The holiday season is meant to bring friends, family and many times people of no affiliation together, and it’s done in a relatively intuitive way – by taking advantage of what I like to call\u00a0 ‘universal human unifiers.’ Food, music, gifts; these are understood by everyone, primarily because they can be enjoyed by everyone, and so our holidays are centered around turkeys, carols and new toys.<\/p>\n
But not all unifiers need to be enjoyable in order to bring people together. In fact, it’s often the most unfortunate events which create an environment of comradery; certainly we’ve all been exposed to stories of war bringing soldiers closer together than otherwise possible.<\/p>\n
Often overlooked, however, are the mundane conditions of day-to-day life for any individual in a given community. Moments of utmost joy or pressing hardships are simply the most obvious of unifiers, and that’s because it’s easy to understand the feelings of those exposed to a heartfelt family reunion or a life-altering disaster.<\/p>\n
Being in Detroit, it’s become more apparent that what I’d previously thought of as an extraneous part of a functioning society, is actually one of the greatest unifiers to exist – public transportation.<\/p>\n
Public transportation has always been primarily about getting from point A, to a distant and potentially fruitful point B, but in its long and advancing history has also been a unifier of purpose. Being in such close quarters with individuals whose reasons for traveling, regardless of distance, are so varied yet so literally near is a vessel for mixing, sharing and creating purpose. Transportation is a common ground that should be shared by individuals and not compartmentalized into a task that falls squarely on the shoulders of each person. We all need to get somewhere, and often we all need to do it every single day.<\/p>\n
Public transportation doesn’t only benefit the community by allowing people to get to where they need to be, but it allows those people to meet and share the weight of one of people’s most basic burdens – getting to where they need to be.<\/p>\n
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