November 2001: Aviation and Transportation Security ActIncluded: federalization of airports. Airport screeners must be citizens.

November 2001-November 2002: 28,000 airport screener jobs lost.

San Francisco International Airport, 2002: 80% of airport screeners are non-citizens.Los Angeles International Airport, 2002: 40% of airport screeners are non-citizens.

On the new requirement:“It’s not a requirement that would address what people’s real concern is, which is national safety. It just creates hardships for workers that have been there for 12 to 15 years, and makes them the scapegoats for the nation’s need to do something quick—it’s a quick fix.”-Lillian Galedo, Director of Filipinos for Affirmative Action

Who? Judge Robert TagasukiWhat? Gebin et al v. Mineta et al. Government motion to dismiss

lawsuit—DENIED. Lawsuit continues.When? November 12, 2002.Where? Central District of California.Why? Strict scrutiny test: disparate treatment must be from “a

narrowly tailored measure that furthers compelling governmental interests” (National Immigration Law Center)… “Governmental function exception.” The Department of Justice argued that the citizenship requirement for airport screeners did not require the strict scrutiny test under this exception.

Sound Beyond Your Testimony, Equality Shouts

SO OUR HISTORYFirst they came for the Communists, marginalized. “War on terrorism” cleans[es] peopleAnd I didn’t speak up, such as “Arab men are backwards terrorists who oppress their women.”Because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, Rationalize[d] Israeli massacre as the hip new thing.And I didn’t speak up, “We are Americans, and we’re waving the flag.”Because I wasn’t a Jew. “We are Iranian! Not Arab.” “We are Jewish and not Muslim!”

DOESN”TThen they came for the Catholics, And I didn’t speak up, Expose the similar ties between Japanese and MuslimsBecause I was a Protestant. To question their communities.Then they came for me, Insist “Global justice” explained: “We must stand in solidarity” And by that time there was no on Left to speak up for me. Sexism Homophobia Orientalism Zionism

Neocolonialist should compel progressive activists toBECOME YOUR FUTURE.

…be set free.

Based on a quote by Rev. Niemoller (1945) and excerpts from essay by Nadine Naber—“So Our History Doesn’t Become Your Future: The Local and Global Politics of Coalition Building Post September 11th” (2002).

JUDGING THE LAW

SCREENERS NO LONGER

Excerpts from interview with Biju Mathew, New York Taxi Workers Alliance. April 29, 2004.

SC: How are you involved with the Taxi Workers Alliance? What is your role?

BM: I’m a part of the organizing committee. I’ve been a part of this organization for eight years.

SC: Can you tell me a little about how TWA was formed? Because I know—it did start before September 11th right?

BM: Way before. As Taxi Workers Alliance, we’ve been in existence since 1998. The organization had a prior existence when it was the Lease Drivers Coalition, and it was a part of another organization, CAAAV- Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence. And that’s where Bhairavi and I both started eight years ago, but we left CAAAV. We decided to become an independent organization, over a whole bunch of ideological differences.

SC: What does TWA help with in terms of the taxi drivers?

BM: For me, the most important thing to realize about all this is that we’ve heard of minimum wage, we’ve heard of a whole bunch of things when it comes to labor rights. But when you think the concept—a person can work 12 grilling hours and then go home with no money, or having lost some money. There’s not even a notion of minimum wage.

SC: Right. Has it always been like that?

BM: No. The system that existed til 1979 was a commission system. Every driver was the employee of a garage. He was entitled to drive a car for the garage, and the meter would be split between the driver and the garage. The owner paid for the gas, the maintenance of the car. The driver got vacation days, sick days, all the benefits.

SC: Is this just in New York?

BM: I mean, it started under Nixon. In the 70s, Nixon brought back leasing. After that, it spread. New York was one of the first, but it spread all across the United States. We’ve now moved to leasing, with the exception of Las Vegas.

So that’s the working conditions. As for what we do as a taxi union—We effectively fight for all issues that surround the working conditions. What we are constantly trying to do is push the lease down. So for instance, we just won a HUGE victory. There was a fare negotiation that was going on between the city and the ownership, and the city and us—the union. Every time the metered fare goes up, that is additional revenue that goes into the cab. The last time the fare went up was 1996. The owners raised the fare so much, drivers only got 14% of the additional revenue. This time, it was a year and a half-long campaign, and we finally WON. Because we got 70% of the split this time.

SC: 70%?BM: 70%. So see, that’s one clear battle. Apart from that, we fight a bunch of others. Garages and brokers are constantly cheating drivers. And so we fight a lot of advocacy cases fighting, taking them to courts of law, recovering money that they cheated from drivers. So it’s a whole bunch of cases like that—we take the owner to court and fight those battles.

SC: Do you guys have a legal team then, or how does—who fights those cases?

BM: It’s always a combination. We have legal support. We’ve had in the past a staff lawyer. But we also have reasonably good legal support from various law clinics. NYU law clinic, etc.

SC: Oh, I had a question for the fare increase—the 70%? When did that happen?

ABOUT TWA:

Organizing Committee:12 people2 non-drivers

Membership:5100 drivers

Medallion: Essentially, permit for a yellow cab in New York City. When lit, cab is unoccupied. Current open market value of medallion= $320,000.

Conglomerates of garages and brokers: These hold the majority of the 12,487 medallions.

To drive a cab… Multitude of tests ($$) License Pay a lease of $110-

$115 for a 12-hour shift.

$20-30 gas Fares from first four-

seven hours of the shift go toward breaking even from the costs.

No guaranteed income; possibility of ending shift with negative income.

Earning depends on: Traffic Airport delays

Who are the drivers? Almost entirely male Mostly immigrants

STRUCTURE OF THE INDUSTRY

ABOUT TWA:

MOBILIZE THE MASSES

BM: March 30th was when we won that. That was the final hearing. Hearing meaning that it wasn’t a legal hearing, but a public hearing that all petitioners made through negotiations between the mayor’s office and us and the owners. That’s the structure of how it works. This becomes effective the 3rd of May.

SC: How does TWA do outreach to drivers that aren’t already part of the union?

BM: Essentially, the membership is part of every campaign that we build. The nature of the industry is one that you don’t have a shot where you go into the factory and stand outside and talk to drivers. So effectively there are points in the city that drivers do gather, however—airport holding lots.

SC: How has TWA’s work changed since September 11th?

