Friends 4 Expo Transit records
Scope and Contents
Records of the Friends 4 Expo Transit advocacy group created and collected by Kathy Seal, a longtime community organizer who founded Friends 4 Expo in 2000 to fight for a light rail Expo Line along a right of way in Los Angeles running from Exposition Boulevard into Santa Monica. Friends 4 Expo (also known as Friends4Expo and F4E) emphasized the environmental benefit of clean, speedy, high-capacity light rail, and sought to overcome opposition to a passenger line--principally from homeowners' groups--by presenting slide shows to schools, senior centers, churches, a mosque, chambers of commerce, Rotary clubs, Neighborhood Councils, unions, and neighborhood groups flanking the right of way. Members of the group gathered thousands of signatures at farmers' markets, neighborhood festivals, outdoor malls, and city events. Friends 4 Expo lobbied Los Angeles, Culver City, and Santa Monica city council members, and members of the Los Angeles Metro board. The activists reached out to community newspapers and met with the Los Angeles Times editorial board. Two community colleges endorsed the project, as did the Music Center and the University of Southern California. The records document the efforts and activities of Friends 4 Expo Transit that led, in June 2001, to unanimous approval by the Metro board to construct the first half of the Expo Line as light rail from downtown Los Angeles to Culver City and, by 2008, to funding that would clear the way for the second half of the Expo Line's construction. Types of material in the Friends 4 Expo Transit records include fact sheets, notes and agendas from meetings, press materials and clippings, files relating to endorsements, and correspondence. Some of the text in this note was adapted from content published on the Friends 4 Expo website in June of 2023.
Dates
- Creation: 2000 - 2002
Creator
- Friends 4 Expo Transit (Organization)
- Seal, Kathy (Person)
Conditions Governing Access
Advance notice required for access.
Conditions Governing Use
All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Department of Special Collections at specol@usc.edu. Permission for publication is given on behalf of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained.
Rights Statement for Archival Description
Finding aid description and metadata are licensed under an Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.
Extent
0.88 Linear Feet (2 boxes)
Language of Materials
English
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Gift of Kathy Seal, September 29, 2022.
Subject
- Friends 4 Expo Transit -- Archives (Organization)
- Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority -- Archives (Organization)
- Seal, Kathy -- Archives (Person)
Genre / Form
- Administrative records
- Agendas (administrative records)
- Clippings (information artifacts)
- Correspondence
- Notes
- Press releases
Geographic
Topical
- Environmentalism -- California -- Los Angeles -- Archival resources
- Political activists -- California -- Los Angeles -- Archival resources
- Social advocacy -- California -- Archival resources
- Transportation -- California -- Los Angeles -- Planning -- Archival resources
- Transportation -- Public relations -- California -- Los Angeles -- Archival resources
- Title
- Finding aid for the Friends 4 Expo Transit records
- Status
- Minimally Processed
- Author
- Bo Doub
- Date
- 2023 April
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Repository Details
Part of the USC Libraries Special Collections Repository
Doheny Memorial Library 206
3550 Trousdale Parkway
Los Angeles California 90089-0189 United States
specol@usc.edu