Building Systems Of Care (Part 1)

On this installment of It's Kairos Time! Building Systems Of Care (Part 1), Fahd Ahmed, Director of DRUM NYC (Desis Rising Up and Moving), discusses the organization's mission to empower low-wage South Asian and Indo-Caribbean immigrants in New York City. DRUM emphasizes community building, narrative power, and political clarity, using member-led storytelling to advocate for systemic change. They also discuss the challenges of engaging with political parties and the importance of building independent power and community connections.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:08

Music, welcome. Welcome to Kairos time. It's Kairos time. Welcome everybody to it's Kairos time. Kairos time. Kairos time. You music, hello and welcome back to it's Kairos time. Thanks for tuning in today. This season stop the war on the poor is a podcast series dedicated to lifting up the calls for demilitarization and the call for a permanent ceasefire. Now, this special season of its Kairos time convenes leaders from movements for racial, economic climate, gender justice and more who are calling for an end to the war and the war economy. With this latest season, we aim to remind listeners and ourselves that we are not alone, and that in these times, silence is betrayal. Now the United States war economy has no hesitation to fund militarism in the name of safety, but where is the funding for the care that actually saves lives for things like housing, food and healthcare? How, in the richest nation on earth, can there be 140 million people who are poor in this country, we cannot claim prosperity by the size of our military when 800 people are dying every day because of poverty in the US, communities around the nation that refuse to accept these conditions are finding ways to rely on each other and organize for long term structural change. Today we're joined by Fahd Ahmed, Director of drum, which stands for Destiny's rising up and moving, which is a multi generational membership led organization of low wage South Asian and indo, Caribbean immigrants, workers and youth in New York City. Fad. It's really great to have you on today, so let's just jump straight into it. First, tell us a little bit more about yourself and your organization. Tell us about some of the community building that you're doing. Little bit more specifically, tell us about what needs have been missing in the community, and how have you and your organization filled those needs. I became politicized as a result of my coming to the US. When I was about 11, I was undocumented. Was in a working class family. Those were working at gas stations. And I also came to Oklahoma after the first Gulf War, and so the experience of coming into the US was also filled with lots of racial violence, and within a few years, I had family members that were facing deportations or imprisonment as a result of the war on drugs and all of these things like really politicized me generally, sort of like in a angry kid sort of way. But as I became exposed to movements in the US, their history of them, it started to make a lot more sense. My own experiences started to make more sense. Now, sort of I became politicized, and then I moved to New York in 2000 and I found drum as a it was a pre existing organization, just by a few months, and I found the people that founded it, and it's been my political home ever since. And at drum, we organize working class out Asian and in the Caribbean folks, we recognize that we are uniquely positioned to organize our communities, which are otherwise not reached by other larger organizing projects or organizations, and also understand that there are particularities to our communities, that if our communities are not being organized in the racial hierarchy in the US, that they can be used, pitted or wedged against other communities, particularly black and indigenous communities, and at the same time as immigrants, we also understand that we have a particularly unique perspective to bring from the histories of struggling against colonialism, from being the victims of imperialism, from being migrants as a result of colonialism and imperialism, and that those histories position us in unique ways to be able to understand the empire from within, and be able to work alongside others to figure out how it is that we fight for justice, not just here, but with a global, internationalist understanding that understands that our struggles are intricately linked. To people across the world and particularly in the homelands that we come from. And so those spirits really guide us in terms of how we think about our work is understanding the concrete material needs that our people have, but also understanding the larger political context in which those material needs arise. And so we very much see the relationship between the endless investment in militarism internationally as well as in policing domestically, while our communities, all of our communities, are deprived of basic needs, from health to housing to education, we approach those struggles with that larger lens in mind. I think it's really powerful and important to be making these larger connections, especially when politicians on both sides are, you know, trying to prescribe answers to these problems. I like to go a bit deeper in how, drum is able to control a narrative and build unity and really have a strong analysis of the condition. So one, how does this narrative power work through your organizing? And also, what are some of the challenges to creating that strong narrative, and just some of the challenges that have arised through drums organizing. We are primarily an organizing shop, right? So we're a membership based organization. Our members are working class folks, cab drivers, food delivery workers, domestic workers, people that just do domestic