Biju Mathew

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Biju Mathew is a New York-based Marxist activist-intellectual. An immigrant from India, he teaches Information Systems and American studies at Rider University (New Jersey). A veteran labor organizer, he co-founded the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, is a founding secretary of the National Taxi Workers Alliance, and president of the International Alliance of App-Based Transport Workers. As a writer, Mathew has published several academic articles as well as the 2005 book Taxi!: Cabs and Capitalism in New York City.

Contents

Immigrant/ Taxi Workers Organizing

In 1998, Mathew cofounded the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA), along with Bhairavi Desai, Javaid Tariq, and several others.[ citation needed ] NYTWA is currently one of the most successful new immigrant workers unions in the US with over 26,000 members in NYC. The union primarily organizes yellow medallion lease drivers and has fought several successful campaigns. In 2004, 2006, and 2012, it conducted fair hike-lease cap campaigns. In 2013–14, it set up a health and wellness fund for NYC taxi drivers. Perhaps its most historical campaign came in November 2021, when, after three years of direct action, including 15-day Hunger Strike, they reached an agreement with the City of New York and Marblegate Asset Management to restructure medallion mortgages, thereby saving many workers from falling into irretrievable debt. [1] The campaign was widely covered in the media, including a cover story in The Nation . [2]

In 2011 the NYTWA and its sister organization, The Taxi Workers Alliance of Pennsylvania (TWAPA) became the founding affiliates of the National Taxi Workers Alliance (NTWA) of the AFL-CIO. [3] The NTWA is the 57th chartered union of the AFL-CIO and the first new charter in over 50 years. The creation of NTWA is a historic event and it is the first national union of independent contractor-workers. Mathew is presently the secretary of the NTWA.

In January 2020, Mathew cofounded the International Alliance of App Based Transport Workers (IIATW), along with delegates from 23 countries. [4] Initially a member of the steering committee, he was made president of IAATW in 2021.

Left Political Education

Mathew has a long record of volunteer left education work. He is most recently the cofounder and chair of the executive council of Lamakaan, an open cultural space in Hyderabad, India. He serves on the board of the Brecht Forum, NY. He is also the cofounder of Youth Solidarity Summer, a South Asian youth education summer camp.

Transnational Solidarity Campaigns

For over three decades, Mathew has worked with various civil society groups to uphold human rights and monitor human rights violations in India. After the 2002 Gujarat riots, in which Hindu groups killed over 2,000 Muslims, Mathew and several others founded the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate (CSFH), which tracked over US$6,000,000 being funneled to the Hindutva movement in India. This work is documented in a report titled “The Foreign Exchange of Hate” published. CSFH has also investigated and published a report, “Unmistakably Sangh” on Hindutva student organizations in the US. [5] In 2005, he helped found the Coalition Against Genocide (CAG), a coalition of 40 organizations dedicated to fighting for minority rights in India, especially for justice for the victims of the 2002 Gujarat riots.

Mathew is also the cofounder of the Mining Zone Peoples Solidarity Group (MZPSG) that works on solidarity campaigns to support peoples movements against indiscriminate mining and consequent displacement in India. MZPSG currently works on a solidarity campaign for the anti-Posco campaign in India. [6] Its report, documents the inconsistencies in the claims of Posco India, the government of India, and the government of Orissa, in justifying the US$12 000 000 Posco-India project.

In 2020, Mathew co-founded India Civil Watch International, a membership based civil rights monitoring and campaign organization based out of North America, which has over 200 members at present. [7] ICWI has mounted campaigns to hold Facebook responsible for hate speech on its India platforms, fight for the release of the activists detained as part of the Bhima-Koregaon conspiracy, among others. [8] [9] Mathew is present co-chair of ICWI.

Media and Publications

Mathew has authored numerous scholarly as well as journalistic publications on subjects ranging from labor to neoliberalism to communal violence. In 2005, he published Taxi! Cabs and Capitalism in New York City with The New Press. [10] The book, which draws heavily on Mathew's interaction with drivers, details the taxi workers' struggles in New York City from the 1920s to the present as well as discussing New York politics and policies and their effects on the taxi industry. It was widely praised in publications including the Financial Times and has been heralded as a classic. It was republished in a new edition by Cornell University Press in 2008. [11]

Between 1999 and 2011, Mathew hosted a weekly radio show for the WBAI station titled "Global Movements, Urban Struggles." [12] It featured discussions with activists fighting for racial and economic justice around the world.

