State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta is walking 105 miles from North Philly to Harrisburg to protest SEPTA cuts
Kenyatta planned to speak in West Chester on Friday night and Lancaster on Saturday before arriving at the Capitol steps Tuesday morning.
State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta on Friday morning embarked on a 105-mile walk from his home in North Philadelphia to Harrisburg to protest the SEPTA service cuts that began this week due to an impasse over mass transit funding and the broader state budget in the Pennsylvania legislature.
“We’re gonna be walking all the way to Harrisburg to draw attention to the very real fact that there are folks for whom this — walking — is their new reality because SEPTA has had to drastically reduce services as a result of Republican inaction in Harrisburg," Kenyatta, a Democrat, said at a news conference outside SEPTA’s 69th Street Transportation Center in Upper Darby.
Kenyatta, 35, who began his journey at 7 a.m. Friday, sported Brooks sneakers, black athletic pants, a golf shirt, and a green backpack.
“The plan is to stay at little cheap hotels along the way,” he said. “I have no real idea where those will be. Shoutout to Expedia. We’ll figure it out.”
Kenyatta planned to speak in West Chester on Friday night and Lancaster on Saturday before arriving at the Capitol steps Tuesday morning.
Kenyatta, a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee who has twice run unsuccessfully for statewide office, is clear about whom he blames for SEPTA’s funding crisis.
“We have the money to fund mass transit,” Kenyatta said. “What we don’t have is the political will within the Republican Senate caucus. What we don’t have is Senate Republicans who give a damn about working Pennsylvanians.”
» READ MORE: How Democrats hope to use SEPTA cuts to flip the state Senate for the first time in 31 years
State Sen. Scott Martin, a Lancaster Republican who chairs the Appropriations Committee, this week called on Democrats “to stop playing politics on the mass transit issue.”
“When your side is staging rallies, press conferences, and protests every day and calling out individual legislators who are working hard to find solutions, how do you have the gall to accuse the other side of playing politics?” Martin said in a news release Thursday.
SEPTA, which has a $213 million operating deficit this year, has said the service cuts that began this week mark the beginning of a “death spiral” for the transit agency if it doesn’t secure more support from Harrisburg.
House Democrats have advanced several proposals to close the funding gap, all of which include increasing the share of sales tax revenue that goes to transit.
Senate Republicans have called the SEPTA service reductions a “manufactured crisis” and so far have not adopted any of the Democratic plans, citing concerns that taking any more money from sales tax revenue would require a tax increase down the line. Instead, the Senate GOP approved a measure to use capital and emergency funds for mass transit, as well as road and bridge repairs.
Democrats initially rejected the concept, saying it would hurt SEPTA more in the long run. But Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro this week said he may end up supporting a solution that includes such a transfer, so long as it is paired with a long-term funding plan for SEPTA.
At Kenyatta’s news conference, state Rep. Gina H. Curry, a Democrat who represents Upper Darby, compared his walk to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, when Black residents protested the segregation of the Alabama city’s bus line by walking or finding other means of transportation.
“During the Montgomery Bus Boycott, when Black riders were told their dignity didn’t matter, they stood up by walking, like our brother is going to do,” Curry said. “While we live in a different time, the same truth applies today. We cannot afford to wait for someone else to fix this problem. We must fix it now.”
Kenyatta’s trek also echoes former U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak’s 422-mile walk across Pennsylvania to launch his 2015 campaign for a U.S. Senate seat.
Sestak, a Delaware County Democrat, came up short in that race, and in his brief run for president during the 2020 election cycle, during which he walked across New Hampshire.
Kenyatta acknowledged some will view his walk as a “stunt,” but said it was necessary to take a stand against Republican efforts to cripple basic services.
“In this moment where you have folks trying to rip up the social safety net from the studs, when you have folks trying to dismantle government,” he said, “we have to reach back into the grab bag of people who have come before, the leaders who have moved this nation forward, and they have always engaged in the type of direct action and peaceful civil protest to move this nation closer.”
Staff writers Gillian McGoldrick and Julia Terruso contributed to this article.