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Manhattan Lawyers Offer Free Services

Arthur J Pais

As he earned his first degree from Brown University, Andrew Kashyap did not have to weigh his options. Having worked as a social activist for several years, particularly helping poor African Americans and Hispanics fight for their rights, he knew he wanted to work for public causes. This year he graduated with a law degree from Northeastern University in Boston -- and within a few months began working for causes close to his heart.

"I went to law school with a specific purpose, to be a public cause attorney," says Kashyap who began his first job as a lawyer this week at the National Employment Law Project in Manhattan. One of his main tasks will be to offer free legal assistance to poor south Asians.

"It is one of the fastest growing communities in the city," he says. "They are not the middle-class immigrants of say, the 60s or 70s. Now, we have a lot more low-income immigrants.

"We hear the phrase 'quality of life' so often these days, we do not think of low-income people who often do not get the minimum wage," says Kashyap, son of a retired philosophy professor and a librarian mother -- a white American. "They are often unable to fight on their own."

Kashyap, who is an Equal Justice Fellow of the National Association for Public Interest Law and is paid by the organization for two years, has for some time been involved in south Asian workers issues. He is a former member of the Lease Drivers Coalition, and now the Taxi Workers Alliance, headed by another South Asian, Bhairavi Desai.

His project is one of the two projects that are the first of their kind in the south Asian community. The Asian American Legal Defence and Education Fund runs the second one. Both projects respond to the unmet legal needs of low-income workers in New York City who face unfair labor practices and are deprived of basic employment and civil rights.

These include employers' failure to pay minimum wage or overtime, employment discrimination, problems related to benefits such as unemployment insurance and workers' compensation, and employers' failure to abide by workplace health and safety standards.

They will target restaurant workers, domestic workers and taxi drivers, but will also seek to outreach to other workers such as teenage workers, construction workers, sex workers, and newsstand workers. The projects also will incorporate community outreach and workshops for South Asian communities on workers' rights issues and will work closely with community-based organizations.

NELP has advocated for almost 30 years on behalf of low-wage workers while the AALDEF is the main civil rights organization serving New York's Asian American community that provides legal services and counsel on issues such as voting rights, police brutality, immigration and labor.

Among the high profile cases AALDEF has won is for a Princeton University Sikh professor who was refused entry into a chic Manhattan restaurant because he refused to remove his turban.

For the first time, the two civil rights organizations will be collaborating to serve the South Asian community.

At AALDEF the project is being directed by Chaumtoli Huq, who is of Bangladeshi origin. It is funded by the Skadden Fellowship Foundation. Prior to law school, Huq has worked at Sakhi for South Asian Women in New York on domestic violence and domestic workers' issues.

"We want to reach out to the communities across New York," Kashyap said, adding the two organizations welcome calls from workers seeking assistance on employment issues. They also want to receive calls from community organizations interested in information or in conducting workshops on workers' rights.

For more information, write to the National Employment Law Project, 55 John Street, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10038. Phone and ask for Kashyap, (212) 285-3025, extension 110, fax: (212) 285-3044; e-mail: nelp@nelp.org.

To contact Huq, call, (212) 966-5932.

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