Who We Are
The earliest collective presence of people of South Asian descent in the Americas is of laborers. Whether indentured workers in the Caribbean, Punjabi farmers on the West coast, or Bengali sailors on the East coast, they are the histories of the working-class. Now, as home workers, domestic workers, taxi drivers, street vendors, day laborers, restaurant and delivery workers, and students, our sweat and labor make this city run. But our South Asian and Indo-Caribbean communities have been shut out, silenced, and ignored in New York City the same as other working-class communities. Our city has been made a playground for the elite and privileged, while we struggle for survival.
DRUM Beats is a sibling organization of DRUM - Desis Rising Up & Moving, and builds on its legacy of organizing working-class Indo-Caribbean and South Asian communities to build movements, and our capacities to transform political systems so that they serve our collective needs.
We do not believe that deep transformational change can come from electoral politics. But, at the same time, we cannot afford to abstain from electoral politics when it has direct impact on the material realities of our communities and movements. Based on that understanding, we not only have to be rigorous about who we are electing or supporting, we also have to have a primary focus on how a particular candidate or elected supports the growth and building of movements, and collective accountability.
With 5,000 members, and over 20,000 supporters, we are looking to organize in a deliberate and strategic way towards transformation of our social and political systems to serve working-class and marginalized people first.