Three South Asian council candidates unite behind Indian farmers fighting deregulation
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City Council candidtaes Felicia Singh, Jaslin Kaur and Amit Singh Bagga. Photos courtesy of the candidates.
By David Brand
Three South Asian City Council candidates from Queens have united in support of Indian farmers hit with tear gas and water cannons as they protest new deregulation laws — measures that the candidates liken to decades of privatization and pro-corporate policies in New York City.
In an open letter Thursday “to the Farmers of Punjab and all of India,” Jaslin Kaur in District 23, Amit Singh Bagga in District 26 and Felicia Singh in District 32 signaled their solidarity with the protesting workers and reflected on organizing in the United States.
“We stand with you in the face of institutional violence and unspeakable police brutality that you are suffering,” they wrote. “We stand with you as we have stood with our Black siblings all across our nation against systemic racism and state violence.”
Opponents of the Indian government’s decision to relax regulations around the sale, pricing and hoarding of produce have characterized the policies as a “death warrant” for small agriculture. Small farmers say the rules will erode government-run mandi markets, which pay a minimum fee for produce, and allow large private corporations to set lower prices and exploit the workers.
Kaur, Bagga and Singh compared the new measures to policies that give large corporations unfettered control of industry and saddle workers, like taxi drivers, with crushing debt.
“The perils of deregulation and privatization aren’t relegated just to farming,” they wrote. “What the laws you are fighting seek to accomplish is hardly different from, for example, the push to privatize our public housing here in New York City.”
A protesting farmer holds a placard on a major highway, refusing to move ahead unless they're allowed to proceed to their place of choice to protest, at the Delhi-Haryana state border, India, Saturday, Nov. 28, 2020. Thousands of farmers in and around the Indian capital on Saturday pressed on with their protest against agricultural legislation they said could devastate crop prices, while the government sought talks with their leaders. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)
Kaur, a Punjabi woman who is vying to replace Councilmember Barry Grodenchik in Northeast Queens, said friends and family in Queens are closely following the developments in India and checking in with loved ones in WhatsApp groups.
“While the farmer protests are on the other side of the world, they aren’t so far away,” she said “The impacts are intimate for immigrant communities in my district who came to the United States, work unsafe, low-wage jobs, and are still sending remittances to their families abroad,
Bagga, among the candidates looking to replace Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer in a district that includes Long Island City, said local leaders have a “solemn responsibility to speak out against tear-gassing in New Delhi as we would in New York City, and to commit ourselves to building a democracy and an economy that offers opportunity, dignity, and power to all.”
And Singh, a teacher and first generation American running for Councilmember Eric Ulrich’s seat in South Queens, likened the erosion of support for farmers to the plight of taxi medallion owners like her father in Queens.
”If we’re not fighting for working people, who are we fighting for?” she said. “We need to stand on the right side of justice and there is no better time than now.”
Update, 1:33 p.m — 20 other Council candidates have signed onto the letter. They are Adolfo Abreu, Moumita Ahmed, Marti G. Allen-Cummings, Juan Ardila, Alexa Aviles, Tiffany Cabán, John Choe, Elisa Crespo, Amanda Farias, Wilfredo Florentino, Aleda Gagarin, Ingrid Gomez, Latchmi Devi Gopal, Shahana Hanif, Michael Hollingsworth, Whitney Hu, Shekar Krishnan, Rebecca Lamorte, Maria Ordoñez, Chi Ossé, Chris Sosa, Deepti Sharma, Marjorie Velasquez and Brandon West.
