Record number of Indian-Americans running for NYC council elections

[Spartan]

New York City Council, the important legislative body that introduces and passes various laws relating to NYC and also approves its budget, may soon have some Indian faces and voices.
The primary elections for members of the NYC council, which will be held tomorrow (June 22), has 10 Indian American candidates in the running. The general elections will be held on November 2, 2021.
Indian-Americans Jaslin Kaur, Sanjeev Jindal, Harpreet Singh Toor and Mandeep Sahi are running to represent district 23; Suraj Jaswal, Shekar Krishnan and Rajesh Ranot for district 25; Amit Bagga for district 26; Japneet Singh for district 28; and Felicia Singh for district 32.
Significantly, New York City, despite being home to a large and vibrant Indian American community, has not ever elected a city council member of South Asian origin. But that could change this year. Most of the candidates are young, first or second-generation immigrants and are highlighting issues which are important for the Indian American community.

“My campaign is a multi-racial, multi-ethnic and inter-generational coalition from 15-year-olds to 85-year-olds working to build a more just and better city that works for all of us. I would be proud to serve as New York City’s District 23’s first-ever city council woman and the first elected South Asian. I hope that more immigrants and young people run for office and bring their energy, enthusiasm and vision for the future,” Jaslin Kaur, a Democrat contesting from the district she was born and raised in, told Timesofindia.com.
Her Sikh parents immigrated to the US from Punjab in the mid-90s and her father drives a yellow taxi cab in New York while her mother works at a grocery store.
Kaur, a graduate of Nassau Community College and CUNY Hunter College, will, if elected, be the first woman and person of colour to represent her district. She feels that she is running for office to uphold the values of hard work and persistence that she has learnt from her parents.

“My dad did everything from loading freight ships, to farming, to auto repair, before finally striking gold on a taxi medallion (a transferable permit). Growing up, I’d hear him start the car at 3 or 4 in the morning and know I wouldn’t see him until 5 or 6 that evening. And he’s still driving, after almost 30 years,” she said.
Her mother, who worked hard raising Kaur and her brother, got a job at a grocery store three years ago. “She would cook and clean and do laundry and drive us to and from school every single day, even when we had different pickup times.”

Kaur strongly believes that too often, economic crashes have devastated NYC neighbourhoods, and a tiny group of billionaires has reaped windfall profits.
“I’m running for city council because it doesn’t have to be this way. We can classify gig workers as employees and guarantee them fair wages and benefits. We can establish debt relief and retirement funds for taxi drivers harmed by the medallion market crash. We can lower property taxes for working-class families while making big-time landlords pay their fair share. We can transform our re-zoning process to create more housing for working people, not the ultra-wealthy,” she said.

Kaur remembers the taxi medallion crash in 2014 when many taxi drivers and their families in the Queens neighbourhood where she grew up and which she now hopes to represent, got locked into a punishing cycle of debt and default. “Too many couldn’t put food on the table, and too many lost their homes, or even took their own lives,” she recollects.
Shekar Krishnan, a second-generation Indian immigrant community activist and civil rights lawyer, too, hopes to become the first ever South Asian New York City Council member. He has, in fact, received the endorsement of Ravi Bhalla, the mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey, who was the first Sikh to be elected mayor in the US.

“When my parents first came here from India, they would take the subway to Jackson Heights to get their groceries and essentials for their bare apartment. They faced and fought through so many challenges that immigrants and people of colour face every day. They were unable to access resources and services that should have been available to them because of a lack of outreach to immigrant communities,” Krishnan told TimesofIndia.com.

His parents’ experiences inspired him to become a civil rights lawyer and an activist and to serve the community. He says he is running for city council to fight for more resources for the community, and for a city that works for everyone, not just the rich and powerful.

If elected some of the issues he plans to focus on include affordable, dignified and permanent housing for New Yorkers; justice for immigrant workers; public hospitals; more open space and safer streets. On the road to economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, he feels that eviction moratoriums and rent relief for residential and commercial tenants are essential.
“Our district was the epicentre of the pandemic, and our residents -- immigrants, people of colour, low-income wage workers, essential employees -- were treated as expendable. The recovery must prioritise communities that were hit the hardest, like ours,” he said, adding that he will fight to make cultural and language accessibility a priority for all city agencies, so that all relief programmes reach those who need them the most.

Whether the Big Apple is ready for Indian Americans on its council and whether Krishnan, Kaur or the other desi candidates make it to the general election in November or not will be decided tomorrow. But the strong sense of support and activism for their campaigns has been visible across the districts of NYC for the past several weeks.
“This is a unique opportunity for South Asian Americans to use our collective power and build representation at every level of government,” said Neil Makhija, executive director, IMPACT, a prominent Indian American advocacy group and political action committee.

[r2d2]

Taxi danda inka nadustundaa??

[anna_gari_maata]

padi mandi Punjabis, oka tamilian, naluguru northies ... standard NRI template. Appudappudu oka telugodu tagultu untadu 

[desiboys]

nyc gone man..crime rate peak lo undi akkada.  170% perigindi anta crime inka open ga drugs vaaduthunnaru washington square park lo. manhattan, midtown hotels lo 8000-15000 mandi homeless vallu unnaru anta