the Bay Area.

The event is Friday, September 29, 2023, starting at 5pm at the Palo Alto Caltrain Station/Transit Center. The Palo Alto Transit Center is an intermodal transit center served by Caltrain, SamTrans, VTA, Dumbarton Express, the Stanford University Marguerite Shuttle and several local shuttle services. 

Trip details:

Before 5pm: The public and Transit CEOs will come from different transit systems, connecting with the public along their route to the Palo Alto Caltrain Station/Transit Center.

5pm:  The public and Transit CEOs meet at the Palo Alto Transit Center (Caltrain Northbound Platform to San Francisco) for photos and mingling.
5:19pm – Everyone boards Caltrain #709 for an onboard Happy Hour (BYOB)
5:44pm – Train arrives at Millbrae Transit Center (100 California Drive, Millbrae)
6:03pm – The Ride-a-long ends as the train arrives at San Francisco Caltrain Station (700 4th Street, San Francisco)

Members of the public and the media are invited to ride for the full or partial journey. This event is a great opportunity for the public to chat with CEOs about transit service and transit career opportunities. Follow on social media for real time updates of the CEOs journey.  

Participating CEOs include:  SamTrans (April Chan), Caltrain (Michelle Bouchard), VTA (Carolyn Gonot), MUNI (Jeff Tumlin), BART (Bob Powers), WETA/SF Bay Ferry (Seamus Murphy), County Connection (Bill Churchill), and LAVTA/Wheels (Christy Wegener). 

The CEOs will be taking transit to the Palo Alto Caltrain Station and posting on social media using the #TransitMonth hash tag. Several CEOs will announce their routes to get to Palo Alto Transit Center if you want to join them on the journey. 

BART General Manager Bob Powers will take BART's Red Line to Millbrae leaving 19th Street Station at 2:57pm and transfer to Caltrain at 4:02pm

SamTrans CEO April Chan will ride ECR leaving San Carlos Ave / El Camino Street at 4pm 

Caltrain Executive Director Michelle Bouchard will ride Caltrain #410 leaving San Carlos Station at 4:48pm

VTA CEO Carolyn Gonot will ride the VTA Blue Line from River Oaks Station leaving at 3:45, changing trains at Baypointe to the 4 pm Orange Line to Mountain View. Then Caltrain #309 departing Mountain View at 4:40 pm

BART's new Transit Saves 2024 campaign art is featured in the slideshow above. 

Earth Day is an international event held annually on April 22 to celebrate sustainability and raise awareness about environmental protection. At BART, it is an important opportunity for us to reflect on the many challenges our planet faces, including climate change, deforestation, and environmental pollution, as well as the ways we can be part of the solution.  

BART takes special care to acknowledge Earth Day every year because sustainability is a core value of our organization. On past Earth Days, we interviewed riders on trains about their carbon footprints; we created a map highlighting some of the creatures and green features around the BART system; we even put together a BART-themed Earth Day quiz.  

This year, we’re celebrating Earth Day with a new educational marketing campaign that highlights some of the environmental benefits of taking BART. The campaign is now live on the digital screens in select stations and will also occupy the ad spaces in stations and trains. You can see the art in the slideshow below. 

Additionally, this year BART collaborated with the Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation and Trees for Oakland to host a tree planting event. The volunteers, which included many BART employees, planted more than 100 native trees at the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline in Oakland.  

Public transportation is one of the greenest ways to get around, and on Earth Day, BART celebrates that. Learn more about the campaign and the tree planting below.  

Happy Earth Day! 

BART launches second edition of Transit Saves marketing campaign

A panel from Transit Saves 2023.

Today, BART is thrilled to launch the second edition of our Transit Saves marketing campaign with three novel art concepts. We debuted Transit Saves in 2023 to highlight the many reasons public transportation enhances our communities, but there were simply too many ways “transit saves” to include in a single campaign. So, we created another one.  

You can view the new art, which includes updated data from our forthcoming Role in the Region Study, in the above slideshow. As of today, you will begin to see the art around the Bay Area, including in the ad spaces on trains and in stations. Animated versions of the art will be rotating on the digital advertising screens in some BART stations as well.  

Check out our Transit Saves webpage for some quick facts about BART’s importance to the region (environmentally and otherwise) and to view our methodology.  

BART collaborates with local organizations for tree planting event

BART is committed to bringing the community together to safeguard our local environment. 

For Earth Day, BART’s Sustainability Department organized a tree planting event at the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline in Oakland on Saturday, April 20, in collaboration with the Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation and Trees for Oakland.  BART employees, their loved ones, BART District 4 Director Robert Raburn and his wife, Pat, and other members of the community came together to plant 100 trees, including Monterey cypress, Catalina ironwood, hollyleaf cherry, flannel bush, and various types of oak. These trees are native, climate adapted and/or shoreline adapted, and will help sequester carbon that would otherwise contribute to climate change. As you can see in the above Transit Saves art, if we didn’t have BART, we’d have to plant a San Francisco-sized forest every 2 years to offset the extra CO2 emissions. The trees we planted will also provide habitat for animal species and shade for humans and animals seeking relief from heat. 

“It was such a pleasure to see everyone out here doing work that helps fight against climate change,” said BART’s Principal Sustainability Analyst, Michael Cox. “We are all public servants at BART, and we take extra pride in being able to help our community with events like this.” 

Added Alex Pinto, the Community Greening Program Manager at Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation: “I see Earth Day as an important opportunity for us to connect with nature in new ways and learn about the natural world. Putting away our electronics and placing our hands in the soil can be a relaxing and gratifying experience.” 

Please join us this Earth Day by learning about the role transit plays in protecting the Bay Area and our planet. Additional information about BART's ongoing sustainability efforts can be found here. And of course, consider taking BART to your destination whenever possible!