BM: It has changed dramatically in that—the workforce is more than 80% Muslim. So that means that there are people who are constantly at some level, the target of society. What I mean by that, apart from law enforcement, it also means there’s this particular knee-jerk racism that they have to constantly face. It maybe that the passenger gets into the seat and then reads the name of the license ten times loudly. Each time, it’s “Oh, your name is MOHAMMED, is it?” That kind of harassment. There’s little that the driver can immediately do about it.

SC: Right.

BM: For us it’s a matter of ensuring that that kind of harassment stops. For us, it’s a matter of, on a daily basis, what are the things that are happening? We’ve done a lot of work around that kind of harassment reporting. But apart from that, I think one of the most important battles that we fought—drivers lost an enormous amount of income during that period. When the towers went down, one of the things as you can imagine, a particular company that was close to where the Towers went down, closed down. Some of the hotels and airports weren’t functioning. So the driver loses doubly, and triply, and quadruply, because he’s the person who’s driving between all of these places. So drivers lost a lot of income. For a whole bunch of complicated political reasons, the then-mayor Giuliani, and FEMA, and the city—decided to not make any compensation to drivers. So we fought another HUGE battle. That was about a year and a half worth of fighting, at the end of which FEMA, after it had ceased most of its emergency assistance programs, came back and instituted a program for drivers. That was another huge victory we had in 2002.

SC: Okay. I was going to ask a question about that, actually. I read a little about that, and know that FEMA didn’t originally want to give taxi workers—that disaster assistance. So how did you attack that issue?

BM: Basically, in all our work, our primary strategy is driver mobilization. We fundamentally believe that the way to work politics, is 1- you have to be mass-based. And once you’re mass-based, you have to have your membership mobilized. And it is the strength of the mobilization that determines the particular outcome. For us, it was a matter of producing a huge mobilization first, and then doing a lot of press and legal work. Finally the campaign peaked with a public hearing that we created, at a college in New York.

SC: Yeah! I saw video clips of that.

BM: Yeah, probably attended by 2000-3000 members. There was no space to get into the hall. What we did was, we managed to get both private and federal emergency assistance offices of various kinds on a panel to listen to the hearing. They thought it was just going to be a small little hearing, and they got completely blown away at the public pressure—that was what actually produced the change in the end.

SC: That’s amazing.

BM: I mean, that’s the first completely organized victory we had. We had had a lot of small small victories before then.

SC: If there were one message you could pass down to the next generation about communities, specifically the s asian after 9/11, what would it be?

BM: One of the most important things about the TWA is that we don’t think about this as South Asian at all. We think about this organization as a union for everybody, and so because—while it’s true that 60% of the driver workforce is South Asian, the other 40% are NOT South Asian. So this space is a space for everybody. Part of the reason we left CAAAV was precisely that. This is a difficult part of multiculturalism. We are determinedly a non-ethnically identified organization. We are a union for our workers, and we may use different identities like “immigrant,” or things like that. So what I would say as one message is that precisely that. We need to get beyond narrow identification, and create mass-based organization, and that’s the only possible way to create change.

Excerpts from interview with Dia Pearce, from the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) and the Immigrant Worker Freedom Ride Coalition, Detroit stop coordinator. April 29, 2004

SC: So what was the original purpose of the Freedom Rides? Why was it designed the way it was?

DP: They were based on the original Freedom rides. Certainly, nowhere near as brutal. We were a little concerned about the safety issues because of the 9/11 event. We only had one incident in all of the buses that traveled across the country. But the main thing was to call attention to the plight. We wanted the country to be aware of the issues. We had publicity not to be believed! One of

the days in D.C., they were going to the Hill and actually do lobbying.

SC: How did the idea start?

DP: … A lot of our membership [is] immigrant workers. We represent workers that work in hotels, and restaurants, and stadiums. A lot of hardships, as for trying to become citizens, and having the same rights, and having children be able to attend schools, and be able to have bank accounts. You just can’t imagine the rights that they do NOT have in this country.

SC: You kind of mentioned some of the jobs the workers had…?

DP: A lot of them work in our hotels, and they are housekeepers, they are buspersons, where they clean the tables off in the restaurants, they’re the dishwashers, they’re the maintenance people, they’re the valet parkers, waiters and waitresses. And in the stadiums, they’re foodservers.

SC: Could you just tell me in general about some of these issues that they were trying to lobby for in D.C.?

DP: Right. One of the problems is the fact that without documentation, you can’t get any type of a bank account. Without a home address and being an established worker, you can’t get your children into school. Now one of the laws that WE were lobbying on—they’re trying to pass a law that you cannot get a driver’s license without a social security number. There are a lot of roadblocks to keep immigrant workers from having the same rights in this country.

SC: How has 9/11 changed the dynamic of immigrant workers and working together, kind of?

DP: Well, I think for those that are narrow-minded, it has made them a little more prejudiced. It’s a lack of knowledge, a fear factor, a visual thing.

SC: Did you find that people within the coalition, all the diff workers, did they all understand each other’s issues?

DP: Absolutely. And part of what happened on the bus rides, they did a lot of education, making sure that all the people on the buses understood what everybody’s issues were. Everybody had conversations and sat next to different people on the rides, so that they would always be learning something new about somebody else on the ride. While they were in D.C., everybody would split up in locations that we were able to make sure that there were a good mix of people. So there was ALWAYS an education going on. And the basic issues are the same.

SC: What are some of the challenges in organizing, specifically for the Freedom Rides?

DP: Well, I think one of the biggest challenges was to get people we were trying to mobilize, to help support, and fundraise with—it was an education process also. It’s an automatic thing for people to say—“well, they’re here taking OUR jobs.” And the reality is, in this country, the jobs that our immigrant workers do are jobs that nobody else wants! It’s an opportunity for immigrant workers to get established and to work through to other fields, to be able to get educated and into another job classification, so they can continue to improve their lifestyle.

SC: What was the result of the lobbying in D.C.? Was it effective?

DP: Well, yes actually it was effective. President Bush, though it’s not certainly what we were looking for, he has reacted to the issues. There is some legislation that we through the labor movement and a lot of politicians are supporting,

Detroit stop: 150 workers.Freedom Ride total: ~ 1000 workers.

End stop: Washington, D.C.

The originals. John Wilhelm (HERE president), John Sweeney (AFL-CIO),

and other union heads.

Diversity. Latino, Arab workers, German, Croation, Albanian, etc etc.

Collaboration and Michigan organizations. HERE, United Food

and Commercial Workers union, UNITE, ACCESS, MOSES, LASED,

Focus: HOPE, etc.