Related Research Articles

Hindutva is a political ideology encompassing the cultural justification of Hindu nationalism and the belief in establishing Hindu hegemony within India. The political ideology was formulated by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1922. It is used by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and other organisations, collectively called the Sangh Parivar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bharatiya Janata Party</span> Indian political party

The Bharatiya Janata Party is a political party in India and one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under the incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The BJP is aligned with right-wing politics, and its policies adhere to Hindutva, a Hindu nationalist ideology. It shares close ideological and organisational links to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) volunteer paramilitary organisation. As of September 2023, it is the country's biggest political party in terms of representation in the Parliament of India as well as state legislatures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bajrang Dal</span> Hindu nationalist militant organisation

Bajrang Dal is a Hindu nationalist militant organisation that forms the youth wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP). It is a member of the right-wing Sangh Parivar. The ideology of the organisation is based on Hindutva. It was founded on 1 October 1984 in Uttar Pradesh, and began spreading more in the 2010s throughout India, although its most significant base remains the northern and central portions of the country.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bandh</span> General strike

Bandh is a form of protest used by political activists in South Asian countries such as India and Nepal. It is similar to a general strike. During a bandh, a political party or a community declare a general strike. For example, a Bharat bandh is a call for a bandh across India, and a bandh can also be called for an individual state or municipality.

Friends of South Asia (FOSA) is a California, United States based social and political activist organization. Founded jointly in 2001 by Americans of Pakistani and Indian origins, the group describes its mission as "achieve a peaceful, prosperous, and hate-free South Asia...work[ing] through people-to-people contacts, dialog, and other non-violent, non-exclusionary means." FOSA activism has touched upon issues inside South Asia, as well as outside South Asia such as those relating to Israel and United States policy in Cuba and Venezuela among others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Koregaon</span> Battle fought between British East India Company and the Peshwa faction of the Maratha Confederacy

The Battle of Koregaon was fought on 1 January 1818 between the British East India Company and the Peshwa faction of the Maratha Confederacy, at Koregaon Bhima.

The Forum of Indian Leftists (FOIL), or the Forum of Inquilabi Leftists, is a group of left-wing activists of Indian background. The organization describes itself as "a clearinghouse for radical Indian activists in the United States, Canada and England." Its purpose is described by its founders as "some place for us to share information, offer support, and encourage each other to write in the open media on issues pertaining to Indians overseas and India itself, and help build projects that make our radical politics more material."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angana P. Chatterji</span> Indian anthropologist, activist, and feminist historian

Angana P. Chatterji is an Indian anthropologist, activist, and feminist historian, whose research is closely related to her advocacy work and focuses mainly on India. She co-founded the International People's Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir and was a co-convener from April 2008 to December 2012.

Hindu nationalism has been collectively referred to as the expression of social and political thought, based on the native spiritual and cultural traditions of the Indian subcontinent. "Hindu nationalism" is a simplistic translation of हिन्दु राष्ट्रवाद. It is better described as "Hindu polity".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anand Teltumbde</span> Indian scholar (born 1950)

Anand Teltumbde is an Indian scholar, writer, and civil rights activist who is a management professor at the Goa Institute of Management. He has written extensively about the caste system in India and has advocated for the rights of Dalits. He is also a longtime critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and was imprisoned in 2020 along with other activists and intellectuals who were critical of the government. His arrest has been condemned by other academics and human rights organizations, and legal experts have said that the charges against him appear to be fabricated.

National Alliance of People's Movements is an alliance of alter-globalisation activist groups in India. It is an umbrella organisation for various civil society organisations and individuals working towards similar goals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Taxi Workers' Alliance</span>

National Taxi Workers' Alliance (NTWA) is a United States labor union that was founded in February 1998 by organizers in New York City, as the New York Taxi Workers' Alliance. On August 3, 2011, the NTWA made history when it became the 57th affiliate of the AFL–CIO. NTWA is the first non-traditional workforce made up of independent contractors who don't work for an hourly wage to be granted membership into the AFL–CIO, the oldest labor federation in the country. The Executive Council of the AFL–CIO voted unanimously "to include the NTWA into the house of labor with a national unionize taxi drivers throughout the United States". The union is made up of 200,000 taxi workers operating 100,000 vehicles serving 1 billion riders per year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gautam Navlakha</span> Indian human rights activist and journalist

Gautam Navlakha is an Indian human rights activist, journalist, and prisoner. He has written on left-wing extremism and is a critic of army and state atrocities in Kashmir. He is a member of People's Union for Democratic Rights, Delhi. He is also an editorial consultant of the Economic and Political Weekly. He resides in New Delhi.

