With advancing technologies and the advent of services like Uber, the NYTWA is faced with new issues, but it’s what keeps the fire alive.
#Struggle session taxi driver drivers
There is no glamour in fighting oppression, but there is a sense of nobility which makes every day, whether you win or lose, feel like an achievement, because people like us aren’t supposed to have it easy.” The triumphs of NYTWA - winning raises that give drivers a decent income and the creation of a Taxi Driver Protection Act among them - and the losses that they bear as a team really matter to her. “In the world of social change, anyone who tells you they have achieved something on their own has not confronted real power…. But, she says, these achievements are not singularly hers. And that gets me through those challenging moments,” explains the born fighter.Ī recipient of the Ford Foundation’s Leadership for a Changing World award, Desai has also been on the executive council of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), USA’s largest federation of unions. They believed in me, and saw abilities I never saw and still struggle to see.
Drivers have raised me as much as my family. “I’ve had to work harder to prove my intellect, my stamina and my right to change the world…. But being a woman in a male-dominated field can’t be without its challenges. Though her daily timetable includes media interactions, meetings with officials, strategy sessions and discussions with colleagues, Desai wishes everyday could be spent out in the field, interacting with drivers. My Indianness survived 200 years of colonial rule and generations of patriarchy.” For me, India means rebellion, humanism and pluralism. The Bronx-based activist says, “Every day I witnessed India through my father’s stories, my mother’s teachings, the sounds of the Gujarati language and bangles that permeated our walls, and in the aromas of my mother’s spices. She grew up watching baseball (“the Mets, not just any baseball team”), playing arcade games, discussing Marx, Nietzsche and Shammi Kapoor with her father (“He was the Indian Elvis!”), and eating her mother’s khari and dal dhokli. I couldn’t help but love the world in return.” Desai moved from her first American home in North Carolina to New Jersey when she was eight. “All four of them raised me to believe in myself, in equity, and the fact that one’s life served a purpose greater than wealth and power. Her passion is evident, and this, she says, is inherited from her parents and two older brothers.
#Struggle session taxi driver full
“To win justice, rights, respect and dignity through full unionisation of all 1,00,000 licenced taxi workers in New York City.” And though it involves a great deal of struggle, her goals for her cause are simple. We started with no members and today, we stand tall with over 19,000 in New York City and are a national organisation with presence in the six sister cities,” says the Rutgers University graduate. Every driver I met, though, wanted to build a union. “I had been hired by a pan-Asian community organisation in 1996 to work on a project with taxi drivers.
Bhairavi Desai, whose family moved from Gujarat to USA when she was six, has spent the better part of her life fighting for the rights of taxi drivers in the Big Apple through the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) which she helped found in 1998. But that doesn’t stop the 44-year-old from making sure that New Yorkers behind the wheels of yellow cabs get to live and drive with dignity. But first we pour one out for friend of the show John McAfee who died question mark? and also that's right it's still not over please don't leave we discuss the NYC Mayor's race for a bit.She doesn’t drive taxis, nor does she have a driver’s licence. We are joined by Hank and David from New York's first co-operatively run rideshare service to talk about the taxi, car, and limousine industry and how we can cut its Truckasaurus head off with the power of worker owned business.
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