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Though Robinson's suggestion was not implemented (the mayor told drivers that the crime-ridden area still had to be served by public transit), his face-to-face with Brown left him energized and inspired. He wrote a flurry of new proposals to improve Muni, which he sent to the mayor as well as to the executive board of Local 250-A.
First, he outlined his idea for a Muni police force to keep riders and drivers safe -- something BART had had for years. Next, he suggested that elevator music be played in buses to calm riders and keep them from attacking drivers or each other. "Music soothes the ear of the savage beast," he wrote in his proposal. He pitched each new idea to Brown on an Open Door Day.
By 1998, public wrath against Muni had hit an all-time high. Riders were enraged by the transit system's chronic tardiness. In August of that year, glitches in a new automated control system produced the infamous weeklong "Muni Metro meltdown," with trains delayed for hours during the morning commute. Frustrated passengers yanked emergency exit levers in stalled trains, escaping on foot through the tunnels. City officials, notably Willie Brown, were under intense pressure to fix Muni.
Muni drivers bore the brunt of the public's rage. Newspaper articles revealed their high absenteeism and eyebrow-raising perks. Drivers were entitled to 10 "miss-outs" a year -- unscheduled paid days off they could take without calling in. The media also highlighted overtime abuse. Even if an operator had taken paid time off during his scheduled workweek, reducing his total hours worked below 40, he could pick up extra shifts and be paid OT.
Other factors contributed to Muni's woes, including outdated equipment and a hiring rate that wasn't keeping up with attrition. And not all drivers abused the system. High absenteeism, for instance, could be partly explained by job stress. According to studies by UC Berkeley and UCSF, San Francisco transit drivers have some of the highest rates of hypertension, ulcers, and neck and back pain in the country.
Robinson saw the solution: good PR. The only way to change Muni's image, he felt, was through humanitarian activity. He again drafted a proposal, which read in part:
"Gentle people, can you visualize in your mind, Municipal Railways Transit Operators in and from all seven division [sic] giving away 10,000 turkeys and hams with corresponding bags of groceries with all the fixings. Can you see the 30,000 people coming to get the 10,000 bags of groceries? Now, can you see the media? Do you see the big picture? ... Now, for those of you [who] truly see the big picture, can you multiply it by three?"
This time when Robinson met with Brown, the mayor recommended him for a seat on the executive board of the Bayview Hope Homeless Resource Center, a small mobile food bank run by a local Samaritan named Barbara "Mother" Brown. It was the first time Robinson had been an executive of anything -- at least anything legal. He helped recruit Muni drivers to give away food baskets at the center's first Christmas party.
"He's a bright young man," said Mother Brown. "He's definitely a humanitarian at heart."
Robinson's stream of ideas and confabs with the mayor began to attract attention. Within Muni, he developed a reputation as a rabble-rouser, and was sought out by a husband-and-wife pair of radicals active in the union -- drivers John and Ellen Murray.
The Murrays are outspoken communists. A middle-aged white man with a brush-cut and an earring in each ear, John Murray is popular among the rank and file for his firebrand style of attacking management and defending workers no matter what the circumstances. Murray (who refused to comment for this story) took Robinson under his wing and crash-educated him in far-left politics. He gave him copies of Challenge, the Progressive Labor Party's newspaper, and became -- in Robinson's words -- his "Marxist mentor."
"John Murray is a hero in Local 250," Robinson enthused. "He's like the last word in unionism." He was also, Robinson noted, only the "second Caucasian guy I could ever just sit down with and converse." (The first was a white pimp.)
The radical labor organizer told Robinson that even his macking was a form of communism. As a pimp, Robinson took all the prostitutes' money and doled out exactly what they needed for living expenses. Likewise under communism, Murray told him, "the people have three pairs of socks, a pair of boots, a jacket -- everything that they need, dictated from the top."
The analogy made sense to Robinson, with one big exception.
Communists, he said with a smile, "believe that the money should be handled by a group at the top, and everything goes back to the people. The difference [in pimping] being, everything goes back to me!"
Murray's influence on his protégé is obvious in a short but prescient article Robinson wrote (under the nom de plume "Forever Redd") about Iraq for Challenge in 2000.
The notorious Rockefeller-wing capitalists' ongoing manipulations of the cost of oil and their control over the fascist governments will ultimately culminate in bombs over Baghdad. ... Comrades, if you listen closely, you can hear the return of the thunderous winds of war ....
With Muni under heavy political fire, the late '90s were a perfect time to become a revolutionary bus driver. In 1999, Mayor Brown appointed a new Muni executive director named Michael Burns, who hailed from Philadelphia and had a reputation for being tough on labor. Two local public interest groups -- San Francisco Planning and Urban Research and Rescue Muni -- were conducting an aggressive signature campaign to pressure city officials to reform Muni.