labor, at home, restaurant workers, retail shop workers, and we understand that as working class people, our primary power really lies in our numbers, that like just actually being able to bring people into movement is the first and the most important step beyond that for us, the narrative power is twofold. One is really thinking within our communities. You know, immigrant communities face this unique perspective of we, we are no longer connected in the same way to our homelands back home, and we're not really fully connected to communities and struggles here, just sort of like, adrift, and that provides a little bit of an opening around like, sort of like, how do we make sense of that dissonance, of that feeling of alienation? And so we rely a lot on ethnic media as well as people within our membership, or like, sort of community based journalists that do like live streams or like social media, but we really invest in engaging in those spaces to help people make sense of the struggles that they're going through, and how do they tie to larger dynamics at play, domestically, internationally and back home, and a important part of of that is that it's really centered in the lived experiences and stories, and most of the time, the actual voices of our members. So we train and support our members to speak in the ethnic media. Speak, tell their stories, highlight the contradictions that exist, both within our communities, say, between community members and gatekeeping leaders and in society at large. So for example, you know, we come from societies where police abuse is in some ways a lot more visceral like it is much more explicitly felt. And so when people come here, and also like, sort of like, within the context of a racial hierarchy, like, they don't experience like police violence in the same way as they did back home, or as indigenous or black communities, or particular communities may experience here. And so like, there will be an interpretation of like, oh, the police isn't quite so bad here. But what we actually have to do is draw the stories of our community members that are public facing workers, so like cab drivers and street vendors for them to uplift like, oh, no, actually, I face police harassment all the time, or Muslims that have been targeted by the surveillance system, like my son was entrapped in a fake terrorism case and is serving 30 years in prison, or youth that have been harassed on the street, saying I got stopped and frisked 60 times or 80 times by the times that I was 19 years old. And, you know, like a lot of that sort of like storytelling is just like stuff that people don't hear about, because as immigrant workers, people are working 10, 1214, hour shifts, going home, going to sleep, waking up and doing the same thing the next day. And so their understanding of what's happening at large is very much limited to just what their own personal experiences are, or of like very. Circles. And so that becomes one of the primary places where we really invest in, like building narrative power. And then secondly, is like in broader society, around, like the, again, the particularities of our communities and what we experience. So, for example, kind of at the being of the pandemic, a lot of it was that undocumented workers who were many of them were like critical essential workers, farm workers, transportation workers, people that were like cleaning up after people in homes in ways that were like putting them at the front lines and at the risk higher, highest exposure risk levels. And yet when policies, I mean, you know, they were half assed policies, comparatively speaking, but half assed policies to like, take care of people, like the expansion of unemployment benefits or things like that, came out, these same undocumented workers who were playing essential roles were being excluded. And so that became opportunities for us to uplift, uh, uplift them, and have them tell their own stories about both being essential workers while also still being excluded workers and being able to talk about sort of like, the gaps that there were and what the risks were like. What What happens if a lot of agricultural workers get covid and fall sick? What happens to our food supply chains? What happens to our healthcare systems if the same people that are providing healthcare to the elderly or people that are at home themselves get covid, get sick or pass away, and that became a powerful moment to fight for something like the excluded workers fund in New York, which attempted to parallel, sort of like the unemployment benefits that were made available for other workers that those that New York created. We won a program that won a parallel disbursement for excluded workers, mostly undocumented workers. And I think in total, we won $2.1 billion which, once it got distributed, was about$15,600 for each worker. And you know, now, sort of like, because of the narrative work that came out of that, and like, sort of like shifting people's thinking and understanding the how people, particular workers or people in communities, can't just be disposable. That sort of like, laid the foundation for us to try to fight to make that program more permanent and have a permanent parallel program for undocumented workers, for freelance workers, for formerly incarcerated workers. And, you know, I think like this is a ways in which, like, narrative power, like creates openings for people being able to understand either what is possible, or sort of like why it is important for them to be involved in movement, or for us to be able to understand that our existing ways of thinking are not sufficient, and that we do need to make shifts, not just in our thinking, but then also in actual material conditions and structures in society to be able to correspond to actual needs that exist. First of all, thank you again, so