Michigan-specific immigrant worker issues:

-Lawn care issues-In-state tuition issue- not a citizen?

Must pay out-state tuition-Want a driver’s license? Need Social

Security Number.

2003 = the FIRST Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride

GET ON THE BUS

which is the DREAM Act. And the PR has been very positive in helping educate

others what we are looking for. Excerpts from interview with Kavneet Singh, Western Regional Director, Sikh Mediawatch and Resource Task Force (SMART). April 30th, 2004.

a lot of things that related to post-9/11 stuff?

KS: Sure, sure.

SC: Okay. What kind of things?

KS: I’ve participated in a number of hate crime forums, talking about things that have gone on, in open discussion type things. I spoke on the

Berkeley campus last year. I have worked in training local law enforcement officials here in the Bay area—lower California area. I have done a lot with outreach and just trying to get Sikhism taught in classrooms. Having parents of kids getting bullied post-9/11, and saying “What can we do?” Getting them materials, resources to pass out or giving them presentations to do in their classes. Also, I’ve tried to host open houses here in the Bay area, as well as on the weekends, just trying to go out to various communities. I’ve done presentations with various churches here, teaching their congregation about Sikhism. Also trying to work with legislative issues in the state and nationally.

SC: What kind of issues?

KS: There is a bill in the California State Assembly—and we’re working to support that.

SC: What does that bill do?

KS: It’s basically a hate crimes preventions bill—sponsored by Senator Kuehl, bill 1234. We’re also specifically helping to get the End Racial Profiling Act, and one about worker rights and discrimination. Basically what [Senate bill 1234] is—it provides for training of law enforcement officials, on relations and hate crimes, as well as requiring that all agencies provide training to their officers. They also work to develop a model hate crime policy, which would encourage all local law enforcement agencies to adopt. We need to make sure, one- to prosecute hate crimes. Also, we need to train our local law enforcement so they understand what a hate crime is. And then finally, a lot the reason that people won’t come out about hate crimes because they don’t want to be further victimized. There was a proposal in the state of California about Racial Privacy.

SC: 54? Proposition 54?

KS: It might have been 54—I honestly can’t remember. We also try to work with the cab drivers here. They’ve been very great about unifying and working with each other. So also working with them whenever they need me to do something. We had a forum that we put on for Attorney General Lockear. He came, and the community expressed their concerns, we expressed some policy things we’d like to see and just basically tried to be an advocate for the cab drivers.

SC: Do you know, from the Sikh community, how many of them are cab drivers?

KS: No. If you look in the major cities, an extraordinary number of people that drive cabs are people of color. And you see a number of Sikhs taking on those positions, because a lot of them are coming here as asylees. It’s something they can easily get into. Being hard-working folk, they don’t mind putting in the tremendous hours to be a cabdriver.

SC: Can you tell me a little about the issues that these cabdrivers face?

KS: The biggest issue that cabdrivers face is that—as men of color who wear turbans-- you’re going to face hate crimes in general. They have a bigger issue because of the fact that they deal with the regular public on such a regular basis. They also work with petty cash a lot of the times.

SC: Have there been difficulties? I guess there’s always difficulties in terms of reporting and documentation and stuff. But I guess that’s what a lot of the bills that you’re working on are about. Have those all come about after 9/11?

KS: I think there’s kind of been a watershed mark in that aspect.

Sikh Mediawatch and Resource Task Force (SMART)

Founded in 1996 One national office in D.C.

Regional directors and representatives across the

countries.

What does SMART do? Founded to be a media

watchdog and advocate for retractions when necessary

Educational outreach Advocacy—training police,

sensitivity, etc. Hate crime resources pocket

guide

WATCHING HATE

After September 11th, there have been a multitude of incidents/crimes committed against South Asian cab drivers on the West Coast.

Among the victims…August 2002: killing of Sukhpal Singh SodhiJuly 2nd, 2003: murder of Gurpreet SinghJuly 5th, 2003: shooting of Inderjit Singh

SC: Do you see gender issues playing out at all in the issues Sikh Americans face after 9/11? I think most cab drivers are male.

KS: I think that’s a pretty fair assessment. Primarily the people we saw that were most affected by 9/11 were Muslim women who wear the hijab, and Sikh men who have turbans. They’re the ones that visually stand out. Also with Muslim men and skull caps, and Sikh women who cover their hair usually with turbans.

SC: What have been some of the challenges you’ve faced in terms of organizing and lobbying around all these things?

KS: I think one is realizing that change isn’t going to come overnight, and trying to take these baby steps. While it’s frustrating to realize at times, you have to continually keep vigilant about these types of things. Also, I think to keep the community charged up and behind these things. It’s really with their support that things aren’t going to happen, as a civil rights group. In a civil rights community, we can only do so much, whereas you need to have the populus supporting those types of things.

If there were one message you would like to pass on to the next generation about communities after 9/11,

what would it be?

Biju Mathew:

We need to get beyond narrow identification, and create mass-based organization, and that’s the only possible way to create change.

Raji Bedi:

Basically this is why we [Sikhs] look the way we do. This is the reason we were given this identity. This is the reason why we wear our turban and our beard. We’re supposed to stand out in a crowd. This is a true test of a Sikh and it’s those Sikhs that are able to withstand these pressures from the community that are able to understand our reason for this identity.

Raahi Reddy:

The most powerful thing that people could do is work to build bridges with the labor movement and people of color communities, [using the] building common cause type of framework. No matter how unpleasant it might be, it is probably the most useful thing—to build some real connections in a real way. I would bet my money and my life on it.

Kavneet Singh:

I think it’s [important] to go out and do a better job of making sure people know who you are. Meeting your neighbors. Going out and not being as introverted as a community, as oftentimes the South Asian community was within itself. I think that also connects to the South Asian community having people get into different fields, whether it be the media, journalism, film, the political process, things like that, across the board.

Saba Waheed:

It’s probably some of the most amazing and intense organizing work that I’ve seen. Organizations just popped up. People empowered themselves and came together. Coalitions and collaborations.. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that kind of organizing before. You know, sometimes you kind of have to get hit by something in order to get that kind of movement. But there was a certain foundation that was there that allowed for that to happen.

Interview with Raahi Reddy, organizer, Service Employees International Union. Interview April 29th, 2004.

SC: So actually could you just start out by talking about your involvement in SEIU?

