Hunger Strike! How Immigrant Taxi Drivers Took on City Hall

At the Moment: Asian American News

When Augustine Tang’s father passed away, Augustine decided to inherit his taxi medallion – the license that had allowed his father to drive a yellow taxi cab in New York City for decades. But the medallion came with a $530,000 debt trap and years of struggling to escape it.

Augustine’s friend Kenny, a fellow taxi cab driver, committed suicide. So did several other drivers who were crushed under the weight of these impossible debts. In hopes of preventing another death, Tang joined a push by the local taxi drivers’ union, to campaign for debt relief. And eventually, city resistance to worker demands culminated in a 15-day hunger strike to convince City Hall that immigrant taxi drivers deserved a fair deal.

The drivers’ struggles for livable working conditions showed how political power doesn’t just come down to votes. It’s a reminder how strong collective will can be, especially for those often silenced and ignored by our imperfect democracy.

Resources and Reading

• After listening, please take our survey about this story — to help us fund more stories like this one!
• This show mentions instances of suicide. We understand this topic may be difficult for some listeners. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is a hotline for individuals in crisis or for those looking to help someone else. To speak with a certified listener, call 1-800-273-8255
• WATCH: “Cheated, Desperate, Financially Ruined NYC Taxi Drivers Go on Hunger Strike” by Maximillian Alvarez of the Real News Network
• WATCH: “New York Taxi Drivers Hunger Strike for Debt Relief” by More Perfect Union
• READ: “‘They Were Conned’: How Reckless Loans Devastated a Generation of Taxi Drivers” by Brian Rosenthal for the New York Times
• READ: “How the Taxi Workers Won” by Molly Crabapple for the Economic Hardship Reporting Project
• READ: “Distressed DriverSP: Solving the the New York City Taxi Medallion Debt Crisis” by Aaron Jacobs for Columbia Human Rights Law Review

Credits

• Produced by Self Evident Media
• Reported by Sahil Nisha, with help from Alina Panek and Janrey Serapio
• Interview recordings by Sahil Nisha, Stacey Wong, and James Boo
• Edited by James Boo and Julia Shu
• Fact checked by Harsha Nahata and Tiffany Bui
• Sound mix by Timothy Lou Ly
• Music by Epidemic Sound
• At the Moment Theme by Satoru Ohno
• Cover Art by Susu Schwaber
• This episode was made with support from the Solutions Journalism Network's Advancing Democracy program
• Special thanks to: Cynthia Liu, Alice Liu, Sabeen Shalwani, Augustine Tang, John Duda, Kuber Sancho-Persad, Jaslin Kaur, Maria Santana, Maximillian Alvarez, Michelle Faust Raghavan and Alec Saleens, and the New York Taxi Workers Alliance Media Team

Support AZI Media

Support our work on Ko-Fi

Instagram (@azi.media)

Twitter (@azidotmedia)

AZI Media’s Code of Conduct

Subscribe to our mailing list

Meet the AZI team