much for being here. Like your insights. There's there's so much here, and I feel like there's so much I want to touch on one just, just the power of having control of our own media and to tell our own stories is really powerful and secure. Some of the stories that you're sharing about how that's led to some some victory, and also base building is is really great. Something we'll often say in the Poor People's Campaign is that movements begin with the telling of untold stories. So hearing, you know how you're saying some working class folks in cab drivers like actually telling their experiences of of being in the police or of being assaulted by police, or just, you know, sharing those stories that oftentimes aren't told, that kind of shift the dominant narrative that we're told about immigrant experiences or just experiences of living in this country and how poverty is not as bad as it is, or these working conditions aren't as bad as they are, but to actually control your own narrative is really powerful. And you were already touching on another question that I wanted to ask you, but one point that I wanted to get into is when we look at, you know, historically, some of these policies, and we look at historically the positions of the two dominant political parties in this in this country, how they want to posture themselves as the party for working class people, but when we look at decisions that they've actually made, how they, you know, deregulated so much and made conditions for working class people so much worse, and how minimum wages have not increased in so long and conditions for immigrant families have you know, been made even worse as time has gone on? So how has your organizing work, and how has the narrative work and the campaigns that you've thrown down on and especially thinking about the expanded workers fund. Think that you mentioned, for example, how have these been opportunities to to cut through some of that noise that, you know, it's not one particular party that is going to save us, but it's going to be like the unity of organizing our community and fighting for things that actually lift us up is going to save us. Can you get a little bit into that? I think, you know, for the first let's say 19 years of drum. You know, we do come from a pretty strongly influenced by political traditions that were highly critical of both the parties, and also, to a large extent, of electoralism itself. I would say, sort of over the years. I think we have, our views have shifted around the issue of electoralism and understanding that the state influences so much, and that the US as the Empire, like sort of like that the system is so entrenched that there is no other way, immediate pathway that, like we do have to engage in the electoral system for contestation of power, but that, if we are going to do so, we have to do it with a lot, a lot, a lot of clarity. And that clarity means I'm being clear about that neither one of these parties represent the interests of working class people here in the US or across the world, that these are both ruling class parties right at the same time that they're not the same that they while they are ruling Class parties, they do in order to build their coalition and build their power, they do give crumbs to different segments of society, and that we should be analytical of that and understand Understand it so that we know, sort of like, how not to be misled by the concessions or crumbs that they offer us, but also so that we also figure out, like, how do we utilize some of those openings for our own advantage? And then I think a big part of this is also that if the vast majority of elected officials and candidates are also not that like even if some of them are coming out of our movements, the pull, the gravitational pull of these parties, is so strong that we have to not write those people off, but be very critical in how We engage with them, how we struggle with them? And you know, because the left and the organized working class is so weak in the US, what we've tended to do is substitute that weakness, that that lack of power, with, sort of just replaced it with, like moral indignation, and that becomes a substitute for actual power, and that creates these really distortions in how we engage with the electoral system and with elected officials. We either, you know, the ones that end up being even like, sort of like lukewarm progressive or like somewhat good, like, we either pedestalize them and fetishize them and treat them as sort of like the next coming and like as saviors, or we go to the other extreme and demonize them for not being absolutely pure or absolutely perfect. You know that is really a reflection of the fact of like, when you don't have power and the only thing that you have is things that, like, make you emotionally feel good, so we heroize them and like, sort of like, project our own shortcomings, our own desires, our own wishes onto them, or we villainize them and project our own inadequacies, our own shortcomings, onto them. And part of our work in 2019 we launched a a sibling, c4, organization, and part of the work there is like, really, like, start to build clarity around this as a working class, we have to be clear that neither one of these parties represent our interest. There are a few elected officials that are either coming from our movements or are adjacent to our movements who are somewhat better, but we can't expect that they're just going to go in and represent our interest. We really have to experiment in deep relationships with them to figure out, you know, playing around ideas of CO governance and sort of like deeper levels of accountability, to figure out, just sort of like, what are ways that we can find and develop a better model, which in the US by and large, doesn't exist. Currently and at the same time