C2 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, MAY 15 , 2022
commuterThe liberal groups that orga-
nized Saturday’s protests de-
signed the events as a resounding
message to leaders that the ma-
jority of Americans support up-
holding Roe. In Washington,
women and men of all ages gath-
ered on the National Mall.
They voiced anger over the
wave of abortion bans and re-
strictions taking hold in states
across the country. They held
signs with drawings of uteri and
images of coat hangers, to sym-
bolize the dangerous measures
people resorted to to terminate
pregnancies before Roe.
Bethany Van Kampen Saravia,
39, of Mount Rainier, Md., walked
through the crowd of thousands
on the Mall. The white poster
board with sparkly gold that she
carried shared her story: “I had a
baby & I had an abortion.”
She was 19 when she had her
abortion, she said. She told her
mother, who had previously told
her about her own “frightening”
pre- Roe abortion, but it took
years for Van Kampen Saravia to
open up about her experience to
others.
“My abortion was a deeply per-
sonal decision for me, and the
thought of the government con-
trolling that made me want to
change laws,” said Van Kampen
Saravia, a senior legal and policy
adviser at Ipas, an international
reproductive justice organiza-
tion. “The thought of my daugh-
ter having less protection than I
did growing up absolutely breaks
my heart. And it terrifies me.”
A sign resting on her eight-
month-old daughter’s stroller
read: “My mommy had an abor-
tion. It is just HEALTH CARE.”
On the lawn outside the Wash-
ington Monument, Katherine
Moffitt, 72, embraced a fellow
demonstrator. The two had met
only a few minutes before but
immediately bonded over having
had an abortion in the early
1970s, before the Roe decision.
Both came to the District, they
said, because they remembered
what life without access to legal
abortions was like.
In 1973, Moffitt said, she drove
PROTEST FROM C1
from her home state of Rhode
Island to Massachusetts to get an
abortion. She had just graduated
from college. Getting an abortion,
she said, changed her life: She
was able to go to graduate school
and start a family when she was
ready, she said. She drove in from
Princeton, N.J., because she want-
ed to advocate for her two grand-
daughters.
“Their future should not be
with fewer rights than my life,”
Moffitt said, tearing up.
The other woman, Melanie,
who spoke on the condition that
only her first name be used be-
cause of privacy concerns, said
she got an abortion in 1971. She
drove from Michigan to New York
City at the time. A nurse held her
hand during the procedure.
When she heard Moffitt’s abor-
tion story, she said, she was struck
by how similar their backgrounds
and stories were. “I’m just feeling
grateful that I’m not alone in my
absolute horror of what’s going
down in our country for women,
and I’m grateful to know that my
sisters are out there doing what
they can,” Melanie said.
Randy Shreve and Lauri Ad-
ams, both 60, drove from Cum-
berland, Md. Husband and wife
stuck their signs into the ground.
Lauri’s read: “Only over mydead body will the gov control my
g-daughter’s!”
Randy’s sign read as a reply:
“I’m mad. She’s madder. Stop the
madness. I have to live with her.”
They said they were there to
advocate for their two daughters,
son and two grandchildren. If Roe
is reversed, “it could send us back
50 years,” Randy said.
Nearby, music started blaring
on the stage, and a roster of
speakers began. In the early after-
noon, U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-
Calif.) took the stage and told the
crowd about getting an abortion
as a teenager. It wasn’t legal at the
time, she said, and she knew the
risk she was taking in “the dark
days” before Roe.
“We’re here today to tell these
radical extremists that if you
criminalize people for having an
abortion, if you make abortion
illegal, if you take away our rights
to make our personal decisions
about our bodies, we will see you
at the ballot box in November,”
Lee said.
The Senate failed to advance
legislation Wednesday that
would codify a constitutional
right to abortion in federal law,
after all 50 Republicans and Sen.
Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) op-
posed moving ahead on the bill,
called the Women’s Health Pro-tection Act.
Rachel O’Leary Carmona, exec-
utive director of the Women’s
March, said the organizers of
Saturday’s events are planning
for many more demonstrations
this summer to continue to pres-
sure lawmakers.
“We have to see an end to the
attacks on our bodies,” Carmona
said. “You can expect for women
to be completely ungovernable
until this government starts to
work for us.”
Halfway across the country,
several hundred people gathered
Saturday morning in downtown
San Antonio. Many in the crowd
said they had attended abortion
rights rallies in recent months to
protest a restrictive Texas law,
which went into effect in Septem-
ber and bans most abortions after
six weeks of pregnancy.
“Most people don’t even know
they’re pregnant until after six
weeks,” said Evelyn Tamez, 26,
who had come to the protest with
her sister, Valeria Tamez, 21. “It
puts a restriction on women of
color especially.”
The sisters are from Laredo,
Tex., on the southern border,
where they said they know multi-
ple people who have crossed into
Mexico to buy abortion pills at
pharmacies without consultingwith a provider.
“It’s dangerous,” Evelyn Tamez
said. If the Supreme Court over-
turns Roe v. Wade , she added, “it’s
not going to stop abortions. It’s
just going to stop safe abortions.”