RR: I was an organizer since 1993 in New York. I organized health care workers all over New York in New Jersey, but we kind of went all over the country, including Vegas, Chicago, Florida, Pennsylvania. Everything from nurses to janitors, the whole nine yards.

SC: Do the organizers—do you all have specific issues that you work on? How do you split up the—

RR: It’s more of a workplace where we’re sent in to help the workers in that particular workplace organize a union. We basically help them recruit leaders from the workplace, and then build support for the union. So they ultimately will go to an election where they’ll vote, and majority has to vote for the union.

SC: Okay. So SEIU is a national organization?

RR: Yeah, it’s the largest union in the country, with I think 1.6 million workers.

SC: Are there specific immigrant worker populations that work with SEIU? Is it pretty much all of them, or…?

RR: Everybody. In SEIU? We have everyone. SEIU represents health care workers, public sector workers, janitorial workers, and a little bit of industrial—bus drivers, stuff like that. When you look at both public, private, and service sectors, you’re talking about pretty much every type of immigrant worker here.

SC: Has SEIU always focused on immigrant workers?

RR: Well, SEIU was started by immigrant janitors in Chicago. It was the Black janitors union. It’s actually a history of a union that was started by immigrants. And at that time, they were immigrants from Europe, and Blacks from the South. I think the organization prides itself on being started by immigrants.

SC: So what are the main issues of the workers that you have worked with specifically?

RR: I mean the main issues are having a voice on the job, a real voice that translates into having a say over their work lives, whether it’s their wages, retirement, health care, discipline, patient care issues. So basically, it’s the issue of voice, and control over work lives. I think a lot of workers get into situations where they’re working and they feel like, “This is a good job, I don’t have the right to say anything.” And so the workers—the ones that want to organize a union—those are the ones that realize, you know, they ARE valuable players in an organization, and they do have a right to have a voice in what happens to them, and specifically what happens to their patients, what happens to the work they do, and that’s a lot of times why I’ve seen people organize. They get to the point and they realize, “I am a major contributor to this company, and I have a right to actually make some demands on it.”

SC: Okay. In your past experience, how effective has the unionizing been in fighting for these issues?

RR: Oh, I think—when I organize workers, I tell them—every worker that I’ve organized has never gotten LESS than what they did before they organized. The way that unions work—like SEIU—workers have a say in the process all along, from election to when you’re negotiating your contract. The majority of people have to vote to approve a contract, and what that does is sets a standard—so people make decisions about whether this is worth it to them. What I’ve seen is that people do improve their situation, without a doubt. The Bureau of Labor Statistics actually proves it, when you look at unionized and non-unionized sectors.

And I think the workers—it’s kind of a hard thing, because this is a first time that they actually are participating in decision-making. But what that means is also having to work really hard, to not only keep your union, because the employer is always trying to figure out ways to weaken the organization, through a lot of different means. But it’s also hard to keep participation among the workers. Every worker that came in after a contract has already been negotiated or has already been unionized, it takes a lot of work to convince that worker to participate in the organization. It’s not automatic. People get inspired by certain things. I think that’s the real challenge for workers—they realize, “S***, this is work—I have to keep building the organization.” It’s not a one-shot deal, and then everything’s fine, because the employer is always trying to take away, and the conditions of work are always changing. Workers—it’s upon them to be as involved and active to stay in the union. It’s well worth it, but it’s more work.

SC: Right. How do you see immigrant worker issues as—do you see a difference between immigrants and non-immigrants when it comes to unionizing? Are there different dynamics that come into play?

A LOOK AT ORGANIZING—ARE YOU REDDY?

RR: Yeah. I think the conditions of work—in terms of why people organize—are very much the same, no matter who you are. But I think employers use different opportunities to oppress workers in the workplace and divide them. I think immigrant workers and Black workers—there is a certain kind of almost state-sanctioned oppression that happens in the workplace. Employers feel that immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, are less protected by the law. They’re in these very difficult, fragile situations, and they know that they don’t want to be deported back home. So all these threats create an environment for immigrant workers that’s really more troubling. Sometimes the risks are greater for them when they organize. Even though the law says they’re equally protected and they have the right to organize, the way that the rest of the system have criminalized immigrants, especially undocumented workers, and now they’re labeling them “terrorists,” of course that adds to the environment that makes it even more difficult for workers to organize. Black workers face issues and an environment with discrimination that makes it even more difficult. I think it’s more about the environment, though—when workers do stick together, and people understand that they’re all in it together—when the employer does try to move on those threats, it’s harder in places where people stick together.

If you look at the janitor’s movement—these are janitorial workers, and they work for small companies, right? They’re probably 100% undocumented workers. The industry used to be Black workers. The demographics shifted, and now you’re looking at Central Americans, South Americans, Mexican immigrants, who are doing this work, who are almost 100% undocumented. And of course employers have used that over the years of undermining basic rights. When you look at that movement—they were able to organize unions and improve conditions for the WHOLE industry, not just the unionized [companies]. They were all undocumented, they’d do civil disobedience, they’d do actions. They don’t go through the NLRB—they actually do action to pressure the employer. People look to that as an inspiration.

It’s two things that came together—One, immigrant workers and undocumented workers standing up together and saying: “We have to make a difference, because this is such a bad situation, and it’s never going to feel good.” And the second thing that happened was that there was a very large progressive union, that was willing to commit resources over a DECADE in order to help the janitors win. We can point to that and say, “That’s an immigrant worker organizing victory!” The workers were willing to stick together and say, “Enough is enough, you’ve got to make a change. For everybody, not just for our little contract.”

SC: So would you say that the janitorial justice campaign—was that one of the more successful?

RR: Yes. Absolutely. If you look all over the country, it’s one of the most successful efforts, and seen as creating HOPE for a lot of union organizers and workers, and non-union workers. If you have a place that is 100% undocumented workers, and they were able to organize not only their own workplace but a whole INDUSTRY, and have big corporate real estate holders being accountable to janitors—that’s pretty massive and inspired a lot of people. The hotel worker organizing inspired a lot of people as well.

SC: How have immigrant worker issues changed since 9/11 or have they?

