Groundbreaking tactic, decision result in safe bus ride to mall
To get to her job at the Mall at Fairfield Commons in Beavercreek, a pregnant woman used to ride the public bus system from her home to Wright State University, then walk a mile at night across a busy multilane overpass that intersects Fairfield Road with Interstate 675 near Dayton.
No bus stops were available at the mall.
“She took her life in her hands to go to work,” Wilma Righter, a member of Leaders for Equality & Action in Dayton (LEAD), explains in recounting the woman’s story in “Free To Ride.”
The documentary — produced by the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University and inspired by the work of LEAD — chronicles the battle to get bus service to the mall despite opposition by Beavercreek City Council.
“It was not surprising that something like this could happen,” said Matt Martin, a senior researcher at the Kirwan Institute who wrote and produced the movie. “And, honestly, it happens in every city and region across the country.”
Beginning Friday, “Free To Ride” will screen for a week at the Gateway Film Center, with the filmmakers attending the 7 p.m. Friday screening, followed by a panel discussion.
The Kirwan Institute conducts research on issues such as transportation, education, public health and housing and how they relate to race. The reports, often used by community organizations, public agencies and philanthropies, can be technical, but making films provides a way for the institute to present research for a wider audience.
“Our mission is simple,” said Martin, 33, of Columbus. “We work to create a just and inclusive society, where all people and communities have opportunity to succeed.”
“Free To Ride” is the institute’s second film; the first, “A Reading of the Letter From Birmingham Jail,” was released in 2013.
“We could see that this story was about more than three bus stops,” said Martin, who worked at the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission in Dayton before joining the Kirwan Institute in 2009.
“It was about the right to participate in the economy, and it struck at the heart of why several people in the story have done what they’d done in their careers.”
Jamaal Bell, the director of strategic communication at the institute and the director of “A Reading of the Letter From Birmingham Jail,” was asked to direct “Free To Ride.”
“We were excited about the idea, but it’s still a story about bus stops, and we wondered whether it would still
be compelling,” said Bell, 37, of Gahanna.
“Matt took me around and showed me the community (Dayton), and I said, ‘Wow, the community itself is a character.’”
“Free To Ride” shows that the location of jobs in Dayton, as in many cities, has shifted since the 1980s. As older, centrally located factories closed, retail and service-sector job were created near outerbelts such as I-675, which runs from I-75 south of Dayton to I-70 between Dayton and Springfield.
The closest bus service to Fairfield Commons left passengers at Wright State University, west of I-675, forcing people to cross the overpass to reach the mall.
In 2011, after listening to complaints from members of LEAD and the community, the Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority agreed to install three bus stops at the mall, pending
approval of the Beavercreek City Council.
The council rejected the idea, setting off a two-year battle to have the stops installed.
Council members cited surveys suggesting that city residents didn’t want the service, but they also used words such as “crime” and “security.”
“So much of that public conversation was in coded racist terms,” Ellis Jacobs, a lawyer with Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, a legal agency that worked with LEAD, says in the movie. “People in the community had no problem discerning what it was really about.”
The movie cites statistics: The population of Beavercreek is 3 percent AfricanAmerican, and Dayton’s population is more than 40 percent black; more than 70 percent of the Dayton bus system’s riders are minorities.
Acting for LEAD, lawyers filed a complaint with the Federal Highway Administration under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which says that any entity accepting federal funds cannot engage in processes that have a discriminatory effect.
The tactic, which had not been tried before, threatened millions of dollars in federal money that the city received each year.
After an investigation, on June 26, 2013, the Federal Highway Administration issued a letter of noncompliance with Title VI to the city of Beavercreek. The council’s choices were to review and pass the bus-stop ordinance or appeal and risk losing millions in federal funding.
On Oct. 14, 2013, the Beavercreek City Council approved the stops, and the first bus rolled to the mall the next January.
“The story was great because it had a happy ending,” Bell said. “A lot of civil-rights documentaries don’t have a happy ending.
“It was a chance to do one that not only inspires but shows what success looks like.”