Dear Friend,

Happy pride and national immigrant heritage month!

Today and everyday we celebrate the LGBTQI+ and Immigrant communities, and workers who continue to inspire us every day, leading the charge for our movements.

We are almost half way through the year and have accomplished so much these past several months. Following are some highlights from January to March of this year at Adhikaar:

Adhikaar Spring 2021 Newsletter

Nail Salon Campaign Highlight

The Nail Salon Campaign completed our first ever virtual 26 hour license courses training 50 worker members, 80% of whom were limited literacy. This is a huge feat in their digital literacy development! We also integrated sexual harassment training to the course. It was the first time that we had three of our worker leaders become trainers (two are now official licensees of the State of New York). In addition to our workforce development courses, we also expanded our Health and Safety (H&S) training curriculum by integrating COVID-19 content through our state partnership with NYCOSH and national partnership with the California Collaborative. In total, we trained four members through our H&S training.

We continue to develop and build leadership with our 16 member Steering Committee biweekly, with other leader members and also through facilitated focus group discussions on ongoing community issues with 300 members. These last few months, we have been working with our Adhikaar’s Nail Salon Steering Committee to explore different approaches to raising industry standards, including sectoral bargaining, and further pushing our state bill, the Nail Salon Accountability Act NY. 

Through all of this work, we’ve advanced the digital literacy of over 250 members by providing training virtually.   

Lastly, In partnership with Business Outreach Center, as part of our high road employers program, we supported 19 employers to apply for the Queens Borough Small Business program, and successfully assisted $20,000 in grants.

Domestic Workers Program Highlight

Adhikaar distributed over $94,000 for the second round of emergency relief funds to 434 domestic workers in New York and New Jersey through the NDWA Care Fund, supplementing our base building work in both states.

We expanded our virtual “We Rise” Nanny Training curriculum to  pediatrics and completed the second round of virtual training with 29 worker members in partnership with the Workers Institute at Cornell University and National Domestic Workers Association. On February 28, 23 domestic worker members and the organizing  team completed a five week mental health training to develop peer educators with Bharati Devkota, a licensed clinical professional counselor (LCPC) at John Hopkins Medicine.   

In February Adhikaar, as Steering Committee member of the NYC Care Campaign, launched the NYC Care Platform, a campaign to engage candidates in local elections on issues related to domestic workers ranging from proposing city benefits like retirement, universal childcare, to defunding NYPD and investing instead in the care industry. Adhikaar’s domestic worker members Sita Tamang and Kabita Gurung spoke during the campaign launch and have been leading to represent our members at other candidate meetings.

Casework and Language Justice Highlight

It’s been an eventful few months for our case and language justice team! Our case team recovered $4,418 through a wage theft claim for a domestic worker member and also made headway in our class action case with 23 gas station workers who’ve now received their first payment of $5,750 through settlement (this is the first of eight installments). We’ve conducted intake for 41 new cases, and currently we have 80 ongoing active cases. We also filed immigration fraud complaints for two families with law enforcement agencies in New York, and filed immigration bond issue complaints for two other individuals with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the NYS Attorney General’s office. 

We began working with NYC Mayor's Office of Immigration Affairs on creating a Nepali language terminology guidebook to inform better language practices citywide. This is part of a larger effort to explore innovative ways to improve Nepali language services and resources currently offered by NYC government agencies.

Immigration Program Highlight

Leading with some big news in our Immigration program, we campaigned for the successful bipartisan passage of the American Dream and Promise Act (H.R.6)!! Passed in the U.S. House of Representatives on March 18th by 228-197 votes, we are one step closer to winning permanent residency for TPS, DED and DACA communities. This was the culmination of an intensive campaign where we organized our community members through member meetings in different regions around the U.S., trained members in being spokespeople and political education, met with electeds with TPS members, and ran an online campaign with our coalition Communities United for Status and Protection (CUSP).

Our staff facilitated two national member meetings in February and March where we provided legislative and spokesperson training to 52 members together, and also hosted  weekly meetings with 41 members from California, District of Columbia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Texas and Virginia. Adhikaar also hosted a virtual Week of Action with CUSP where we launched our petition, an email and phone banking campaign that has collected almost 2,000 signatures and resulted in over 200 members calling their Representatives to Vote YES on HR6. We also participated in AAJC’s immigrant and refugee week of action as part of their #WhoWeAre campaign, and integrated our H.R.6 push through TPS member stories.

