Alum Leah LaCroix Helped Make SF Public Transit Free for Youth

Thursday, February 07, 2019

SF WEEKLY -- LaCroix and the Youth Commission’s hard work lives on every day. Tens of thousands of young San Franciscans now ride our public transit system for free.

“It took young people organizing and mobilizing for folks to really see that we were in it for the long haul,” LaCroix says.

But the Youth Commission was just the start. Around the same time that she graduated from San Francisco State — with a dual degree in urban planning and Political Science — someone suggested that she run for San Francisco’s Democratic County Central Committee, a powerful local voice whose endorsement meetings draw hundreds of people around every election.

“At first I was like, ‘No, that seems like a beast, I’m starting a new job, I just finished school,’ ” she says. “But the more I thought about it, I kept thinking about how young people are told ‘not now,’ and to ‘wait their turn.’”

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