Candidate Questionnaire

DRUM Beats is a community-based organization that builds political power grounded in the experiences and demands of working-class South Asian and Indo-Caribbean New Yorkers, with chapters in:

  • Western Queens (Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, Astoria, Woodside)

  • Eastern Queens (Jamaica, Hillside, Hollis)

  • South Queens (Richmond Hill, Ozone Park-City Line)

  • Bronx (Parkchester)

  • Brooklyn (Kensington)

Our members are cab drivers, street vendors, domestic workers, retail shop workers, day laborers, fast food workers, public school students, college students, the unemployed or underemployed, office workers, and small family businesses. Our members have origins in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Guyana, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Suriname, Tibet, and Trinidad & Tobago. We organize for racial, immigrant, worker, educational, gender, and global justice, in alliance with working-class and People of Color movements here, and movements across the world. DRUM Beats is the sibling organization of DRUM - Desis Rising Up & Moving, which has over 5,000 members and 20,000 supporters locally, and led the fights to keep out Amazon HQ2 from Queens, won the $2.1 billion Fund for Excluded Workers & $2.4 billion for rent relief, and ended the anti-Muslim NSEERS (Muslim Registry) program amongst many others.

DRUM Beats believes that mass movements are the leading agents of social change and transformation, and elected officials should follow their leadership. Subsequently, we seek to not only hold candidates and elected officials accountable, but also to implement models and structures of shared decision-making and co-governance.

Thank you for taking the time to complete this candidate questionnaire. Please note that information in a completed questionnaire may be used on the DRUM Beats website to share candidate positions with our members and interested parties. IF THERE ARE ANY RESPONSES YOU'D LIKE TO REMAIN CONFIDENTIAL, PLEASE INDICATE SO IN THAT RESPONSE.

After submitting the questionnaire, you will be contacted about whether we have any outstanding questions.

If you have questions about the content of this questionnaire please submit to Jagpreet at DRUM Beats - jagpreetdrum@gmail.com

We will be taking Questionnaires until Friday 10/13