$25,000 / Fall 2017
Fahd Ahmed, Executive Director
New York, NY
www.drumnyc.org/
Founded in 2000 by low-income, young South Asian immigrants and workers, Desis Rising Up & Moving (DRUM) is a multi-generational, membership led organization that seeks to dismantle overlapping systems of criminalization of communities of color in the U.S. to achieve greater racial equity in jobs, education, immigration and access to all human rights. The South Asian and Indo-Caribbean (SAIC) population that DRUM serves is also the second largest of the one million undocumented immigrants in New York City. As a result of their undocumented and easily exploitable status, most of their constituency work in low-wage jobs and lack access to public benefits and higher education. Moreover, as the majority of SAIC in NYC are Muslim, DRUM’s constituency has been at the epicenter of Islamophobic policies and practices that include mass detentions and racial profiling. Over the past year, DRUM co-led protests at NYC airports against travel bans, which led to court rulings that halted the executive orders. DRUM also won new guidelines from NYC Department of Education which add moderate protections for students from being detained by ICE agents in NYC public schools. Hazen’s renewal grant will enable DRUM to continue to organize youth and allies to pass police reform legislation, immigration relief and reforms and to address discipline issues, including reframing bullying as an institutional issue and demanding restorative justice practices to redress it.