being grounded that like this, is just one, one tool and one arm of our struggle, and that our day to day mass work is a place where we really build our independent power as a working class, and that has to be the central piece. And also, how do we continue to explore building our capacities in the cultural or in the narrative realm, to be able to also have people, to be able to struggle in the realm of hearts and minds within our communities and beyond. And so I think, sort of like overall, sort of like a lot of this is, like, really just grounded in a materialist practice where we recognize that, like, sort of like people's subjective emotions and how they think or feel about themselves is important, but is not determining, in and of itself, that we actually have to be able to see and understand systems, people, elected officials, in very materialist ways, understand all the different forces at play and how they're evolving. Who's influencing them, who's not? What are we doing to be able to influence them? What are we not? Are we building the power to influence them? Are we not? And really like, try to experiment and experiment in understanding, how do we continue to build our power, both from the ground up, but also from other directions, to be able to create more space for us as organized, as an organized working class. I'm just so thankful for your clarity and the clarity, the political clarity that drum has in his organizing work. Thank you for tuning in to it's Cairo's time stop the war on the poor. We're going to take a brief break from our conversation to hear about an upcoming policy summit on october 17. The Cairo center is bringing together experts on the economy, militarism, the rise of authoritarianism, and project 2025 alongside religious leaders and organizers to offer a concrete analysis of our current context and how our movements and organizations are responding. Join us as we discuss the challenges and opportunities of this kairos moment and how we can build on lessons from the pandemic era to build up powerful movements for the long haul. Visit us@www.cairocenter.org Welcome back to it's chariston. Stop the War on the war. I want to read you this quote. It's from the Black Panther Party service to the people, programs. Book. The book goes in depth on some of the Black Panther party's survival programs, like the free breakfast program, just meeting the immediate needs of the community, but also politicizing those conditions. And so this is some of his thoughts on these survival programs. Quote, all these programs satisfy the deep needs of the community, but they are not solutions to our problems. These survival programs are not answers or solutions, but they will help us to organize the community around a true analysis and understanding of their situation. And so hearing the work of drum and hearing your own analysis. I see so much of that in in this quote, but I'd love to hear what more of your thoughts on how programs like yours can be the basis for a larger movement. You know, we have to meet our community's immediate needs and tell our stories. But how can this lead to long term structural change, more than just in New York, but how can this lead to larger change nationally? I think, in response to that quote and the history of the Black Panther Party survival programs, I think we may be a little bit uniquely situated. I think in general, the rise of neoliberalism really happens after the black center party is sort of like, you know, targeted, attacked and decimated, and neoliberalism has really brought the shift of, like, taking away from the state's responsibilities and really privatizing a lot of those things. And so there is this unique dynamic where, you know, as the organized left, sort of like, got destroyed by contour pro and by governmental policies and by neoliberal policies. A lot of the that vacuum was filled by nonprofit organizations. A lot of our movements shifted into nonprofits, and then a lot of the nonprofits have sort of like positioned themselves to provide the services that the state no longer provides, or has like shifted to the nonprofits, and so it becomes this very tricky place, right, where we need to meet the needs of our people. And. And at the same time, we have to be careful that we're not sort of like further legitimizing the new liberal agenda and drive, which says that, like, look, the state doesn't have to take care of this. Like, really, people, communities, nonprofits can do this. And so I think like that that is represented in a spectrum within our movements, the parts of our movements that operate through nonprofits, and you could argue, to some extent, a similar dynamic, even within unions. I think we as a left as a whole, have not really deeply grappled with those tensions and those contradictions. And for drum I think the position that we have taken, which I think is probably more of a minority position, is that we tend to minimize our like, sort of like the provision of services, or sort of like something similar to, sort of like survival programs. I think some of that is informed by a particularity to our communities, which is that even though we are organizing working class communities, the very fact of that people were able to migrate from South Asia or from to a lesser extent, the Caribbean, but particularly from South Asia, means that Our people, even though they are working class, here were people of some means back home. So they were largely middle class, lower middle class people back home. Because if you're working class back home, you're not you're never going to access a visa to the US, and you're not going to be able to afford a plane ticket to the US. And so that middle class experience back home and consciousness already. So like, like, even though people are living working class realities here, that that