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Officer Richard Craig

Richard Coulibaly was a beloved taxi driver and union brother who served New York City for over 30 years. On July 2nd, tragedy struck when Richard died in his parked taxi overnight on Frederick Douglas Blvd. in Harlem. With no family in the country, it was his fellow drivers who first noticed something was wrong. As the police discovered Richard behind the wheel, drivers and neighbors gathered, standing vigil late into the night until his body was removed and the car was towed. The community came together to verify his identity, but no one knew how to contact his family. 
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 For days, we sent messages across WhatsApp and Facebook groups, hoping to find a relative in the Ivory Coast community. The search went viral, and after days of outreach, we finally located Richard's family in Ivory Coast. His siblings had wondered why they couldn't reach their brother, and now their hope is to give Richard a proper funeral in his hometown. 
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 We are asking for your support to help send Richard Coulibaly home for his final resting. Your donation will help cover the costs of transporting his body and funeral expenses, so his family can lay him to rest with dignity. Join us, his union family and Harlem neighbors, as we honor Richard's life and service to the city. Every contribution brings us closer to giving our brother his final passage home.

Help Send Richard Coulibaly Home

<div>On July 19th, in one of the busiest parts of NYC, taxi driver Saeed Afzal Butt, 61 years old, was viciously attacked by a group of five – all apparent strangers - not only without provocation, contact, or even exchange of words but minutes after he was attacked by two other people who had just fled the scene.
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<div>The group assault caused Mr. Butt swelling in his head and damaged his eyes from punches and kicks he suffered; the force of the assault was so ferocious it left the sides of the taxi dented and collapsed the front bumper of the car. When the assault started, Mr. Butt was standing outside his taxi to recover from an attack just minutes before the group assault. Two people on a scooter had damaged Mr. Butt’s taxi and littered the front seat with food and garbage. There was pie, gravy, and pieces of meat and salad – sticky food and liquids - all over the seat and on his face and his shirt and pants. His side mirror was broken off. When Mr. Butt stepped out of the car to shed the garbage off him and check the damage, the attackers assaulted him from behind. First it was three assailants and eventually it was five. Instead of stopping the punching and yelling, more strangers piled on. The group harassed him, and shoved, punched, kicked, and chased him around the taxi. Mr. Butt was left kneeling against his taxi, covering his head and face from kicks and punches.
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<div>They saw this 61-year-old man, a cab driver working to make ends meet, in shock from an attack, and their response was to kick him in the head and chest. It was still daylight. No one stopped them. The police, for their part, released two of the assailants straight from the precinct with a Desk Appearance Ticket and let the other three assailants go without an arrest at all. Mr. Butt, meanwhile, lay in the hospital with massive swelling and possible internal bleeding and blindness.
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<div>Saeed Afzal Butt was born in Lahore, Pakistan and migrated to the United States over 20 years ago. Since then, he’s raised two boys in NYC with his wife while driving a yellow cab. He doesn’t own the car or the medallion; he leases both from a garage. While Mr. Butt was in the hospital, his family had to recover the taxi and clean it out. It took them over three hours to wash the sticky food and liquids out of the seats from where their Father earns his living.
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<div>Mr. Butt is still in serious pain and is dealing with possible long-term damage to his eye. Please help us raise funds so Mr. Butt can have the recovery he needs.
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<div><a href="https://pix11.com/news/son-of-beaten-cab-driver-speaks-with-pix11-news" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><a href="https://pix11.com/news/son-of-beaten-cab-driver-speaks-with-pix11-news/" target="_blank" class="" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">https://pix11.com/news/son-of-beaten-cab-driver-speaks-with-pix11-news/</a></a>
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Help Cabbie Recover After Brutal Attack

