Mass Murder on CTA Trains and the Collapse of Our Society: How To Prevent It

The CTA trains and buses are not a motel, hospital, jail, cafeteria, shopping mall, pharmacy, shelter, group home, community center, cage ring or shooting range. 

Yet that is exactly what is has become! 

Eight near-empty rail cars full with chaos and human suffering all day and all night! 

Mass murder of homeless people with nothing by people with nothing to lose!

Eight rail cars being run ragged and operated by burned out, sick, abused one-person train crews.

Eight rail cars cleaned by skeleton crews that are rushed and written up day-in and day-out. 

Like the four homeless people massacred on the Blue Line train, CTA workers' health, careers, human rights and Collective Bargaining Agreement are massacred by cold-blooded CTA mismanagement.

People in Chicago need affordable homes, good jobs, healthcare and education. Suffering people need care. Not to be dumped on CTA trains and buses for me and my coworkers to care for and clean up after! They certainly do not need to be arrested and punished for being homeless!

Suffering people, like the four who were shot point-blank while asleep, aren't even considered human in our sick, profits-over-people society! This was mass murder! It certainly would be called such if the persons were in suits headed to their downtown office!

The same goes for me and my fellow CTA workers. 

We are looked upon as ingrates. Trash. Not even worthy of proper tools, paid leave or dental implants. Our full-time jobs are being replaced with 40-hour part-time jobs. Some of us struggle with homelessness and poverty—and it is getting worse every year! Then our stingy employer whines about not being able to hire enough people! 

When we clamor for Paid Leave, Full-Time Jobs For All, Two-Person Crews, Proper Tools and Brick and Mortar Bathrooms, we are constantly punished and are told:

There is no money for that. 

Be happy you have a job.

But riders need these things too. If we are suffering in hell, what makes anyone think that service will ever be good? Lack of such basic dignities create hazards that entrap us within a cycle of punishment and humiliation that erodes the power of our unions and Collective Bargaining Agreements.

Full-Time Jobs For All CTA Workers, Two-Person Crews, shorter trains during non-rush hours and quadruple the amount of maintenance crews tending to vehicles and facilities will naturally make trains safer. This will result in less vagrancy and more riders. 

Yet, without addressing the root problems of poverty in our city, nothing will ever prevent mass murder on CTA trains (and buses). Nope. Not even adding police and security will prevent another execution of homeless people.

But our tax dollars and debts are funding endless wars and prisons. The CTA mismanagement is blowing millions on ridiculous purchases like pizza and video systems on trains that already have them!

The massacre of the four innocent human beings on the Blue Line is an alarm of a society on the brink of total collapse. 

However, the collapse can be averted if we invest in human growth and development like we do for policing, wars, prisons and new "capital" projects. Then we will have sustainable positive change in our society.