Sorry I missed shooting some video of it - I had been asked to attend by NHPP members at the meeting earlier that day but got so damned busy by 4 I couldn't get over to it in time. I've been warning folks for some time that people are fed up to their eyeballs with being taken advantage of simply because they're poor. They are tired of being held down and then kicked while they are down. They are fighting back in every way they know how and I think there will be much more civil disobedience as the year rolls on.... Congrats to those who are standing up for what they believe in. Now, is anybody listening?
Low-paid workers take grievances to city hall
Cabbies drive 'Nashville Movement'
Tennessee NAACP Labor and Industry Chair Marilyn Brown presents Abdelrhman Hussein, vice president of the Metro Nashville Taxi Driver Alliance, with a Human Rights Award during a rally for low-wage workers at Metro Courthouse.
In Nashville Thursday, the civil rights movement married a low-wage workers' campaign at "city hall."About 300 people — mostly cab drivers and students, car wash workers and activists — who referred to themselves as "The Nashville Movement," marched the 2.8 miles from 15th Street Baptist Church to the Metro Courthouse where Metro's mayor has an office.
They marched to call public attention to the plight of low-wage workers across the city.
"The average person in Nashville thinks that when they call a cab and we come to pick them up that we are employees," said Worin Khalid, 39, a Sudanese immigrant who has worked as a taxi driver for seven years. "But we, the drivers, are the ones bearing all the expenses … and facing all the risk."
In Nashville, cab companies operate like transportation middlemen. They pay a $245 annual fee to the city and provide such services as advertising, credit card processing and dispatching to drivers.
In exchange, drivers pay cab companies weekly fees, known as a "weekly lick," ranging from about $140 to $175. Drivers must pay for gas and insurance, cover any maintenance or repair costs and buy a business license.
The weekly lick must be paid even if a car is in the shop.
"There are drivers who start their day $100 in debt," said Abdelrhman Hussein, 21, a vice president of the Metro Nashville Taxi Driver Alliance and a driver.
During the rally, Hussein accepted a Human Rights Award from the Tennessee NAACP on behalf of the driver alliance.
The association wants the city to look at how other cities manage and regulate the taxi business, to regulate the relationship between the companies and drivers, and open the way for drivers to operate independently.
The Metro charter does not give the Metro Transportation Licensing Commission the authority to regulate the driver-company relationship.
But drivers insist that Metro government should intervene.
The rally left about four taxis in operation at the Nashville airport, several drivers said. "If we wanted to, we could devastate this city," Hussein said.
At the Thursday demonstration, Nashville lawyer Mary Griffin's appointment to the Licensing Commission was announced. Griffen is known to some drivers because she sits on the board of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.
Most of the city's taxi drivers are immigrants. Many are legal refugees from Sudan, Somalia and Iraq.
Griffin's appointment, along with a commitment from Brady Banks, director of the mayor's office of neighborhoods, to listen to driver concerns, brought cheers from the crowd.
Thursday's event was organized by a collection of nonprofit organizations, including Middle Tennessee Jobs with Justice, the Nashville Homeless Power Project, the Urban Epicenter and the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.
But the group took its name from something that began more than 40 years ago. The Nashville Movement is also the term used to refer to coordinated acts of civil disobedience organized by Nashville civil rights activists and students during the 1960s.
"Just remember, freedom and justice is not a destination," former Metro councilman Kwame Leo Lillard, an organizer in the original Nashville Movement, said to the crowd. "It is a daily and weekly journey."
Contact staff writer Janell Ross at 726-5982 or jross1@tennesse
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