Mohammed Hoque had been driving a taxi for seven years before he put money down for his own medallion.  The broker he trusted and the city he believed in said it was worth a million dollars and with his new born baby to think about, he took everything he had and invested into a steady job, his retirement, his credit line for a house and better times for his family.  He still worked 60-hour weeks, but now, he thought, he could see a stable future.  With fees he knew nothing about added on, the million became $1,091,000 and five years later, everything is lost.  The medallion and taxi were seized on March 18, 2019.  Mohammed has been leasing from others to go to work every day.  Anything you give will help him get his car and medallion back so everything he worked for during these years doesn’t get wasted. <br /> <br />Mohammed and his family are featured in a New York Times  front-page investigation into predatory practices in medallion lending and how seven government agencies knew and not only did nothing to protect the drivers, but did everything to undermine them.  The city set the opening value of the medallion at $850,000 in 2014, then let in Uber and Lyft with none of the same regulations, making it impossible for Mohammed and others to earn enough money to keep up with their payments. <br /><br />Mohammed first started driving a taxi in 2007, two years after he first came to the US from Bangladesh.  His only days off over the past five years were when his children were born, his daughter in 2016 and his second son in 2018.  He and his wife have lived in the same studio all these years, now with their three children.  Even after all the crisis, long hours and struggle, Mohammed made the Honor Roll for the city's safest drivers in 2016 and again in 2017.     <br /><br />Mohammed is active with his union, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, in a campaign to win Debt Forgiveness for himself and his fellow owner-drivers.  With new regulations on the medallion brokers and banks that lend – many went from destroying home owners during the 2008 crisis straight to lending to medallion owner-drivers like Mohammed while seven government agencies left them unregulated - and on Wall Street financed companies that flooded the streets with cars – 100,000 Ubers and Lyfts vs. 13,000 yellow taxis – Mohammed and other owner-drivers believe change will come and things can get better.  He wants to keep serving the public he loves in the job he loves.  His first plan is to move his family out of the cramped NYC studio and into a bigger home.  Anything you can give will help him get back on the road behind the wheel of his own car and make a better path for his children.

Mohammed Hoque Family

Mohammad Hossain came to the United States from Bangladesh in 1996.  In 1998, he started driving a yellow taxicab, putting in 60-hour weeks and 200 miles a day.  He purchased a medallion for wheel-chair-accessible car at the city’s 2014 auction for $854,000.  NYC had set the opening bid at $850,000.  Taking everything he had and borrowing from friends and family, he put down a deposit of $138,000.  Today, he has an outstanding debt of $705,000. Over the past four years, he’s been driving alone, paying for the monthly operating expenses of $5,000 – the medallion mortgage, vehicle, insurance, city taxes, gasoline, licensing fees - entirely on his own.  He has to earn back that much before he can earn anything for himself.  Unlike years past when owning a medallion gave you a good credit line, having bought the medallion at the time of the downturn has also meant Mohammad has had no credit built up in the medallion to give a better life to him, his wife, their daughter and his mother-in-law for whom he cares.  On paper, the City said he was sold the American Dream.  In reality, the Hossain family share a one bedroom apartment in the Bronx.    <br /><br />Mohammad's story is featured in The Weekly, a TV series from the New York Times.<br /> <br />Mohammad started driving a taxi in 1998.  Two times, he was recognized by the Taxi and Limousine Commission’s Honor Roll for drivers with safe records for five straight years.   He’s logged in over 150,000 miles on the road and served over 155,000 passengers.       <br /> <br />It’s been hard for all taxi drivers especially during these past five years.  New York City has stricter rules on yellow cabs than other cars, and let companies like Uber and Lyft with Wall Street money dispatch 100,000 cars to compete against 13,000 taxis. All taxi driver incomes are down by 40% today compared to just seven years ago.  At the same time, banks and brokers who control the medallion loans have had no mercy to lower the payments.  Lenders responsible for the housing crisis in 2008 moved on to lending to owner-drivers like Mohammad.  Mohammad is active with his union, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, to change things, organizing to win Debt Forgiveness for thousands of his fellow owner-drivers, and to win fair regulations so all drivers can protect their full-time jobs.  <br /><br />This campaign will help the family come out of their debt, rebuild their lives from the crisis of the past several years and move out of their one bedroom.

Mohammad Hossain Family

Bhairavi Desai

Bhairavi Desai

Bhairavi Desai

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