RR: They’ve definitely changed. Right after 9/11, the labor movement, and AFL-CIO, was starting to really recognize that they needed to take strong positions on certain things that they weren’t willing to do before, including pushing for an immigrant rights agenda that included amnesty for all undocumented workers in the country, an end to the bracero (guest worker) program, which basically punished workers and not the employers that were attracting them, ending employer sanctions. When immigrants tried to organize, they would say, “I’m going to call the INS, I’m going to report that your social security numbers don’t match.” It was this way all along, but they would say that when workers tried to organize. The excuse they tried to use was that “We’re going to get in trouble if we don’t report you.” Mind you, they didn’t report them all along, but of course it’s a form of retaliation. So we want an end to employer sanctions, because it doesn’t help the worker—it just helps the employer at any given time. We were on this amazing move through the AFL, and people from HERE came up with the idea to do the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, which was going to be this phenomenal way to connect the Civil Rights Freedom Rides to the plight of folks now.

And 9/11 completely derailed that. It made people scared to stand up for immigrants and say “We want an immigrant rights agenda now” when our government was moving toward a policy of “Immigrants are the enemy.” What post-9/11 did, was it actually fused some watchdog elements of the INS and social security, and fused it into the justice system. Being a worker who is undocumented—it wasn’t about visa violations, it became more of: “You’re an enemy of the state,” with stricter penalties. It became a horrible heightened environment. Employers were using this fervor of “Americanism” in HR departments to make sure that if social security numbers didn’t match, that people were alerted. They would tell people—“You better find your papers, or you’re fired.” Even though that’s illegal, they became civilian enforcers of government policies and created a frenzy. It created a much more difficult environment.

SC: If you have time, could you talk a little about the airport screeners?

RR: Well, the screeners is an interesting issue of what happened pre-9/11 and post-9/11. Pre-9/11, the whole San Francisco airport organized. They did it with labor and community. EVERYBODY was organizing. The airport was full of lots of little independent contractors. And so they wanted one agreement for the whole airport, recognizing the workers and their unions, increasing standards. There were a number of different unions that were involved. It was an amazing victory, because they organized and got the employers through community labor efforts. They will allow them to organizing the union just through “card check”—which meant when the majority of workers sign cards saying they want a union, the employer will recognize that. They won’t hire anti-union consultants to fight them, and they won’t harass people. This is a major victory. They got these huge Filipino churches involved, the Catholic church involved, community leaders, and also political leaders including the MAYOR. This was an AMAZING victory for immigrant workers.

And then, boom, 9/11 happened. And then it’s: “Blame the screeners.” It became this frenzied thing. The screeners are majority non-citizens. They’re all documented, they’re all permanent residents, they’ve all been living here for years. But it’s because they weren’t American citizens. There was this environment of “Immigrants are suspect,” you know? “Let’s assume they’re criminal, before we assume anything else.” These are screeners that have been working there for twenty years, you know? One of the challenges was—a lot of the screeners want to be citizens, but they were petitioning for their families to come from the Philippines. If you change your status midstream, then you have to file papers all over again for your family. So people have been waiting for years—they’re not going to jeopardize that. So one of the requests that the screeners had was: “Look, allow us to continue with our paperwork, and not start from scratch.” The federal government wouldn’t do that.

In one minute, these amazing people were the enemy, and suspect. And ONLY—only—because they were non-citizens.

SC: Right.

RR: Not because they were here illegally, not because of any wrongdoing on their part. The only reason they were fired and scrutinized and replaced, was because they were immigrants. It’s pretty scary.

SC: Okay. I was going to ask—just how citizenship status, socioeconomic status, race, and gender might all play a role in these issues? Definitely with what you’re saying about how citizenship status has a huge effect on what happened with them. I guess—do you see gender at all playing a role in anything?

RR: I’m not sure how many women there were versus men… I think it always plays an issue. I’ve met a number of the leaders and they’re women. I think the way it affects—employers target women, specifically if they know they’re the sole breadwinner for a family and have responsibility for the family. They threaten them—to put even a shadow of a doubt that if they organize a union, that they’re putting their livelihoods in jeopardy, which is going to put their children’s lives in jeopardy. That’s pretty powerful, especially when there is no safety net any more. I think in the health care field, they really play upon women caregivers, around their own kind of issues around putting patients’ needs first, before YOUR needs as a worker, as a woman. You have so many situations of guilt-trip. Somehow they have to choose between bettering their own conditions, and bettering the conditions of patients. Which is a false choice. When you actually improve the conditions for workers who are taking care of patients, you have better patient care. It’s proven everywhere you go. The employers play upon this idea of women having to put ourselves second—to our families, to our community, to our patients. And [another way gender affects these issues] is direct threats. If you’re a single mom, and you’re being threatened that you might lose your health insurance if you go join a union, that’s pretty scary.

SC: You mentioned before different coalitions between different people of color, and how that has been a really strong part of organizing. Has that been a challenge at all, or has it been pretty easy, or…?

RR: I think those are partnerships between people of color organizations and labor organizations. It’s a very complex issue. It’s not a new issue in that where we’ve seen the labor movement be really progressive and radical is in the times when those connections were really organic and really happened. Like in the height of the thirties, there were amazing connections between Black rights organizations, Community party, the labor movement. But I think now, there’s a lot of distress, and a complexity of organizations. It’s a difference between business unionism and social movement unionism. Business unionism says your job is to just improve conditions for your members. Social movement unionism says that’s only one piece of a larger picture. Labor unions actually function as agents of change in society, and should take on issues that are broader than immediate interests of their members. Which would lead to linking with community struggles. It’s a mutual struggle in social justice. There’s been a long history of distrust among community organizations and labor, etc.

Community organizations don’t have the capacity of the labor movement. The labor movement is the largest organization of working people in the country. It is real organization with resources that are completely from the members. How do you get people to the table and say, “We want to do many things and be accountable to each other.” It’s complex. We know that to win big, you need some movement unionism. We’ve seen that in the past.

Excerpts from interview with Raji Bedi, University of Michigan student, Sikh

community leader, Khalsa Pride webmaster. Interview April 27, 2004.

SC: How were you involved in the Sikh community after 9/11?

RB: After 9/11, I’m actually the webmaster of pretty big website that began in 1999. I’m pretty involved in the Sikh community and with Sikh leaders in the Midwest, East Coast. Through that, I’ve made connections in other parts of the world. But as a result, I actually received a phone call—there was a large conference call with the leaders of the Sikh community around the world. In that conference call, basically we listened in on the elders and offered our input when we were required to, and received directions for what was going to happen afterwards. It actually took place that same night, because we already began to face quite a bit of dissent regarding our identity and misconception behind it. As a result, the Sikh Coalition formed, and Sikh Media Watch. SMART took on a heavy role after 9/11.

SC: What was your website for?

