I’m immensely pleased that the New York Daily News chose to run my op-ed today. It compares the widespread public support in 1945 for the coal strike led by Dr. Elizabeth Hayes with the apathy surrounding a hunger strike, now in its second week, by New York taxi drivers.
The cabbies desperately need the City of New York to grant them relief. Before Uber and Lyft, they were encouraged by the city to buy taxi medallions — permits to own and operate cabs. TV ads and city-run auctions urged them to sink their life savings, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars, into the medallions. Because the city long regulated the number of legal cabs on the street, this seemed like a sure-fire investment. Immigrants who’d barely mastered English were assured that, with hard work and long hours, a medallion was a ticket to the middle class.
With the advent of ride-sharing apps, this has all come crashing down. At least nine New York cabbies have died by suicide, unable to face staggering debts for which the City so far has offered inadequate relief. Now they’re on a group hunger strike, protesting —sometimes around the clock —in front of City Hall. Yet most passers-by and the media pay them little mind.
Contrast that with the America described in my book A MIGHTY FORCE, where people’s hearts went out to Dr. Hayes and the striking miners. Worrying about others, overseas and on the home front, was common during World War 2. As I write, that’s why the coal industry had to form a public-relations branch. People wanted to know why miners lived such a hard life, and the coal operators needed to prepare glib answers.
Click here for my op-ed as it appears online. This is how it looked in the paper:
