NYC’s Historic Win for Landmark Civil Rights Legislation is Decades in the Making

Yesterday afternoon, DRUM membership stood with Communities united for Police Reform and made history. After years of mobilizing hundreds of our members with organizations city-wide, the City Council voted to override Mayor Bloomberg’s veto, and passed both bills of the Community Safety Act in to law!  DRUM members, directly affected and many who testified at City Council about their own experiences of profiling, cheered in pride as City Hall with Communities United for Police Reform (CPR), when both bills won the veto-proof majority and the packed chambers erupted in celebration.

For DRUM, this is victory has been over a decade in the making. In the late 1990’s, I first envisioned the need to form an organization by and for low-income South Asian immigrants as a young organizer myself rooted in the police accountability and racial justice movements in NYC after the shooting of Amadou Diallo, an African immigrant street vendor. In fact, DRUM’s first community action was a Jackson Heights Mela for Police & Immigration Accountability in April 2000 as part of the 41 Days of Action city-wide organized by Coalition Against Police Brutality (CAPB).  From the start, we linked arm in arm with Black and Latino communities in CAPB, grew from the mentorship of Richie Perez, and planted the seeds of multi-racial and multi-strategy alliances and solidarity between the Justice Committee, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, CAAAV – Organizing Asian Communities, the Audre Lorde Project, and DRUM. As low-income South Asian immigrants, we saw our community as being the newest to experiencing racial and economic injustices, but realized that our struggle must be rooted in genuine solidarity and in respect of the longer histories of movement led by Black, Latino, worker, and immigrant communities.  

In the post 9/11 decade, as DRUM shifted our focus to a new era of policing under a National Security paradigm and merging with an immigration enforcement complex,our work always maintained the core challenging unjust enforcement as a foundation for winning true social and economic rights.   As a result of this history in forming and building numerous multiracial coalitions, and being a unique organization that organizes community members directly affected by both stop and frisks and by surveillance, DRUM was honored facilitate and lead the partnership between the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition (MACLC) and Communities united for Police Reform (CPR) to work together on the Inspector General bill, and then the whole Community Safety Act. We are in awe of the tremendous generosity and solidarity built across these organizations- the diverse people of this city- to finally achieve this historic moment for civil rights in New York City and nationally.

The City Council members vote on these bills is a reflection of their accountability to communities and constituents, and we thank the council members who stood by their communities.  We couldn’t have done this without the courageous leadership of City Council Members Jumaane Williams and Brad Lander, and CPR – Communities united for Police Reform, and the many people who paved the way over decades. We honor all of those directly affected community members from so many organizations representing so many communities who courageously shared their stories and experiences with the world, and created the groundswell of pressure that made this victory inevitable. And of course, we also couldn’t have done it without you, our supporters.

Our work is not yet finished. We must now work to ensure proper implementation of the Community Safety Act. DRUM members are excited and energized by being participants in this victory, and will continue to mobilize and take action for further reforms, and bring about a culture of real safety and dignity for the communities of New York City.

And very importantly, we need your continued support to make sure we can keep doing this work until ALL people are guaranteed the same civil and human rights.

As our members now prepare to get on the bus to the historic 50^thAnniversary of the March on Washington tomorrow, we are committed to continuing the providential struggle for justice and equality.