West Queens is DRUM’s oldest and perhaps most diverse base,—- Bangladeshi, Nepali, Indian, Pakistani, and more. It’s a swirl of languages, cultures, and community care. Here, organizing happens in five languages (sometimes all at once).
Twenty five years ago in Jackson Heights, we held our first-ever action, a rally and march to call for justice for Amadou Diallo, a 23-year-old Guinean Street Vendor shot 41 times and killed by NYPD in the Bronx. Soon after that action, in 2000, our youth program began. Ten young people, all low-income South Asian teens graduated from Youth Power, marking the start of what would grow into a full model for youth-led, intergenerational organizing. What started as as response to injustice became our purpose in building and organizing our communities.
The sidewalks of Jackson Heights have become our meeting rooms, the corners our rally sites, Diversity Plaza our second home. We’ve distributed mutual aid during the pandemic, marched for justice, built deep relationships with street vendors and shopkeepers, and turned everyday public space into a canvas for solidarity.
West Queens isn’t just a neighborhood where we organize. It’s where we learned how. It is where justice became visible, tangible and the foundation for our our decades of commitment to this liberation work. It’s a living archive of DRUM’s history where, even after all these years, we still return not just to remember, but to build what’s next.