RB: My website’s called Khalsa Pride. Basically in ’99, I was the first to make [this] kind of an entrepreneur website—a lax Sikh website as opposed to a strict Orthodox Sikhism website. [This was] more for young kids. There was a turban gallery—people had a blast with that. I got 8000 hits a day, and it was very influential and inspiring to a lot of people. It’s going to grow this summer and turn into a non-profit.

SC: Oh, that’s awesome. So what are a couple of the major issues faced by the Sikh community after 9/11?

RB: If you look at what happened after 9/11, it turns out that the first doctor on scene after 9/11 was Sikh, the first person arrested after 9/11 was Sikh, and the first person murdered as a result of a hate crime was Sikh. That is a very interesting dynamic. The doctor on scene first—the person he was helping actually was scared of him, said “why did you do this to us?,” this and that, but then when they realized he was a doctor, they were very grateful. It’s amazing that right away, fingers were being pointed. People just made the correlation between the beard and head coverings of the people on the TV screen with the beard and turban of the Sikh. Sikhs comprise probably 99.9% of the people that wear turbans and beards—in the U.S., Canada, basically the regions outside of India.

You’ll hear a lot of the time that Sikhs will say “We’re not Muslim, don’t confuse us with Muslims.” That gives a lot of people the wrong idea, in that we’re not saying “Don’t hit us, don’t kill us because we’re not Muslim.” It’s an innate concept in the mind of a Sikh to fight against injustice and we would rather take the hate than someone else. We don’t mind being scapegoats for another community. That should be the mentality of a Sikh. This is an overall concept of understanding and education of the community. Our identity is not a Muslim identity.

After 9/11, a lot of focus went on the Arab/Muslim community and the various hate crimes they faced. After 9/11, it seemed to me that the Sikh community has had tenfold the amount of hate crimes. It’s much easier for an ignorant bystander to look at me, this happens at least two or three times a day, and call me “Osama.” Because quickly they correlate the beard and turban—and say “oh, there’s Osama.” This is an ongoing problem. Just a couple days ago, someone had something to say to me when I was running—the guy was stuck in traffic with his window down. I decided to run toward the car and respond—and I looked inside and I said, “Whoa! Are you Timothy McVeigh?” [SC laughs] The guy didn’t understand originally; I think he might have been shocked that I had something to say.

SC: How [do] hate crimes affect immigrants specifically?

RB: It might be a little easier for a person like me to have a hate crime—because I can communicate to that person and explain myself. When they hear me speaking English, they realize, “oh, this guy’s one of us.” But if an immigrant Sikh is to respond to a hate crime, they might further it—fuel the fire a little bit. They might say “He’s not one of us, let’s just keep going.” Who knows what other responses that person might get—“He came here to take our jobs, this is our country.” If they think the same thing to me, but I respond, they think, “This guy grew up here too.”SC: Do you think 9/11 has had any positive effects on the Sikh community?

It has helped to mobilize the Sikh community quite a bit. We had to mobilize, we had to talk to each other, to work these problems out. And we needed a community as a whole. We had to work together to get things done. This is the reason why we have this identity—to stand out. A lot of people cut their hair after 9/11, shaving and cutting their hair. I was told as well to hide my identity as much as possible. I got a phone call from friends and family—to “do what you need to do, but make sure you’re safe.” By saying that, they might have been saying, “You can trim your beard.” We were given this identity. You can tell who a Sikh is. If we’re facing this injustice, we can’t hide from it.

http://khalsapride.com

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SC: As a Sikh American, how strongly do you feel tied to immigrant Sikhs? Or do you?

RB: I guess I don’t think about it. I think with the Sikh community, it’s really not—I can’t discriminate between the two. I would relate to all Sikhs on the same level, I think. We unite over our common religion, our common identity. And that gives us a sense of brotherhood, of sisterhood.

SC: If there was one message that you would like to pass onto the next generation about communities after

RB: Basically this is why we [Sikhs] look the way we do. This is the reason we were given this identity. This is the reason why we wear our turban and our beard. We’re supposed to stand out in a crowd. This is a true test of a Sikh and it’s those Sikhs that are able to withstand these pressures from the community that are able to understand our reason for this identity. If I’m being discriminated against, I should be happy, and say “At least it’s me and not someone else,” because that is the role of a Sikh. In my eyes, a Sikh should be a lifeguard of humanity—it’s a thing that has been so strong in our history. I think 9/11 has have helped us realize that a little bit more.

Want to learn more about immigrant worker issues post-9/11? Here are some topics to explore…

Sweatshop labor abroad Hotel workers 2004 Hispanic Worker Initiative, Elaine Chao 1997 immigrant raids, New York Windows on the World restaurant atop the Twin Towers AgJobs bill

Excerpts from interview with Saba Waheed, Community Development Project, Urban Justice Center in New York City. April 28th, 2004.

SC: What is your job at Urban Justice Center?

SW: So we do community-based documentation projects here. The idea is that we partner up with community organizations and in collaboration with them, design a research project. Design its methodology, its goals, and all of its outcomes go back to the organization for use in their campaigns or internally or whatever way is useful to them. The research can vary from background research to surveys to interviews to doing mappings, and so on.

Within the Community Development Project, it’s like a legal organization. The idea is that the Center provides services to different clients, like whether they’re street vendors or sex workers or homeless or mental health clients. The Community Development Project’s idea is that you actually provide direct services to the organization. The organization itself is the client. A lot of it is legal support, technical assistance, litigation, research, and policy work with them.

SC: Jumping right into it, what are some of the issues faced by South Asian cab drivers in New York and other cities, both before and after 9/11?

SW: The work I did with the Taxi Workers Alliance was to do an analysis—a survey—that they put together a year or so after September 11th. The idea was to generally see how much taxi drivers are paying out in terms of cost to drive the vehicle, and how much they’re taking home from customers. But even within that, there were questions like: “Have you faced different kinds of harassment—verbal, physical, and so on.” And did they have access to disaster assistance. Because the way the disaster assistance worked out with September 11th was just—it totally didn’t access immigrant communities, it didn’t acknowledge the taxi industry, which relies on the tourism industry, which relies on the economy of the city—how harshly it impacted them.

