How to help

 

We get more calls and emails every day with people asking “How are the workers supporting themselves?” — and just as many asking: “How can we help?”

Much of the workers’ lodging and many meals have been provided by generous church supporters such as St. Stephen’s Church of Washington, DC, Rev. Nelson Johnson of the Beloved Community in Greensboro, NC, and Rev. Timothy McDonald of the First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta, GA.

Still, expenses for food, lodging, and transportation are enormous, and the fund the workers have pooled their own money into goes only part of the way. If you would like to join the workers’ growing number of supporters, you can contribute to their struggle by sending a check payable to the National Immigration Law Center with “NOWCRJ – Indian guest workers’ campaign” written in the subject line. Checks should be mailed to:

National Immigration Law Center
3435 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 2850
Los Angeles, CA 90010

If people have any questions about contributing, they can contact Colette Tippy of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice at 504-881-6550 or workerscenter@gmail.com.

Satyagraha TV in DC

Yesterday’s action and meeting with the Indian ambassador brought a great of amount of coverage, including TV reports viewable online from CNN India, BBC World News, and Times of India TV.

Check them out:

BBC World News TV – Indian men in US ‘slave’ protest

CNN India – Mississippi Protest: Indians sue American employer

Times of India TV – Ronen Sen assures ‘exploited’ workers

We’ll post links to print and radio coverage shortly.

More on the big meeting

It was an incredible scene: over 100 Indian workers, allies, and press packed into the lobby of the Indian Embassy in Washington, DC. Embassy staff had set up a microphone for the ambassador, whom you see here listening to Saket Soni, and had wireless mics for workers and allies to speak. The ambassador started with a long statement saying the embassy’s doors were always open for Indian citizens, India was founded as constitutional state on respect for the individual, and this should only be the beginning of a dialogue between the workers and the embassy.

Sabulal Vijayan responded with an account of how he and nearly 600 other workers were trafficked to work for Signal, then set the tone for the next 2 1/2 hours with a question: Where were you when the company came after me and the other organizers with armed guards in March 2007 to lock us up and deport us? Where were you when they drove me to a suicide attempt when they chased me into my trailer bathroom and I slit my wrist to commit suicide? Where were you while I lay in a hospital bed for three days?

About a dozen of the workers held photographs of the loved ones they have been apart from for 18 months now: sons, daughers, wives. At the rally in Dupont circle before the meeting with the ambassador, Aniesh Thankachan gave a fierce, tearful account of the pain of being separated from them:

“You see these pictures? These are our familes. They are the reason we came here. We were told that we would be able to bring our families on permanent residency visas. Once we came here we learned that these promises were false. I cry at night. I can’t tell my family what’s going on. I listen to my children on the phone and I weep. Our families are the reason we’re here. They are why we are on this satyagraha.”