The 2018 Bhima Koregaon violence refers to violence during an annual celebratory gathering on 1 January 2018 at Bhima Koregaon to mark the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Bhima Koregaon. The violence and stone pelting by a crowd at the gathering resulted in the death of a 28-year old youth and injuries to five others. The annual celebration, also called Elgar Parishad convention, was organised by retired justices B. G. Kolse Patil and P. B. Sawant. Justice Sawant stated that the term "Elgar" meant loud invitation or loud declaration.

Rona Wilson is an activist, researcher and the public relations secretary of the Committee for Release of Political Prisoners (CRPP). He has worked with people accused in terrorism cases, including those booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). He is an accused in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon violence.

Arun Ferreira is an Indian activist. He was arrested in 2007 for alleged links to the Indian Naxalite movement and spent five years in prison before he was acquitted in 2012. He began a career as a criminal lawyer defending political prisoners. He was arrested again in August 2018 and is currently lodged in Taloja prison along with other accused of the 2018 Bhima Koregaon violence

Sambhaji Bhide is a Hindutva activist from Maharashtra. Bhide, a native of Sangli district, was a full-time worker for the Hindu-nationalist organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, before leaving to form his own organisation, the Shiv Pratishthan Hindustan, in the late 1980s. The organisation claimed to spread the teachings of Shivaji and his son Sambhaji.

The Battle of Bhima Koregaon: An Unending Journey is a 2017 documentary by Indian filmmaker Somnath Waghmare. It explored the role of 500 Mahar dalit soldiers of the East India Company in the Battle of Koregaon on 1 January 1818 against Peshwa rulers. It talks about dalit assertion on 1 January taking place every year. The 50 minute documentary was released in April 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stan Swamy</span> Indian Roman Catholic priest and tribal rights activist (1937-2021)

Stanislaus Lourduswamy, SJ, popularly known as Stan Swamy, was an Indian Catholic priest, a member of the Jesuit order, and a tribal rights activist for several decades. Swamy was the oldest person to be accused of terrorism in India.

Vernon Gonsalves, born 1957, is a trade unionist, activist and academician, and an accused in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon violence. His wife, lawyer Susan Abraham, is also a workers rights activist. Vernon was arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

References

  1. ↑ "#EndCabbieDebt". New York Taxi Workers Alliance. Retrieved 2022-01-31.
  2. ↑ Crabapple, Molly (2021-12-13). "How the Taxi Workers Won". ISSN   0027-8378 . Retrieved 2022-01-31.
  3. ↑ "Mission & History". New York Taxi Workers Alliance. Retrieved 2022-01-31.
  4. ↑ "About Us – IAATW" . Retrieved 2022-01-31.
  5. ↑ "Unmistakably Sangh: The National Hindu Students Council and its Hindutva Agenda". hsctruthout.stopfundinghate.org. Retrieved 2022-01-31.
  6. ↑ "The People's Movement Against POSCO - India". Kairos Center. 2014-07-06. Retrieved 2022-01-31.
  7. ↑ "About Us – India Civil Watch International (ICWI)" . Retrieved 2022-01-31.
  8. ↑ "Rights groups push Facebook to release India human rights assessment". Washington Post. ISSN   0190-8286 . Retrieved 2022-01-31.
  9. ↑ "Bhima Koregaon Campaign – India Civil Watch International (ICWI)" . Retrieved 2022-01-31.
  10. ↑ "Product Details". Cornell University Press. Retrieved 2022-01-31.
  11. ↑ "Product Details". Cornell University Press. Retrieved 2022-01-31.
  12. ↑ "WBAI Radio - NYC". wbai.org. Retrieved 2022-01-31.
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