Takin' it to the Streets
By Julia Kumari Drapkin and Mariana Martinez Estens

With the immigration debate heating up both in Congress and on the streets, Monami Maulik, 31, faces a challenging moment in her career as a community organizer.

As one of the founders of Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), a South Asian non-profit organization in Queens, Maulik is working to coordinate with other ethnic activists. Until now, such activists have mostly worked within their separate immigrant communities in New York City.

Photo by Julia Drapkin

Activists speak at a forum on immigration reform at Eagle Theater in Jackson Heights, Queens.

See and hear the story of the people driving immigration rights' activism in a slide show.

“A lot of times our members, as South Asians, don’t understand why people cross the border, and a lot of times Latinos will use language that mimics the idea that South Asians could be terrorists or dangerous,” Maulik said, after an immigrant rights panel held at the Eagle Theater in Jackson Heights.

“When people talk to each other they realize that they’ve been really misinformed,” she said.       

Maulik is one of the new immigrant leaders working with the New York Immigration Coalition, an umbrella organization of 150 groups advocating for immigration reform.

In December 2005, The House passed HR4437, also known as the Sensenbrenner law, which would make felons out of illegal immigrants and those who aid them.  Ethnic community groups have begun organizing to protest what they perceive as an increasingly hostile political climate for immigrants.

“This movement is emerging into a civil rights movement,” said Mr. Ansanullah “Bobby” Khan.“Especially the people of color, the people from South Asia and the new immigrants who are really under attack.” 

Khan, 48, said he founded the Coney Island Avenue Project in response to the mass deportations and harassment of Pakistani communities after the terrorist attacks in 2001.

In cities across the nation, including Dallas and Los Angeles, the immigrant rights movement is lead by Hispanics. But in New York, immigrant leaders have had to cross language and cultural boundaries to synchronize the voices of their communities against HR4437.

“This is one of the first times the Latino community and the Asian community are working very closely in Queens,” Maulik said of the borough’s two largest immigrant populations.

After struggling in relative isolation with racial profiling and discrimination since Sept.11, South and Western Asian leaders are eager to contribute to the chorus of immigrant rights activists. 

“It’s been kind of rough living over here,” said Mustafa Shukur, 29, who heads the Queens Anti War Committee.  Shukur and his parents immigrated to the U.S. in 1989 before the first Gulf War. “Now, with the new immigrant rights movement organizing,” he said, “there is a more open atmosphere for people to be heard.”

Ethnic community leaders who encourage immigrants to take action do not want protestors to be fired by employers or arrested by immigration authorities.

“I know people are scared, I know there’s a big chaos, I know there’s a big harassment going on,” said Khan. “But at the same time, there are people who want to break that fear and want to go out there and speak.”

Khan, Shukur, and Maulik helped plan the citywide protests that took place on May 1, International Labor Day. The cacophony of New York’s immigrant experiences took the shape of boycotts, walkouts and human chains.

Maulik hopes that the May 1 protest will send a message of unity. To do so, she organized a vigil at the end of the rally. She said it was “held to commemorate all the people who have died crossing the border or been killed by border patrol as well as all our brothers and sisters who’ve been deported.”

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