Before September 11th, drivers are barely making it, you know? Something like September 11th is kind of like the push that will throw over a bad situation. It’s already a bad working condition. Something like that will kick them a lot harder. In terms of the report [“UNFARE”] itself, it’s reporting huge amounts of debt, and huge amounts of loans. On top of that, they were barely making even a decent take-home day, having seen a yearly income drop. Having to take out loans and going into debt. But on top of that, they DIDN”T get any disaster assistance?! Eventually they did, but very late in the game. They could have

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gotten rent subsidies, or different types of low-interest loans. The city didn’t respond in a way that could have supported them. And they’re bailing out to big businesses in downtown to no tomorrow. They’re giving residents of Tribeca huge amounts of grant money to keep them staying in their apartments. But the taxi industry, which is primarily an immigrant industry, didn’t get that support at all. They’re also contingent labor, because they’re not official employees. They’re meant to be independent businessmen. But the way it’s set up, they end up being this kind of sweatshop type of labor.

SC: Are most of the cab drivers, then, immigrants?

SW: Yes, definitely.

SC: How does that play into the whole issue of them being immigrants, specifically. Do you think that makes a difference, compared to if the cab drivers were not immigrants?

SW: Yeah, so many of these different new immigrants go into these low-wage industries. And these have such horrible working conditions, that a non-immigrant would probably have some choice of taking it or not taking it, you know? And there’s always this sense of, “Oh, this taxi driver doesn’t speak English, or doesn’t know the maps,” or those kinds of harassment. Especially for South Asian drivers after 9/11. The volatility of race just go so much bigger. Even generally, when it is an immigrant class, the response is very different, because it is immigrant, because you can get away with it much more.

SC: Have people lost their jobs because of these economic difficulties?

SW: I would say generally no. Because actually when there’s a recession, taxi drivers actually increase.

SC: Really?

SW: Well, because other people who lose jobs from other industries—Not all the licensed drivers are active drivers. So there’s a lot of taxicabs sitting in these garages that people aren’t driving because the conditions are so bad. Generally, an immigrant taxi driver will stay in the industry and have stayed. With the survey results, so many of the drivers that were interviewed had been there for a long period of time. There was a low amount of people that had entered the industry in the past four years. There is a stability about the industry workforce itself.

SC: You had mentioned earlier that there had been no disaster assistance, but then later there was? Was that a result of organizing?

SW: Yeah. It was actually TWA. They did a lot of organizing around getting disaster assistance. Partially, they used a geographical line. We have another report on there called “Ripple Effect” which is exactly about that and especially about low-income and immigrant communities not getting the assistance they needed. Yet they were so much hit by the attacks. All these kinds of government agencies were like: “We had to draw the line somewhere, so we put it along Canal Street.” Literally, there’s one side of Canal Street which qualified for aid—there’s all these garment industries and Chinatown residents living there, and the other side of Canal Street, and garment industries and Chinese residents living there, but THEY didn’t get disaster assistance.

So it was these arbitrary lines of who they felt should get assistance. What they were saying, it was because they didn’t have a base. There wasn’t a base [for the taxi industry] in Downtown—that meant that you didn’t work in Downtown. Even though there’s all this research about how the majority of taxi cab rides go to Downtown, and that their income dropped drastically after 9/11. The disaster assistance agencies themselves weren’t acknowledging that. And then about a year or so later, from a lot of work that TWA did, they finally opened it up and included drivers.

SC: I wanted to ask—so the report that you did was kind of in conjunction with a lot of different organizations. Did they come to you guys, or how did the project get started?

SW: I used to volunteer for them [TWA]. Two years before I started at Urban Justice Center. It was kind of a conversation I had with them after I started here, about doing a research project together. Although generally, we do it mostly through word of mouth, our own community ties.

SC: messageSW: I think that as much as there was such an impact on certain communities and all communities. It’s probably some of the most amazing and intense organizing work that I’ve seen. Organizations just popped up. People empowered themselves and came together. Coalitions and collaborations.. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that kind of organizing before. You know, sometimes you kind of have to get hit by something in order to get that kind of movement. But there was a certain foundation that was there that allowed for that to happen. I think that was the really exciting things, as we kind of go on to face Bush and globalization and all these things. We’ve started to build infrastructures and slowly expand outside of New York across to other states on a more national level.

America has been called a nation of immigrants—immigration makes up such a huge part of this country’s history. People too easily forget that immigration is still a large part of this nation. During the last decade of the twentieth century, about 11 million people came to the United States for permanent residence (Chishti). Immigrant communities make up a huge population within the overall U.S. population, and many of these—68%-- have arrived in the United States just within the past two decades (Chishti). Within the immigrant population, low-wage workers are even further off the map of recognition—South Asian taxicab drivers, garment industry workers, service employees, etc. This zine showcases the issues that immigrant worker communities face after September 11, 2001. After the World Trade Center attacks, immigrant worker economic and social hardships were exacerbated. This paper will focus specifically on the effects of 9/11 on South Asian immigrant taxi drivers in New York City. An intersection of race, class, and citizenship status has been a center of that community’s experience after 9/11, and within this intersection, we find elements of racialization and the polarization of citizens and non-citizens.

The majority (an estimated 58%) of New York taxi drivers are South Asian (Waheed and Romero-Alston 6). Before 9/11, these drivers faced issues of low wages and safety issues. After 9/11, new issues arose—an intensified number of hate crimes, drop in income, and lack of government-provided disaster assistance. After 9/11, there was a drop in tourism to New York City for the first time since 1991, and this greatly affected the number of riders taxi drivers competed for (Waheed and Romero-Alston 20). There were also a significant number of road closures and restrictions, specifically to Manhattan, where 80% of taxi trips end or begin (Waheed and Romero-Alston 20). The result of the lower numbers of ridership and all these restrictions was a 50% drop in the income of New York taxi drivers (Waheed and Romero-Alston 20). This issue affects not just South Asians but other immigrant taxi drivers in New York City. Beyond New York City, other South Asian taxi drivers in major cities on the West Coast and other areas are affected by September 11 th as well, specifically with the issue of hate crimes and incidents. However, this paper focuses primarily on South Asian immigrant taxi drivers, because of the uniqueness of the social identity dynamics within this community.

South Asian immigrant taxi drivers experience an intersection of many social identities—their race & ethnicity, socioeconomic class, nationality, and possibly religion. Despite their seemed job stability, immigrant taxi drivers face extremely low wages—an average of $22 per day. A New York City taxi driver’s average costs per day, including paying for the use of medallion1 taxis, gas, insurance, and maintenance, amount to $137; earnings from fares and tips per day average less than $160 (Waheed and Romero-Alston 13). After September 11th, these low wages became lower. In 2000, 11% of the drivers

1 Medallion taxis have permits from the City that allow use for commercial purposes (Waheed and Romero-Alston 8).

reported annual incomes of $15,000 a year or less; in 2001, this increased to 48%, nearly half of all New York City taxi drivers (Waheed and Romero-Alston 21).

