Union Summer Interns Rally with D.C.-Area Taxi Workers
“My voice is kind of going. I’ve got to get used to this!” says Antonio Elizondo, a 23-year-old Union Summer intern from Los Angeles.
The UCLA student (studying history and international development) paused to talk Friday during a rally supporting taxi workers at the National Harbor just across a stretch of blue water from the monuments and buildings of the District of Columbia.
About 140 taxi workers and backers chanted, “What do we want? Taxi stand! When do we want it? NOW!”
People waved signs and marched for two hours in front of the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center. The 2,000-room hotel, one of the largest on the East Coast, is a focal point for transportation around National Harbor and to Washington, D.C., and area airports.
Taxi workers have been organizing almost weekly to protest a decision by Gaylord National to contract exclusively with a car service, owned by Veolia Transportation. Taxi workers, who have served National Harbor for five years, have nowhere to form a queue for customers and can’t cruise the streets to look for fares. The drivers want a fair chance to pick up fares in National Harbor.
Elizondo is one of about 30 interns who converged on the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington this week for workshops and classes on activism and union organizing as the start of Union Summer, the AFL-CIO’s national program that introduces interns to the labor movement on union organizing campaigns.
Sophia Poitier, 26, of the University of Texas, Austin, (studying philosophy and rhetoric) found out about Union Summer, as a volunteer on a drive to help workers organize at UT’s Housing Service. Alongside Elizondo, Poitier rallied and chanted with the crowd of activists under a clear blue sky and a hot sun.
By Sunday, Poitier, a United Students Against Sweatshops member, will be back in Texas, experiencing one of three union campaigns. Elizondo, who came as part of an allied program called DREAM Summer (for DREAMers—young people who were brought to this country by their parents as children), plans to be back in Los Angeles to continue his internship on the CLEAN Carwash Campaign.
“When I got started, I was mostly doing immigration actions,” says Elizondo, who’s proud to call himself a DREAMer. “But I’m really interested in the intersections. I’m big on finding commonalities. I’ve been finding a lot of connections to labor, and I can feel the power here. I want to be a part of labor.”
