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Pipe Bomb Explodes Near New York Bus Terminal

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by Rehan Qamar

An attempted terrorist attack struck the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 42nd Street and 8th Avenue near Times Square on Monday morning. Three were injured causing chaos in one of the busiest commuter cubs in the nation, officials said.

Police have identified the suspect behind the New York bus terminal explosion as Akayed Ullah, 27, a Bangladeshi immigrant living in Brooklyn.

Ullah wore an “improvised low-tech explosive device attached to his body,” which he intentionally detonated, New York Police  Department Commissioner James O’Neill said.

Ullah had attached a pipe bomb to himself with a “combination of Velcro and zip ties,”  O’Neill said. The fastening may have indicated Ullah intended to carry out a suicide bombing.

According to officials, the device went off prematurely with the explosion being recorded on surveillance video.

Ullah, now at Bellevue Hospital, is being treated for lacerations and burns to his hands and abdomen, New York City Fire Department Commissioner Daniel Nigro said.

The incident comes a few weeks after a deadly terror attack in Lower Manhattan, where a man killed eight and injured others as he drove a pickup truck down a bicycle path near the World Trade Center on Halloween. This was the deadliest terror attack in New York City since the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.

The blast occurred around 7:20 a.m. in an underground walkway connecting two subway lines.

After the explosion was reported, chaos erupted as commuters underground near 40th Street and 8th Avenue began to flee after the loud, muffled sound was heard in the Port Authority subway station.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority reported that 1, 2, 3, A, C, E, N, Q, R, W and 7 trains were skipping 42nd Street, affecting the commute of thousands to the busy commuter hub.

In a news conference, Mayor Bill de Blasio called the blast an attempted terrorist attack and said no other devices had been found.

“Our lives revolve around the subway,” he said. “The choice of New York is always for a reason, because we are beacons of the world. And we show that a society of many background and many faiths can work.”

“The terrorists want to undermine that,” he added. “They yearn to attack New York City.”

While police sources say the suspect was heard doing this for the name of ISIS, no confirmed connection has been made.

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Queens Assemblyman Reintroduces Taxi Driver Protection Act

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by Aysha Qamar

“He asked me, ‘Where you from?’ So I told him, ‘I’m from Pakistan.’ And then he asked me, ‘What is your religion?’ So I told him, ‘I’m Muslim,’ because I am Muslim,” Anwar Syed, the victim, told reporters.

What started off as any ordinary ride, turned into a vicious beating of an Uber driver when the passenger asked Uber driver, Syed, to pull over. According to police, that’s when, 23-year-old, Phillip Gannotta grabbed Syed’s flashlight and beat him blow after blow.

“He hit me so hard that I knocked out,” Syed said.

Police say, Gannotta beat him bloody with a flashlight and left him unconscious lying in the street. Gannotta then kicked out the rear passenger window fracturing Syed’s eye socket.

This incident that took place in February in Bellmore, Long Island may bring about new laws aimed at protecting drivers.

“My son went to school, his psychiatrist called me and he asked me could you please talk to him because he’s very disturbed. My daughter is very disturbed. My son is only 9 years old, my daughter is 13 years old,” Syed said.

Syed spent five days in the hospital. He developed severe headaches and blurry vision from the incident and what is even scarier, he said, is the lack of state laws present to protect him. Currently, if you hit a train conductor or bus driver the act is considered a felony or assault, however attacking a cab driver is merely considered a misdemeanor.

While still afraid like others, Syed has no choice but to continue doing his job. Fear will always exist for people of color and of marginalized communities until laws are in place to protect them.

“I am scared, but like you know got to go to work, got to go to work. That’s it,” Syed said. “No New Yorker should worry about being attacked for simply doing our job. I call on lawmakers to protect taxi and ride share drivers before another life is shattered.”

State Assemblyman Ron Kim from Queens is trying to change that and toughen penalties on attacks against cab drivers. Legislation is being re-introduced in which the same protections for MTA bus drivers and train conductors would be applied to cab drivers.

Kim gathered with drivers who had been victims of assault at Flushing Town Hall this past week. He provided details for his amended bill called the Taxi Driver Protection Act, in which the penalty for attacking on-the-job for-hire drivers will rise from a misdemeanor to a felony. He said that it would do so by adding for-hire drivers to a list of occupations which currently includes public transportation workers, for which assault is a felony and [attackers] could be sentenced up to 25 years in prison.

“If you attack a public transit worker, a bus driver, EMT worker it’s an automatic felony and the public understands that,” Kim said. “All we’re asking is to extend the same kind of protection for these drivers who are working the late night shifts to make sure they feel protected.”

State legislation in regards to raising the penalty for assaulting a for-hire driver in New York was originally introduced in 2013 and then reintroduced in 2014, but did not pass legislation. It is now being reintroduced due to the recent attacks against minorities.

The bill would require a sign to be posted in for-hire cars informing passengers of the legal consequences of assaulting drivers. According to Kim, such a law already exists in New York City and the bill would extend it to the rest of the state.

