Dear Amtrak, After hearing about your new and incredibly awesome residency program, we have a proposal.

We are two college graduates in our mid-20s, and we have a project that has the potential to benefit both Amtrak, and us, in a big way. This spring, we are taking a month to do a cross-country rail trip. Along the way, we plan on working alongside, and chronicling, the daily lives of blue-collar, low class workers. We both have spent time working for non-profits, and we have a keen interest in the challenges faced by those who are working paycheck to paycheck. Katie Figura has spent two years in Seattle working for Communities in Schools, a nationally operated drop-out prevention organization. I, Marty Schneider, worked with VPIRG for two years, and more recently, CALPIRG and Environment California for a year. For our trip back, we want to do a gonzo/photojournalism project on the current status of America's lower class as well as on the affordability, romanticism, sustainability, and blatant lack of political attention paid to America's rail system. We feel that this transportation issue is a microcosm of our current economic problems. The lower class is lacking access to mobility. Katie is a published photographer with a strong eye for capturing human emotion (http://katefiguraphotography.smugmug.com/). She graduated from Cornell Universitys School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and is passionate about labor issues and human rights. Her pictures will coincide with essays and interviews on the people we meet, and the jobs they do. Traveling by Amtrak will also give us the opportunity to document the excitement and beauty of experiencing this country via rail. The American Worker Our plan is to stop in towns across the country to document the stories of the present-day Blue-Collar worker. We plan on taking full days out of our trip to shadow the salt of the earth, those who are reliably doing hard work for low hourly wages. Departing the Bay Area with the feeling that our working class is becoming increasingly disenfranchised when it comes to the direction of our national economy, we want to explore the stories of working individuals. Our observation is that a frustration is growing and it stems from the fact that America is becoming increasingly controlled by the few, and the privileged. The strings of our economy are being pulled by investment bankers and Wall Street stockbrokers. With a rising inability to break into that upper class, Americas collective annoyance is building. Still, we take comfort in community, hard work, and each other. What permeates is both frustration and hope. We want to capture these emotions and these stories. The American Railway Coupled with the lack of economic opportunity for underprivileged Americans, is also a lack of physical mobility. It is a tragedy that we live in this beautiful, vast country, yet in many locations our public transportation system is still in its nascent stages. When compared to Europe, our rail system lags behind. This means that those who dont have the financial resources to buy a plane ticket or a car are unable to experience the personal growth that comes with exploration. Besides the freedom

of being able to explore, we believe that rail is the sensible future of transportation in America for two reasons. First, the structural implementation would create jobs; jobs that cannot be shipped overseas. With the rapid rise of globalization, we need this investment in domestic infrastructure to bring jobs back to America. Second, according to Eurostar, traveling by train (vs. plane) cuts CO2 emissions by up to 90%. As America's population keeps rising, the importance of travel keeps increasing. If we want a healthy planet to live on, we must find more sustainable means of transportation. We believe the answer is rail. So, we plan on capturing train life. We'll write about and photograph the world as it passes by the giant windows of the train car, as well as the personal connections that are unique to this type travel. It's an old-time, quaint, and exciting mode of transportation. The stories and the pictures will be enchanting. Resources We are appealing for support to help fund our project. We could really use a residency! What We Can Offer In our blog, press releases and other documentation we would like to publicize the affordability, efficiency and sustainability of traveling by train. We also plan to examine the current state of the Blue-Collar American by volunteering and shadowing workers on our travels. The fact that our rail system is so underfunded and ignored epitomizes the lack of focus for Americas working class. We can keep in constant communication, and send you frequent updates, throughout the journey. Our finished project will be a coffee-table type book, with full-page pictures accompanied by essays and interviews about those in the pictures. Regards, Marty Schneider and Katie Figura