New Orleans The first May Day in the United States saw 300,000 people hit the streets in solidarity with the issues of workers. Fast forward to 2014 and there was not a single note in any of the local papers I read daily or the national ones about any notion of May Day even existing …
Tag: Suresh Kadashan
In Mumbai ACORN’s Ragpickers Start Rolling
Mumbai I had a sleepless night in Bengaluru, filled with excitement about our progress in unionizing informal workers and always mindful of the constant challenges of early morning flights in the “jams” of India, all of which combined to leave me exhausted once I hit the Juhu Beach area in Mumbai around noon. No time …
Building a Union of Street Vendors in Bengaluru
Bengaluru I had a long list of things I needed to get done on this trip to India, catch up with Dharmendra Kumar in Delhi on our progress at blocking multi-brand retail in Delhi and stopping foreign direct investment, state by state, and evaluate our growing, alliance with hawkers, and my coming visit with Vinod …
Blood and Eyes: Organizing Small Retail Workers in Bengaluru
Bengaluru In the process of visiting several of our organizing sites with Bengaluru organizer, Suresh Kadashan, we spent about two-thirds of the time on the buses of the city and one-third of our time actually meeting with the vendors in various locations where they worked in either a market or the street or as traders …
Building the Informal Workers Union in Bengaluru and the Health Camp
Bengaluru For several years in Bengaluru (Bangalore) our main focus has been organizing informal workers into unions, not because it’s easy, but because it’s necessary. Informal workers in construction, domestic work, street vending or hawking, and wastepicking in the state of Karnataka cannot obtain identification cards and therefore ration cards unless their employer or their union …