still exists in the consciousness. And there is like from the middle class, the strong sense of individualism and me, me, me. And so that has been a additional sort of like reason why we have sort of resisted, sort of like the service provision orientation, or emphasizing it too much. And so the way that we have structured is that we actually, when we go out to the community to talk to people and recruit people, we do not talk about of any of our service provision, we really just talk about our political work, and once we bring people in through the political work, then we say that, like, look, here's, here's some of the services or supports that we do provide. And because we we don't want to use the service provision as a hook, because it creates some distortions in the type of people or the orientation with which we bring people in, but once we have people in, we understand that, like, we got to take care of our people, we got to take care of each other. And so I think, you know, like in that perspective, like there is a particular uniqueness that we're not able to do, sort of like the public facing orientation that, let's say the Black Panther Party was able to do around survival programs. We really have to do that once people are already inside the organization and have already demonstrated a commitment. But one major exception to that was sort of like at the moment of the pandemic, where we saw again, because of decades of neoliberal policies, this abandonment of our communities, that there was no public health education programs that were actually getting into our communities, and so people didn't know, how is the virus transmitted? What are the things that we should do or shouldn't do? And so we launched a campaign, which we call power and safety through solidarity, for short, the past campaign where we launched a phone based campaign, we knew that a lot of people were just at home because work was suspended, and so we started calling first our members, to our members, asking our members to call their family, their friends, their neighbors, and the phone based campaign, talk to people about what do You know about safety? How are you keeping yourself safe? And then, like, actually drilled the need of the public health education that was not being met in language, in Bangla, in Nepali, in Punjabi, in Urdu, in Creoles, to be like, Look, here's how the virus is being transmitted. Here's how you wear a mask, here's the things that put you at risk. Here's the things that you actually don't have to worry about that that's not how it gets transmitted, right? And so spend 510, minutes just talk to people about, like, public health, then actually ask them, like, okay, what are what are the current needs that you have? Are you eligible to apply? Apply for unemployment benefits. Okay, we can have somebody that can help you apply for it here, so and so they will call you and like, assisted people with applying for unemployment benefits or accessing healthcare or some of those things. And then we also, like, did some political agitation to be like, Why do you think in the richest country in the world, in the richest city in the world, that is the financial capital of the empire of the richest country in the world? Why is it that our community members are doing fundraisers to provide protective equipment to doctors at Elmhurst Hospital, which is the epicenter of the pandemic. Does that make sense to you? Why has there been no public health education programs that have come into the community or in language and like, told you, why are we having to, like, give this information to you? Why are you having to give it to your neighbors? And so, you know, like doing some political agitation and then being like, you know, this is why it's important to be organized. We invite you. Do you want to make these calls to other people? Do you want to talk to your neighbors through the phone about, like, the same things that we're talking to you about? And if so, come join drum at that point, not physically, but like, you know, like, get connected to us. You know, make calls to other people, and then also, like, pull people into campaigns. You know, we heard you mentioned that, like, you know, you you can't access unemployment benefits because you're undocumented. We're working on a campaign for the excluded workers fund you're worried about paying. How you're going to pay rent when you're laid off of work. We're, we're fighting for a rental Leave campaign so that the government sets aside money to help people pay their rent for the people that are unable to. And that became the way that sort of, like, we pulled people in, and then, you know, within that was sort of, like, towards the end of it was also a loading of like, Oh, are you in need of groceries? Okay, you know, like, we're working with Queens Mutual Aid, or this group that are, like, delivering groceries, you know, we'll sign you up if you want to assist in providing that for other people. Like, we can connect you so that you can volunteer. But like, these are ways of like, just like, bringing people in. And I think it was probably like, the closest that we have engaged in what I think the Black Panther Party posited as people survival programs that understand that the that the state should be doing this, but isn't doing it because of neoliberal policies of both the parties, and we have to fill that gap in the short term, but in the long term, that really shouldn't be our responsibility, and that we have to be organized as a force to be able to push against the system that to force them, to compel them to actually fulfill these roles and these needs that really should be the responsibility of the state, it's been like, those are ways in which, like, we're, you know, like it's, it's pretty nuanced, right? Like being able to talk about what the state