Marble Falls The monthly roundup of key directors of ACORN operations started with reports from Delhi, where our affiliates had broken through with huge victories in recent weeks. Dharmendra Kumar reported significant successes in our organizations of informal workers among street vendors and gig workers.
For hawkers, the story starts more than a decade ago when we joined with others to press for passage of a critical livelihood act which gave street vendors the right to ply their trades on city streets, footpaths, and established marketplaces. The right to access their customers and public properties had been contentious, and even with the passage of the act affording them these rights, remains so. Earlier in this week, ACORN’s organizer in Bengaluru had reported sweeping evictions in spite of the supposed legal protection.
Key in the law had been the mandate that cities create something called a Town Vending Committee, which would include appointees from the city, nonprofits, and the business community, but critically at least half would be composed of hawkers themselves. The seats were designated to be represented by vendors elected by other registered street vendors. Megacities, like Delhi, were broken down into subdistricts, each with their own committee. Several years ago, as Dharmendra reported, in the first, initial election, there were only 10,000 registered in Delhi. The process was haphazard then and much of the slate composed at the 11th hour as the city tried to catch up. This time was different and much more representative and even democratic. 100,000 were now registered and voting. Across Delhi, our members won 63 of the seats. Allied groups that were not affiliated with us, but aligned with us, also won seats, putting us in an excellent position to protect and advance the interests of the street vendors.
India ACORN had also been an enthusiastic participant in the global ACORN Beat the Heat Day with 23 cities across the country participating not only in Delhi and Mumbai, but in many other cities where we are organized. The demands had been robust and included times triggered to temperature for breaks and water for food delivery gig workers and street vendors. A key demand that many might have thought was too far a reach wanted excess heat to be classified as a disaster in the same way that flooding or earthquakes might be. Such a determination would give access to additional funding at the national level for abatement and remediation for workers which was more limited, if available at all, on the local level.
Amazingly, this week there was an announcement that we had won. In the future, heat and lightning strikes, would both be added to the natural causes that could access disaster and emergency funding. There had been 12 on the list, and now with this addition, there would be 14.
Every organizational victory warrants celebration. Both of these are huge. Critically, winning more heat protection won’t just increase livelihood and well-being for our members, but will save lives. That’s worth even more applause.