NEW YORK -- Roger Toussaint headed to jail Monday by marching across the Brooklyn Bridge alongside a boisterous group of supporters who hailed the transit union president as a hero to working-class Americans for leading last year's bus and subway strike.
The Brooklyn Bridge is the same pedestrian route that tens of thousands of New Yorkers were forced to use during the three-day strike that crippled the city just before Christmas.
The walkout violated a state law banning strikes by public employees, and a judge ruled that Toussaint should be jailed for 10 days and fined $1,000 for contempt.
Toussaint was greeted by wild cheers as he arrived at a pre-march rally in Brooklyn, and the Bob Marley song "Get Up, Stand Up" blared from loudspeakers before he addressed the group. As he marched across the bridge, drivers honked their horns and security members held hands to form a chain to protect Toussaint.
"I will do 30 years before transit workers surrender," Toussaint said in a fiery speech. "Working people have tried to obey the law and we have gotten nothing but insults for it."
Union leaders addressed the crowd in front of a podium adorned with a banner that read, "It's about respect" — a quote uttered repeatedly by Toussaint during the strike. The marchers also carried the banner across the bridge.
"They are unifying us and strengthening us and you can see that on the bridge. New York is a union town," said union member Vincente Alba-Panama.
Speaker after speaker at the rally hailed Toussaint as a hero who bravely stood up for the rights of the common man by demanding fair treatment on pensions, health care and wages. They screamed chants like "long live Roger Toussaint!" "long live the union" and "let's hear it for Roger."
"It's going to turn Roger Toussaint into an icon," Tony Young, a cleaner for the transit authority who was in the crowd, said of Toussaint's jail term.
Gov. George Pataki doesn't see it that way. He wants people to remember the plight of Matthew Long, a firefighter who was run over by a private bus while he was bicycling to work during the strike — suffering serious injuries including a crushed pelvis.
"I would prefer that the people of New York think and pray of the firefighter who has gone through many operations and faces many more before he can walk, instead of someone who actually provoked this illegal action," Pataki said in a public appearance earlier Monday.
The 60-hour strike ended without a contract between Transport Workers Union Local 100 and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the bus and subway system. Union members voted last week to approve an offer they had rejected in January, but the MTA has said it doesn't have to accept the vote because the dispute is in binding arbitration.
The 33,000-member union was fined $2.5 million for the strike and plans to appeal.
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