should be doing, but isn't, why isn't it doing it? What are the political forces that are responsible for it being that way? What are the ways that we're fulfilling that gap, but only in the short term, and what are the ways that we need to be organized that we can actually compel the state to fulfill those needs in the long term? And I think you know, part of this is that at every point of interaction with our members and with our communities that we want to be providing clarity and agitation to our people about what's happening and not be providing feel good responses, or just sort of like, you know, sort of like some nice talking points or messaging points or sloveneering that doesn't actually explain what's actually happening, materially happening, and why it's happening. And, you know, a lot of it just goes back to the there's a quote from Amilcar Cabral around like, tell no lies. We really have to be honest with our people, not sell them type dreams or or feel good stories, but actually just be real with people. Because if we want to bring them into the struggle, we want to be honest with them, so that they actually have clarity about the the extent of struggle that is needed for us to be able to build the forces necessary to be able to contest for power that can transform the world. I don't even have to tie it up the way you've laid it out, how drama is able to, you know, lay out these conditions for folks, bring them in, but also this understanding for the struggle that we're in, for the long term structural change. That's exactly what we need in this moment, and I know so many of our listeners are going to learn so much from your conversation today, just finally, fad, if folks want to learn more about you, about drum, and even get more involved in this work or donate where. Where should we go? We have a website, drum nyc.org, you can also look up, look us up on social that's a good place if you can find the link to donate, because people don't look at websites anymore. It's not the most updated place otherwise. But social media, we have Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. You can look up drum tasty rising up and moving, and be able to just sort of see the work that we're currently engaging in. You know, we are a organization that is particularly focused on really building the leadership of our own members. And so there are particularly working class folks. And so there are some limitations in sort of like how people that don't fit into our membership are able to plug in. But we are also recognizing that we are in a political moment where capitalism, and particularly neoliberal capitalism has created, like extremely high levels of isolation and alienation, and pandemic has worsened it and that there are lots of people that are and that in that alienation is where we're also sort of seeing that, versus like the the fascist forces of the right are able to seize and pounce upon people, including people from within our communities. And so we recognize that this is a moment where more connectivity is important, more relationships are important. And so we recently put out a call, uh, inviting people who are allies and as volunteers, so people that wouldn't fit our membership criteria, but would be allies and volunteers and are particularly in the neighborhoods that we organize, and in Queens, in the Bronx and in Brooklyn, on that if you are in some of those neighborhoods, We are exploring ways for people to either support our mass work or potentially also explore sort of like creating some community of people you know, like in the neighborhood, to get connected to other people, so that they have a sense of community with people that are feeling isolated and are striving and wanting for community and for a better world that does take care of all of us at an individual level, at a communal level, but also at a systemic level. And it is really an experimentation in figuring out, how do we start to organize at larger and larger scales that are needed to be able to confront the threats that we're facing from the fascists, but also from the abandonment caused by the centrist and it's really going to require us to massively, massively scale up the numbers of people that we're engaging and the ways in which we are engaging them and so on social media, I think, like if you scroll back a little bit into the last month, we have also been put we have been putting out this call, inviting in allies and volunteers. It is largely going to be limited to people that are in the neighborhoods in New York City that we organize in, but that may also be one place that if people are in some of those neighborhoods, that we would be interested in engaging people and exploring what does it look like To create communities of care at a neighborhood level out of which we can actually support people to further organize, maybe your apartment building, maybe your church and maybe the community center or ethnic organization that you're part of. But just given the threats that we face from climate disaster, from the instability of of capitalism, from militarism, from fascism, that we really do need to bring a lot more people into movement, and do it in a way that still keeps the interest and the leadership of working class people at the center, but also then doesn't exclude people that are not from the working class, but having them be in movement and in relationship, and so that that is one of the places that, if any of the listeners would be suited, we would love to engage with people. Thank you. I've said it already five. Thank you so much for your clarity today, and thank you so much for your leadership. You and drum are really getting this movement where it needs to go. And thank you listener for tuning in to it's Kairos time stop the war on the poor. We hope you'll continue to join us. You.