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Lakshman Abeysekara is from Sri Lanka, grew up in France, brought his top chef skills to several Francofone hotspots across the world, and came to New York via Dakar! He has been a NYC yellow taxi driver since 2005 and is our resident software expert too. An uncompromising night driver (you cannot drag him into the day shift) you will find at one of the city’s several all night gyms after 3 AM! |
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Bhairavi Desai (Executive Director, Staff) has been organizing in the taxi industry since 1996 and co-founded NYTWA in 1998. She is a Mets fanatic, a Bollywood buff (ask her about Aamir Khan!), loves the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish and is convinced the sun sets and rises around her mother's smile and father’s laughter. See Bhairavi on NY1. |
Biju Mathew is in part an organizer, in part a person who just enjoys late night chai sessions and in some part lives in a fantasy world of his own. He helped co-found the Alliance and recently wrote Taxi! because he is convinced that intellectual work belongs more in the interstices of hard political battle rather than in the academy (especially its American variant). He is a sitting duck for street side scamsters and a reluctant technologist.
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Thomas Osam is our untiring organizer from the South Bronx, the heart and soul of the Ghanian and West African community in the Bronx. A gentle soul with powerful loyalty, Thomas only says what he means and always means what he says. An active member of the Ghanian Taxi Drivers Association, he has driven yellow taxi since 2003. He is the only one in the organization allowed to refer to Bhairavi as Big Mama and he earned that right through sheer dint of hard organizing work! |
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Rizwan Raja or vakil saab (as he is now called) is the legal eagle of the Taxi Alliance. After driving for ten years, Rizwan decided to take on the TLC more directly. He now is the NYTWA’s representative at TLC courts in Queens and Manhattan. If you want to make him drop his serious vakil saab persona ask him about his daughter Nayab! |
Victor Salazar is the purest blend of a golden heart, hopefulness and poetry. A true internationalist, Victor cherishes words, language and history as much as he loves conversations and people. And did we mention soccer and his two favorite people, Victoria and Andrew! Hailing from Ecuador, he has been a construction worker, a home remodeler and taxi driver since 1989 and NYTWA's key Spanish media contact. He plans to one day write a memoir of his driving days.
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Beresford Simmons our all-rounder. The Minister of Propaganda—as he prefers to be called—started out as a cricketer in Jamaica. A thirty-year veteran of the taxi industry, he is a rasta-man personified in the great tradition of his friend Bob Marley and is a poet, a music producer and a untiring organizer. Beres hosts the only taxi drivers’ radio show by a taxi driver, Taxi Vibes, on WVIP 93.5 FM every Friday at 1 a.m. (Thursday night shift). |
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Javaid Tariq is a co-founder of the Taxi Alliance, a veteran of 15 years of driving, a photographer and an itinerant bhangra dancer. He has a passion for detail, wears his heart on his sleeve and will never back off from a fight against oppression. If genuineness had a face, it would be Javaid. He has recently accepted the position of Executive Director of the Construction Workers United. See him (and more correctly hear him!!!) here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCV72q6awS8 |
Mor Thiam is the voice of caution, the reality check in the organization and a dedicated organizer who knows and feels the pulse of the Senegalese community in specific and the broader West African community in Harlem. Super confident and strong, he is a man of few words (except when he is on the radio!!) but the little he says is always precise and illuminating. A polyglot, listen to him switch between English, French and Wolof with ease here.
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Mamnun Ul-Haq, co-founder and veteran organizer from the Bangladeshi community, is a man of jaw-dropping, celebrated courage. After being suddenly knifed in the back with a ten-inch hunting knife by a passenger, Mamnun held his composure to drive for blocks to alert passersby, nearly caught his attacker and less than twelve hours after surgery—held a front-page press conference from his hospital bed to call for safety measures for fellow drivers. He continues to amaze us with his presence of mind and remarkable will. He is also a world-class story teller and builds friendships with ease. Mamnun is currently a Community Health Worker with the DREAM project of NYU Medical School's Center for the Study of Asian American Health.
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About NYTWA 