The crowd swelled to more
than 1,000. Some of the protesters
snapped pictures, remarking on
the size of the protest. “I haven’t
seen anything like this,” said Nat-
alie Butrico, 22, who lives in San
Antonio.
Many of the signs addressed
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), who
signed the Texas bill into law. One
woman wore a T-shirt with a
Texas map that read “Gilead,” a
reference to the patriarchal dys-
topia from “The Handmaid’s
Tale.”
Veronika Granado, 22, said
she’d had an abortion herself, and
urged people to focus on the
rights that have already been
restricted in Texas.
“We are already living in a
post- Roe reality,” Granado said.
Jessica Cisneros, who is chal-
lenging Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-
Tex.), the only antiabortion Dem-
ocrat in the House, in the 28th
District’s Democratic primary,
was also in the crowd. On Satur-
day, she stood at the front of the
march, holding a sign that read
“Vote out anti choice politicians.”
Aria Floyd, 20, said she came in
part to support Cisneros.
While she initially felt helpless
after learning that the Supreme
Court was poised to overturn Roe
v. Wade , she said, she quickly
turned her attention to the ballot
box.
“I’m going to be voting,” she
said.
In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., hun-
dreds of abortion rights support-
ers lined several blocks in front of
the federal courthouse, drawing
continual honks of support from
motorists.
The boisterous demonstrators
chanted “Abortion is health care!”
while carrying homemade signs
such as “No Church Rule in USA”
and “Women are not Government
Property.”
Standing under Florida’s blaz-
ing midday sun, many of the
demonstrators said they viewed
Saturday’s protest as just the startof a long battle to protect access
to abortion in the state. Last
month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSan-
tis (R) signed a bill banning abor-
tion after the 15th week of preg-
nancy, and many of the demon-
strators said they will now mobi-
lize to try to defeat his reelection
bid in November.
As she pointed to motorists
cheering on the demonstrators,
Cindy Ciarcia said the turnout for
the abortion rights protest re-
minded her of the South Florida
Women’s March in January 2017
opposing President Donald
Trump.
But “this has way more people
just driving by and getting in-
volved, and the Women’s March
was not like that,” said Ciarcia, 66.
“And we are just getting started,
so I feel like, for once, we are
really going to make a difference.”
Bett Willett said her decision to
remain at the protest despite
heat-related health risks signaled
just how angry she was about the
looming Supreme Court decision.
“I am 81 years old, and I have a
daughter and granddaughters,
and that is why I am here,” said
Willett, a resident of Deerfield
Beach, Fla.
Asked whether she thinks
abortion will remain legal in Flor-
ida if Roe is overturned, Willett
said she won’t be able to answer
until after the November elec-
tions.
“This is just going to grow,”
Willett said, as the sounds of
chanting and car horns rico-
cheted off the federal courthouse
building. “All of these people
know other people. This is not a
small gathering for Fort Lauder-
dale, and the anger here is off the
wall.”
Back in Washington, the
marchers made their way to the
Supreme Court. Chants of “Keep
your theology off my biology!”
echoed in the streets before the
crowd began to disperse. A group
of 50 antiabortion counterpro-
testers demonstrated near the
Supreme Court, but police kept
the groups apart.Caroline Kitchener in San Antonio,
and Tim Craig in Fort Lauderdale,
Fla., contributed to this report.On National Mall and across U.S., protesters assemble to save abortion rights
C RAIG HUDSON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Thousands of abortion rights demonstrators march toward the Supreme Court on Saturday.BY JUSTIN GEORGEMetro and transit systems
across the country are facing a
number of challenges in the com-
ing years.
More than two years into the
coronavirus pandemic, a shift
toward telework has dented the
number of passengers using tran-
sit. Fewer commuters means few-
er fares, equating to a revenue
drop of hundreds of millions of
dollars for the Washington-area
transit agency.
The pandemic, meanwhile,
shows no signs of ending as loos-
er return-to-office policies con-
tinue to limit in-person work, es-
pecially in downtown D.C. Mean-
while, Metrorail has operated a
reduced schedule since October,
when nearly 60 percent of its rail
cars were pulled from service af-
ter a federal safety investigation
uncovered a defect in 7000-series
cars that causes wheels to move
outward.
The agency’s funding stream
for annual repairs, upgrades and
vehicle replacements is also pro-
jected to max out in the coming
years.
That’s the situation that Randy
Clarke, Metro’s next general man-
ager, will walk into this summer.
After a nationwide search, Met-
ro’s board last week appointed
Clarke, the chief executive of the
Austin-based Capital Metropoli-
tan Transportation Authority, as
its next general manager. He will
replace Paul J. Wiedefeld, who is
retiring June 30 after six years
leading the agency.
Clarke, 45, who has served in
various transportation-related
roles over more than two decades
— including at the Massachusetts
Bay Transportation Authority in
Boston and the American Public
Transportation Association —
spoke to The Washington Post
about his reasons for taking the
job and his plans for getting Met-
ro back on track.
