Conversations on the M60: Knowledge Production through Collective Ethnographies

Abstract

This chapter comes out of a persistent conflict I have encountered on the question of knowledge production and political work. I have been an organizer with the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) for more than twelve years now. The Alliance was born in early 1998 as nine organizers—Bhairavi Desai (who would become executive director), seven drivers, plus myself—sat over sacks of potatoes and onions in the basement of a Bangladeshi deli in SoHo and consolidated the gains of more than a year of organizing work and set into motion a new organization. Within months, on May 13, 1998, with fewer than 700 signed-up members (out of a total active workforce of more than 26,000 drivers in New York City), the Alliance launched the most successful strike action in the industry’s history, with more than 98 percent of the cabs staying off the roads. Today the Alliance has more than 12,000 members, mostly yellow medallion taxicab drivers. The yellow medallion taxi is unique because its central organizational component—the medallion—is essentially a permit to put a taxi with the sole privilege of street hails on the streets of New York City (NYC). The current open-market value for a single medallion is more than $600,000. So, most drivers—in large part recent third-world immigrants—do not own these medallions, but merely lease (rent) the medallions (and taxis) from a close conglomerate of garages and brokerage houses.¹