Kazi Fouzia

Director of Organizing

kazi@drumnyc.org

Kazi Fouzia comes from a long history of struggles for justice.  In Bangladesh, Kazi was a community organizer involved with a street vendors union, free community health clinics, and free education for slum children.  She worked with several community and women’s organizations such as Women Watch Bangladesh, a national union of the small and cottage industry.  She also participated in women’s leadership and capacity building training and community theater for social justice.  In 2007 she was selected, along with 13 other South Asian women, for the State Department International Visitor Leadership Program, through which she met unions and community organizers in Los Angeles, Texas, Washington D.C., and New York City.

Kazi immigrated from Bangladesh to the U.S. in 2008, and became a designer and seamstress at retail sari shops in Jamaica and Jackson Heights, Queens. She was introduced to DRUM in 2009 through a ‘Know your Rights’ workshop for workers.  For the past few years, Kazi has been involved with DRUM as a member, leader, Community Organizer, and now as the Director of Organzing.

In 2010 Kazi trained with the Center for Third World Organizing and the School of Unity and Liberation. In 2013, she received the Immigrant Heritage Award from the office of Councilmember Daniel Dromm. She regularly writes in the Bangla media about DRUM’s work and regarding workers, immigrant rights, and racial profiling, as part of her commitment to fighting for the rights of low-income South Asians.