December 3, 2020

New York City, U.S.A.

To the Farmers of Punjab and all of India --

Kisaano, Mazdooraun, Bhaiyon, Beheno --

We, candidates for New York City Council in 2021, write to express our deepest solidarity
with you in your fight for your livelihoods, your rights, and your lives.

We have watched in horror and with fury how a government that is supposedly designed
to represent, empower, and protect you has instead devalued your life’s work, destabilized
your communities, and robbed you of your dignity.

We want you to know that you are not alone.

We suffer the pain of your families who have lost far too many members to despair and
suicide. The blood of farmers pulses through our veins, and from the other side of the
world, we share the stinging pain of teargas in your eyes and lathis (clubs) cracking your
limbs.

We stand with you in the face of institutional violence and unspeakable police brutality
that you are suffering. We stand with you as you attempt to cross roads blown up by the
police to prevent your peaceful passage. We stand with you as we have stood with our
Black siblings against systemic racism and state violence in this nation.

Today, no matter our backgrounds, we are Sikhs and all of the religious minorities in
India, so easily labeled as “terrorists” by the Modi government in order to delegitimize us
and rob us of our humanity. We stand with you because farm debt is at an all-time high
in the United States, and we cannot accept one more suicide of a farmer in India.

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Your fight is our fight, and we wage it fiercely alongside you. We write to you as Punjabis,
South Asians, Indo-Caribbeans, immigrants, children of immigrants; people of all
backgrounds, faiths, genders and sexual identities. Because we believe that our freedoms
are deeply intertwined, we share our solidarity not just as a symbol, but indeed as a
practice.

We share with you a proverbial langar, as you share yours with each other, and indeed
with the entire nation. We honor the sustenance you provide just as we honor the
dedication of New York City’s Mutual Aid groups in sustaining hundreds of thousands of
our neighbors in need.

We know that global solidarities have historically built bridges across movements, and we
seek to build this bridge with you.

Global South embraces the Black Radical Tradition in their support for ending the
occupation of Kashmir. Jews for Racial and Economic Justice chronicles Mizrahi Jews
in Israel who fought against white supremacy alongside the Black Panthers of the United
States. And as Angela Davis has so aptly claimed, the fights from Ferguson to Palestine
against police brutality and incarceration are indeed parallel.

These movements have not been in isolation from each other, just as we are not in
isolation from you.

The fight for racial justice and gender justice in movements for working people have been
directly tied to fights against austerity measures, neoliberal policies, and increased
globalization that have fashioned a capitalist political economy that puts workers in
jeopardy.

From 1911, when the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire here in New York City spurred the
emergence of the International Ladies’ Garments Workers union that fought for building
safety and shorter hours, to 2019, when the American Postal Workers Union protested
with SEIU and the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers in an
action of solidarity with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, whose collective
bargaining were under attack, we have seen movements in support of each other, just as
we support you.

What deregulation stands to wreak for you is what decades of deregulation has wrought
for us in the United States. Agricultural deregulation policies instituted in the U.S. by the
Nixon Administration in the 1970s had disastrous results for small time farmers, who now
make up just 2% of the workforce. The overwhelming majority of American farms are now
large-scale, corporate operations whose employees often include former farmers.

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We stand with you, farmers of India, because we do not want to see this future for you.

The perils of deregulation and privatization aren’t relegated just to farming. What the
laws you are fighting seek to accomplish is hardly different from, for example, the push to
privatize our public housing here in New York City. We stand with you in your fight to
ensure that the laws of India protect and empower working people, and not destroy local
economies or further bolster public safety that too often publicly terrorizes.

We stand with you not just in your fight for a fair economy for all, but also in your fight to
strengthen your democracy.

Our collective struggle is against the Modi government’s insidious drive to disembowel
India’s pluralism and secularism, just as Donald Trump has sought to do here. We fight
with you against the stripping of Kashmir’s sovereignty and of the citizenship of
thousands of Muslims, just as we fight against mass deportations here. We stand with you
to fight India’s descent into a one-party, Hindu nationalist state, just as we fight Trump’s
remaking of our government and judiciary in the mold of hate and intolerance. We stand
together in our fight against Modi’s growing network of immigrant detention centers, as
well as our fight to ensure no child is separated from their parents at our borders.

Together, we plan to build a City Council that shows up for all our communities in all their
struggles: immigrants, workers, small business owners who are fighting for an economy
that works for them and for a state that protects, not brutalizes, them.

We stand with you, our sibling farmers, because your fight against privatization is our
fight against the type of development that hurts the working people of New York City. We
stand with you in our pledge to always prioritize people over profit, and to put workers at
the heart of our decision-making if we are elected.

We pledge to listen, reflect on, and make policy based on the lived experiences and needs
of the people we are seeking to represent.

And today, we also call on all elected leaders in New York City to stand with working
people everywhere by expressing your solidarity with the farmers of India and by
denouncing the Indian government’s violent crackdown on those who are feeding, not
terrorizing, the people of India.

On behalf of the working people of New York City, whose freedom is inextricably tied with
yours, farmers of Punjab and of India, we stand with you.

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 Candidates

Amit Singh Bagga Jaslin Kaur Felicia Singh

Council District 26 Council District 24 Council District 32

Adolfo Abreu, District 14

Moumita Ahmed, District 24
Marti G. Allen-Cummings, District 7
Juan Ardila, Candidate District 30
Alexa Aviles, District 38
Elisa Crespo, District 15
Amanda Farías, District 18
Wilfredo Florentino, District 42
Aleda Gagarin, District 29
Ingrid Gómez, Candidate District 21
Latchmi Devi Gopal, District 15
Shahana Hanif, District 39
Michael Hollingsworth, District 35
Whitney Hu, District 38
Shekar Krishnan, District 25
Rebecca Lamorte, District 5
Maria Ordoñez, City Council District 14
Chris Sosa, District 5
Deepti Sharma, District 24
Brandon West, District 39