In the three weeks leading up to the floor vote, our staff with CUSP partners, trained and engaged 15 TPS members in congressional lobby meetings for H.R.6 with Representatives from NY, CA, CO, VA, TX, KY, OH.  On the day of the vote, with our partners at CUSP and AAJC(Asian American Advancing Justice Co), we organized a “direct” action where we played a video between Union Station and Capitol Hill featuring TPS member stories from various communities and urging a YES vote on the House floor.

Following the successful House vote, on March 24, over 40 Adhikaar TPS members from the DC, Maryland and Virginia area took part in a rally in front of Republican National Committee building with CUSP, CASA and other partners. They marched from Democratic National Committee building to the Republican National Committee building. Adhikaar's Virginia TPS members leader Maya Lama shared her story publicly at the rally and urged the Senate to pass permanent residency through the SECURE Act.

At the same time, our staff continued immigration services and from January to March of this year, we’ve responded to 250+ immigration related inquiries from across the country. We hosted a virtual legal clinic with TakeRoot Justice and conducted a legal immigration screening in January for members.

It’s not too late to take action for TPS! 

We passed permanent residency in the House, now we need the Senate. Send a letter to your Senator and call their office  to ask them to support permanent residency for all TPS holders NOW! Link to petition and phonebank instructions: http://bit.ly/tps2residency

[Adhikaar phone banking video link]

Health Care Program Highlight

These last few months have been important in making sure our members are covered and get the health care access they need. Through the United Sikh Federation, Adhikaar distributed NYC Care cards for 10 undocumented community members with which they can access free health services, choose primary care doctors and get medication. We responded to 170+ health insurance enrollment and health program related inquiries and most importantly, we began building out our vaccine project. Starting in April, with the support of U.S. Congresswoman Grace Meng, we were able to begin providing 50 vaccine appointments weekly at Elmhurst Hospital.

We also worked with MOIA to assist members with vaccine appointments, and expanded Elmhurst Hospital vaccination appointments to weekdays with the support of NY Assemblymember Catalina Cruz, to cover especially nail salon worker members. In our effort to create awareness about the vaccine and access to appointments, Adhikaar co-hosted a COVID-19 Nepali Vaccine Town Hall with MOIA and New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene. To date, we have been able to provide vaccine appointments to 494 members.

Part of our health advocacy, we joined CACF and other partners in the 15% and Growing campaign and participated in APA City Advocacy Week in February, to call for increased funding for Asian American service providers.

Our vaccine project is still ongoing! If you need assistance with a COVID-19 vaccine appointment in New York City or need Nepali interpretation at vaccine sites, then please call Adhikaar at (718) 937-1117.

Civic Engagement Highlight

Adhikaar kicked off our Civic Engagement campaign for the NYC local elections this year, and brought on a Civic Engagement intern - Rhea Tamang! Rhea will be working the Adhikaar staff to engage volunteers in voter registration, voter education and get-out-the-vote work with Nepali-speaking voters in the community. We’ll be reporting back more in-depth on our Civic Engagement campaign next newsletter, but for now, please watch two candidate forums that we organized over the last few weeks:

• Adhikaar’s Candidate Forum for District 25 on May 16,
• Adhikaar, in partnership with NYC Care Campaign Candidate Forum for District 26 on May 23, 3-5pm 

Organizational-Wide Highlights

Some organizational-wide highlights and events from January to March:

• We hosted the COVID-19 Member Awards in [MONTH] by honoring 12 members who went above and beyond to support the community during the pandemic and illustrated true mutual aid.

• Our staff celebrated Lhosar with MOIA and other local community organizations by speaking at their virtual event in February.
• Adhikaar launched a political education pilot project to strengthen leadership development of current member leaders through an understanding of social justice movement history, government structure and strategies.

Thank you for taking the time to support and uplift our work. Please donate today to ensure that we can continue building on our wins.

In solidarity,   

Pabitra Khati Benjamin,

Executive Director, Adhikaar