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My name is Aboubacar Ki, and I’m a delivery worker and proud member of Los Deliveristas Unidos, an organizing campaign of the Worker’s Justice Project.
Thank you to the Three Parks Independent Democrats for this recognition. It means a lot to be honored by a community where so many of us work every day – and to have our struggle for rights and dignity seen.
And congratulations to Congressman Jerry Nadler on this well-deserved lifetime achievement award. Your leadership has helped make New York a place where working people can fight for dignity and win.
There are more than 80,000 delivery workers in New York City. The vast majority of us are immigrants, supporting families here and back home. Every week, we complete more than 3.2 million deliveries – keeping this city running, one order at a time.
Here on the Upper West Side, delivery is essential. This neighborhood sees about 1.2 million deliveries every quarter – one of the highest rates in the city. Many of us are here every day, riding these streets, serving this community.
But behind that convenience is a reality most people don’t see.
The app companies we work for steal our wages and manipulate our tips. They deactivate workers without warning. In just the past two weeks, hundreds of workers have come to our office after being unfairly deactivated – cut off from their livelihood in an instant.
The job is also dangerous. The algorithms that control our work are designed to maximize corporate profits and punish workers who don’t comply – creating unrealistic delivery times that push us to rush and take risks just to keep our jobs. One in five delivery workers has been injured on the job. Our work has five times the mortality rate of construction. And recently, we lost one of our own – Darlyn Zacarias – killed by a driver while working not far from here in Harlem.
But as organizers, we are also actively working to change this system.
Because we have stood together, we have won real change:
--The right to use bathrooms in restaurants.
--The first minimum pay standard in the country that raised wages from $5.39 an hour to $21.44 an hour. And new protections against unjust deactivation.
--Just a few weeks ago, we opened the nation’s first worker-designed and worker-led deliverista hub at City Hall Park – a space where workers can rest, safely charge their bikes, repair equipment, access services and safety education, and stay safe in extreme weather. These hubs don’t just support workers – they make our streets safer for everyone.
And even as multi-billion dollar app delivery companies try to lie and cheat their way around the worker protections we’ve won, workers have kept fighting – and winning. Thanks to our organizing and enforcement led by leaders like Attorney General Letitia James and Mayor Mamdani, millions of dollars in stolen wages have been returned to workers through historic settlements with companies like DoorDash and Uber.
This is what happens when workers organize – and when communities stand with us.
That’s why being here on the Upper West Side matters so much. Many of our members work here every day. And we believe in building real relationships at the neighborhood level – because together, we can create an industry that reflects the values of this community: fairness, safety, and dignity.
We are a worker-led organization, and workers themselves have solutions we are advancing – and we would love to work with this community to bring them here. We need another deliverista hub on the Upper West Side and are partnering with the NYC Parks Department to find a suitable space that can ensure we provide the same safety, dignity, and organization for workers here as we have at City Hall Park.
But making that vision real will take all of us. These hubs are designed to be worker-led and welcoming spaces – built not just for workers, but with the support of the communities they serve and for those communities. While multi-billion dollar app companies continue to provide nothing for the workers who sustain their business, we are building this with the community.
So we hope to work with you to make this vision a reality – and we hope you will support in whatever way you can, through financial contributions, relationships, and partnership, to help create a space that reflects the dignity and value of delivery workers in this neighborhood.
Thank you again for this honor – and for standing with delivery workers and our struggle.
And please remember: the deliverista who brings food to your door is a human being – with a story, aspirations, and often a family they are supporting. They take real risks to deliver your food quickly, so we ask that you be patient, be kind, and tip generously – because deliveristas depend on those tips.
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