Ride and wrong
Opposing rallies back, bash e-hail business
Dueling rallies were held in Manhattan on Tuesday — ahead of the City Council’s vote on a package of bills affecting the taxi industry.
At one gathering, social justice leaders urged lawmakers to hit the brakes on a yearlong cap on new e-hail cars — by recounting the discrimination and isolation they faced from yellow taxi drivers.
Across Manhattan, outside City Hall, taxi workers and labor organizers welcomed the cap as a first step in saving drivers — after six suicides in the industry.
At the Harriet Tubman Memorial in Harlem, Symone Sanders, a political strategist and former Bernie Sanders campaign aide, called the Council’s efforts a “misguided and frankly discriminatory cap” on e-hail companies.
She recounted the problems she had trying to get a yellow cab recently.
“I could not get a taxi — so I had to call a Lyft,” she said. “The sad part is, my story is not unique. This happens to countless black and brown folks all over the city of New York.”
The group called for City Council members to delay a vote planned Wednesday on a package of taxi measures that will “pause” bringing new for-hire vehicles on the streets for a year during a study.
The city also announced last week an “Office of Inclusion” at the Taxi &Limousine Commission that will train drivers against refusing service to neighborhoods and people on the basis of race.
Arva Rice, the New York Urban League president, said that the office should be set up before capping Uber and app vehicles.
Rice said that she requested an e-hail ride Monday night because of a subway delay on the Upper West Side express lines.
“Otherwise, I would have been standing there,” she said.