The interview was lightly edit-
ed for length and clarity.Q: Metro, overall, has recently
experienced an uptick in riders,
but Metrorail continues to lag,
running 35 percent of the daily
passenger trips it was before the
pandemic. How do you get
people back on Metro, or should
the transit agency focus on
what’s working with Metrobus,
which has recovered 88 percent
of its pre-pandemic ridership?
A: All modes are critical, and all
customers are critical. I care
about the bus customer like I
care about the rail customer.
They’re all really important, and
they all bring different types of
value to the community at
different parts of the day or
different days of the week. I am
bullish on transit long term. Are
we clearly having a downward
trend right now? Of course, we’re
coming out of a pandemic. The
economy is up and down more
than we all like, lately. There’s a
lot of uncertainty and anxiety.
Another wave of covid is
potentially coming.
This is all going to work its way
out. We have to come together as
a region, and think through the
long term, [review] the business
model for Metro. There is maybe
an opportunity to gain more
transit users at night. As an
activity center, D.C. is special.
Think of millions of people that
come here every year. There
shouldn’t be a visitor that comes
here, that stays in the core, that
ever rents a car. They should be
on the [transit] service doing all
of their activities. You have major
development in places like
Tysons and along the whole
Silver Line alignment and in that
area. You have Nats Park and the
Caps.
There are all these
opportunities across the day to
have people using transit, and to
do that we need safe, reliable,
frequent service. I look forward
to working with the partners andstakeholders and hear from
customers on how we can maybe
rebalance the network. This
whole thing doesn’t need to be
rethought. Transit is the
opportunity connector, and
nothing is the workhorse of a
good city like transit.Q: With telework becoming so
pervasive, what’s a selling point
for Metro? How do you get
people back on Metrorail,
specifically?
A: First of all, I think there’s a lot
of people on Metro. I think the
bigger question is how do we get
more people back on Metro. Most
people, I’m convinced, want to
know it’s safe and reliable and
frequent. If the 7000 series were
back today, I’m personally
convinced — and I’m not under
the hood here — but ridership
would be significantly higherthan it even is today because the
frequency would be so much
higher. If the Silver Line Phase
Two was already in service,
there’d be more people taking
that.
You go out to [Interstate] 66 at
like 4 in the afternoon, and it’s
just a line of cabs and Ubers. My
understanding is traffic back in
the D.C. area is pretty horrible
again. Gas prices are at the
highest level they’ve ever been,
and I don’t think that’s going to
change for a while. There’s
obviously major environmental
impacts to driving. People want
to take the rail line.
I think Metro is doing a lot of
things right, and we’ve got to get
in and see where we can focus to
improve things. A state of good
repair leads to good reliability
and safety and that’s going to get
more and more people back.People want frequency and they
want to know they’re safe. We’ve
got to get people back on the
transit system, because when the
system’s performing well, the
whole region’s performing well.Q: How do you capitalize on
growing bus ridership and
improve reliability and frequency
of bus service?
A: One of the key things that I
really look forward to working
with our partners on is on right
of way. The jurisdictional
partners own the right of way,
and I give [the D.C. Department
of Transportation] a lot of credit
right now. I’m not in the mix, but
it’s clear they’re doing a lot of
stuff.
[Bus priority lanes] are the
types of improvements that we
need to work with all the
jurisdictions to think: How do wemove those buses safely and
quickly to get as many people
onboard and give those
customers the best possible
service? And if we can do that,
well, then your bus-rail
connections at stations are
better. The whole system
improves.Q: Many government leaders say
transit is a public service and
should be fully funded or made
free for users. Several cities,
including Kansas City and
Alexandria, have gone fare-free.
What do you think of those ideas?
A: Transit is a public good. You
cannot have a great city, a great
region, without a great public
transit system. It’s just
impossible. Every great city of the
world has a great functioning
public transit system. So, fares is
a complicated element.
We’ve funded transit in a
unique way in America, and that
conversation is kind of evolving
in America about the right way to
fund transit. Ultimately, someone
has to pay for a public good,
whether it’s a fire department, a
school or a transit authority.
Those services have to be funded.
So the community has to come
together and decide how to use
their money to fund the services
they care about.
In Austin, we were able to do a
referendum and people actually
passed a property tax on
themselves during a pandemic
because they cared so much
about building a much larger
transit system for the future of
their community — the fastest-
growing city in the country. In
this community, we have to come
together as a region and think
through kind of the puts-and-
takes of how we want this region
to function — both not just
mobility-wise, but social justice-
wise, public safety-wise, traffic,
environment, you name it. And
transit is going to have to be a key
player in all those discussions.Metro’s new general manager is optimistic on ridership
BILL O'LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST
A train pulls out of Metro Center station last fall. That’s when nearly 60 percent of Metro rail cars were
pulled from service after a federal safety investigation uncovered a defect in 7000-series cars.Subscriber ExclusivesAlmost “tutu” good to be true: Specially priced tickets to
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