“These assaults against drivers are completely unacceptable,” said Kim. “The fact that the victims’ ethnicity or beliefs may have influenced the attacker’s decision is even more despicable.”

While many attacks go unreported, in the past two weeks, there have been reports of two suspected hate crimes against a Sikh driver in the Bronx and a Muslim driver on Long Island.

“Taxi drivers are more likely than any other workers to be victims of violence on the job,” said Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. “Drivers in New York City are almost all immigrants and largely Muslim and Sikh, and they face more risk than ever.”

“We want to send a strong message. Don’t attack drivers who are predominantly from minority and immigrant communities. These individuals are out there working hard putting food on the table,” Kim said to Reporters.

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#ANewBronxTale: Bronx Community Organizers Fight to Resist with Local Office

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by Nasif Khan

On the brisk night of January 29th, 2017, a brief rally formed following an estimated 100 people outside a Bengali restaurant in the East Bronx, New York. On Starling Avenue, a predominant Bengali-Muslim community, as well as a scatter of other South-Asian communities including Pakistani and Indian communities, responded to a set of new policies by the Trump administration which aimed to ban entry from seven Muslim-majority countries as well as target undocumented immigrants. Which many argue is the epitome of discrimination and hinders some core values of this country in terms of immigration and diversity.

One of the community members who joined this rally was Elvin Garcia, a local community member who is running for City Council of District 18 (in the Bronx) and hopes for a new future in terms of representation and empowerment for the community regardless of age, sex, or race.

Garcia, who was raised by a single immigrant mother, spoke in an interview about the hardships of finding opportunities in terms of education and other financial issues and what that means for the future of The Bronx. He recalls a program when he was in college that helped low-income students was being in the process of being phased out. He took this sobering moment to actualize the importance of opportunities and aid returning to their community. Ultimately changing his path from an Architecture major in college to returning to his neighborhood to help better the social conditions presented to him many years ago.

His campaign slogan, “#ANewBronxTale,” was created to represent all marginalized voices in his community and referred to the potential of newer, young people taking leadership like himself. Garcia, 29, recalls what it means to be a young person pushing for change.

“Representation is very important. The old way of representation only catered to a very narrow base. We need newer, younger voices of all backgrounds to advocate for things such as the government budget, criminal justice reform, and education.”

When asked how ‘#ANewBronxTale’ can be utilized and reflective of the current political climate in terms of the new, rather anomalous executive orders being pushed by the Trump administration; Garcia responds:

“We are the change we want to see and the time is now. We need to reclaim our country starting at a local level. I have opponents on the conservative fringes who are supporting the ‘Muslim ban’ and I am not in support of that.”

District 18 covers the neighborhoods of Soundview, Castle Hill, Parkchester, Clason Points, as well as Harding Park in the Bronx. Local community organizer Nilka Martell, who will be awarded the 2017 Tim Tompkins Leadership Award next month for her efforts in organizing and coordinating events for the improvement of conditions in The Bronx, is the current Treasurer for Garcia’s campaign team.

She comments, “I’m proud of being part of the Garcia for Council team. There have been lots of changes within the district and more are coming. We have a diverse community and need leadership that understands the issues and will bring neighbors together, regardless of race, age, gender, faith or sexual orientation, to find resolutions. For me, Elvin is that person.”

Martell, who has been helping organize the Soundview section of the Bronx for many years through efforts such as coordinating community events as well as what beautification looks like in the neighborhood, comments on what the future of the Bronx may look like in response to the newly appointed President Trump and how his term may impact the community.

“The best impact Trump’s presidency has had on folks is many are now interested in knowing more about how the country is governed and local politics. For this community its means neighbors working together to assure that we elect leaders that will truly be our voice. We need to understand the power we have as individuals, and how much more powerful we are when we work together to create change.”

Concerns following President Trump’s administration and their push for certain policies is no surprise as there have been spikes in large-scale “Anti-Trump” protests in nearly all fifty states of America. This incredible disdain for the newly-elected 45th president erupted into many forms of protests with leadership and support from different levels of offices and politicians. Residents of different communities under scrutiny for these recent waves of hate crimes, such as District 18, believe that it’s President Trump’s ‘hateful’ rhetoric that emboldened this heightened concoction of patriotism and xenophobia.

A resident of District 18 in the Soundview section of the Bronx, Minul Asgar, 19, comments on the current political climate.

“There are a lot more people at risk of being assaulted and victims of hate crimes because of Trump’s rhetoric instilling a hate-mongering that awakens parts of societies that discriminates based on racism” he recalls on belief that Trump’s rhetoric has trickled down into hate crimes in his neighborhood. Asgar also joined the brief rally in Starling Avenue alongside Garcia, Martell, and the estimated 100 people chanting “No Ban! No Wall!”

When asked about the potential of working together with local offices to gain more traction for their means of organized resistance, Asgar commented:

“Local offices can provide resources we need in terms of outreaching and reaching people who wouldn’t necessarily be apart of the cause.”

He also emphasized the need for leadership uniting us from different pockets of people scattered in the community.