These figures give us a picture of the socioeconomic aspects of a taxi driver’s life. However, the socioeconomic status of many of these drivers encompasses more than just the numerical wages. The majority of these drivers (65%) report that they are the sole income earners for their families; 79% of these drivers support three or more people (Waheed and Romero-Alston 7). In addition to all this, the Taxi and Limousine Commission fails to give taxi drivers a “safety net,” benefits, or regular pay increases, even despite the fact that 86% of drivers have “veteran status”—they have worked as drivers for four or more years (Waheed and Romero-Alston 8). Like all social identities, these drivers’ socioeconomic status has effects on the way they experience life—as some might choose to put it, taxi driving for more than 12 hour workdays is like a “sweatshop on wheels” (Waheed and Romero-Alston 11). The ability to support a family and the experiences that family can have are obviously hugely affected by the low wage system that taxi drivers encounter. Socioeconomic status intersects with the citizenship status of immigrant taxi drivers in New York City. Since most taxi drivers in the City are recent immigrants from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, it seems an interesting connection that government-provided disaster assistance and other systems did not serve to work for these communities (Waheed and Romero-Alston 6). The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and a private agency, the “Unmet Needs Roundtable” became the main sources of disaster assistance after 9/11. The taxi industry was an obvious example of an economically affected community, and the role of FEMA was to provide a “full range of authorized disaster assistance to the post-disaster needs of individuals” (FEMA). However, low-interest loans were not available to workers in the taxi industry until FEMA expanded its guidelines almost a year after the attacks, in August 2002 (Waheed and Romero-Alston 23), and this was the result of major organizing efforts by the New York Taxi Worker Alliance (Waheed).

Although many communities lacked FEMA assistance after 9/11, it seems like there was a noticeable gap specifically for industries like the taxi industry in which most of the workers are immigrants. After 9/11, there was a strong anti-immigrant sentiment, displayed not just by everyday citizens, but by government policies such as those involving detentions. Perhaps FEMA’s lack of assistance is another example of our government’s inadequate real services to immigrant communities.

Race and racialization play huge roles in the intersection of identities for South Asian taxi drivers in New York. “Since September 11, what we’ve seen is a tremendous rise in acts of violence against taxi drivers” (Desai). There has been a large element of “clumping” South Asians with the other targeted communities—Muslims and Arab Americans. This is the process of racialization at work—the “categorization of a diverse group of individuals into one conglomerate inferior to the white majority” (Chang). Hate crimes and incidents

committed against South Asian taxi drivers in New York City display this racialization well—perpetrators see “Muslim/Arab-looking” features in any person, and connect them with the images of Osama bin Laden on television. Those features become the markers of supposed inferiority and backwardness. This racialization and ignorance have resulted in taxi cars being set on fire, dented, or spray-painted (Desai). Other incidents include broken windshields, cracked side windows, and nighttime riders carving “F--- the Arabs” into backseats, the dragging of drivers out from open front doors onto the street, and homicides (Desai).

The intersection of race with socioeconomic status and citizenship status is obviously something that has huge impacts on the way South Asian taxi drivers experience their lives in New York City. Since “ground zero” is within the city, emotions of many New York City residents were deepened after 9/11. This meant greater sense of loyalty, community, but also perhaps levels of hatred stemming from ignorance about the targeted communities. We can link the difficulties of racism to the South Asian taxi driver community prior to 9/11—their lives as low wage workers was already difficult without this added fear of being attacked. Since the majority of the taxi drivers are immigrants possibly with another racialized marker—“foreign” accents, this citizenship status aspect also plays a major role in the way they are perceived and, therefore, the way they are treated. All together, the environment for South Asian taxi drivers is not a comfortable one in part because of the role their intersection of identities takes in their lives.

Community organizing has been crucial to South Asian taxi drivers in New York City after 9/11. The New York Taxi Workers Alliance has been instrumental in bringing taxi workers together on wage issues, disaster assistance, etc. Bhairavi Desai has been an amazing spokesperson who has spread much awareness about the issue of South Asian taxi drivers in New York City, along with the Asian American Federation of New York’s film, “Tribute and Remembrance: Asian Americans After 9/11.” Without the efforts of the Urban Justice Center, the public would be missing a lot of data on taxi workers wages and the taxi industry. It is important to realize that the issues these taxi drivers face are not static—with efforts by these organizations and organizers, situations can become better. New incidents, policies, and debates can all influence the welfare and public opinion of these drivers. South Asian taxi drivers in New York City post-9/11 present a multidimensional and continually changing issue that deserves more attention.

Bedi, Raji. Phone interview. 27 April 2004.

Chang, Stephanie. Midterm paper assignment, 3/4/2004.

Chishti, Muzaffar and Bhairavi Desai (speakers). “Worker’s Rightst and Immigrant Communities” (panel presentation). Asian Social Issues Program, Asia Society. New York, November 1, 2001. http://www.asiasource.org/asip/workers.cfm

Federal Emergency Management Agency. “Executive Summary,” FEMA’s Delivery of Individual Assistance Programs: New York- September 11, 2001. at http://www.fema.gov/ig/iaprograms.shtm

Lieser, Ethen. “Policy on Airport Screeners Challenged.” AsianWeek. February 2002. http://www.asianweek.com/2002_02_01/news_airport.html

Mathew, Biju. Phone interview. 29 Apriil 2004.

National Immigration Law Center (NILC). “Gebin et al v. Mineta et al: Federal Judge denies Government’s Motion to Dismiss Airport Screener’s Suit, Issues Preliminary Injunction.” Immigrant Rights Update, Vol 16, No. 7. 22 November 2002. http://www.nilc.org/immsemplymnt/emprights/emprights057.htm

Pearce, Dia. Phone interview. 29 April 2004.

Reddy, Raahi. Phone interview. 29 April 2004.

Singh, Kavneet. Phone interview. 30 April 2004.

Waheed, Saba. Phone interview. 28 April 2004.

Waheed, Saba and Laine Romero-Alston. “UNFARE: Taxi Drivers and the Cost of Moving the City.” A report by the Community Development Project of the Urban Justice Center. Prepared for the New York Taxi Workers Alliance September 2003.

WORKS CITED