October Hellraiser

Nahar Alam: <i>Fighting for the rights of domestic workers</i>

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At the age of 13, while still living in her native Bangladesh, Nahar Alam became the wife of a police officer through an arranged marriage. Their union was not a happy one–soon after their wedding, Alam discovered that her husband already had a wife, four children, and a violent temper. After four failed attempts to escape, Alam eventually fled Bangladesh for the U.S., settling in Brooklyn, N.Y., where she encountered a different type of abuse.

There, Alam found work as a domestic worker–often logging 12-hour days for as little as $50 a week. Her own experience, coupled with her acquaintance with other South Asian domestic workers who were denied such basic privileges as using the phone or time off inspired her to learn English and become active in promoting economic justice for immigrant domestic workers from her region. “[They are] invisible,” Alam says. “They are isolated, they can’t use the phone, they don’t know English…. Many come to America because of problems at home and are afraid if they complain, their employers will send them back.”

Alam became active in Sakhi for South Asian Women, a nonprofit domestic violence prevention organization, and expanded Sakhi’s scope to include promotion of fair working conditions. While working for the group, she organized demonstrations outside the homes of exploitative employers, handed out leaflets publicizing minimum wage and federal labor standards, and conducted weekly workshops and meetings on workers’ and immigrants’ rights.

In 1997, Alam formed a smaller nonprofit group, Workers’ Awaaz (Workers’ Voice) that focuses exclusively on domestic worker exploitation. Workers’ Awaaz now has about 30 volunteers and members and has helped dozens of women leave unjust work situations.

“I was like a prisoner,” says Gurbachan Juneja, who used to work seven-day weeks as a babysitter for a family on Long Island and now works at a cellular-phone store. “I didn’t know how to leave the house…or use public transportation.” Thanks to Alam’s intervention, she says, “now I can do anything.”

Last year, Workers’ Awaaz won its first court case against an abusive employer. At Alam’s urging, one member who had been grossly underpaid by her employers sued for back pay. ACLU attorney Mike Wishnie handled the case, arriving at a $20,000 settlement on her behalf. “Many of the women Alam worked with had learned their rights,” Wishnie says. “Alam wanted us to set a precedent to demonstrate that they shouldn’t be afraid to exercise them. She’s courageous. The women of Workers’ Awaaz are lucky to have her fighting for them.”

But Alam says her fight is far from over. She would like to create a shelter for domestic workers and conduct more outreach in other immigrant communities.

“She worked like us,” says Juneja. “She knows what we need.”

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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