Delivering Justice: Food Delivery Cyclists in New York City
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2018 Delivering Justice: Food Delivery Cyclists in New York City Do J. Lee The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2794 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] DELIVERING JUSTICE: FOOD DELIVERY CYCLISTS IN NEW YORK CITY by DO JUN LEE A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2018 ii © 2016 DO JUN LEE All Rights Reserved iii DELIVERING JUSTICE: FOOD DELIVERY CYCLISTS IN NEW YORK CITY by DO JUN LEE This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Psychology to satisfy the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Susan Saegert Date Chair of Examining Committee Richard Bodnar Date Executive Officer Michelle Fine Tarry Hum Adonia Lugo Melody Hoffmann Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iv ABSTRACT Delivering Justice: Food Delivery Cyclists in New York City by Do Jun Lee Advisor: Dr. Susan Saegert In New York City (NYC), food delivery cyclists ride the streets all day and night long to provide convenient, affordable, hot food to New Yorkers. These working cyclists are often Latino or Asian male immigrants who are situated within intersectional and interlocking systems of global migration and capital flows, intense time pressures by restaurants and customers, precarious tip-based livelihoods, an e-bike ban and broken windows policing, and unsafe streets designed for drivers. I approach this research through participatory action research (PAR) and han, an indigenous Korean word that describes collective transgenerational traumas that are rooted in systems and structures of oppression. A han-based PAR approach seeks to use participatory research methods with delivery workers to create communities of resistance and healing that name structural oppressions, to gain societal acknowledgement of these named oppressions, and to change structures and systems to undo oppressions and heal collective traumas. As a rationale for this work, I examine how echo chambers of whiteness craft demonizing public narratives about immigrant delivery workers by excluding their voices. This exclusion signals a need to listen to delivery worker voices to characterize and name their conditions and experiences. Intermingled systems of transnational migration, restaurant business, and labor conditions coerce competition, isolation, exploitation, and tactics for transnational survival that speed up the v bodies of delivery workers to meet the demands of food delivery while also disposing of worker bodies that are too slow, old, or injured. Exacerbating this disposability of worker bodies, unsafe streets are based upon a system of cumulative irresponsibility where mass harm accrues from the inability to address this harm through individual responsibility. This system undermines the right to the street for immigrant delivery workers by creating harmful conditions and criminalizing worker tactics for survival such as riding electric bikes (e-bikes), which are perceived to disrupt social order. By being unable to address systematic and structural labor and street conditions that compel the speeding up of worker bodies, NYC has responded to “disorderly” immigrant delivery workers by excluding immigrant workers from the boundaries of legality and enacting broken windows policing. Accordingly, the City and NYPD have created a regime of Vision Zero Apartheid by racially weaponizing a public policy to reduce traffic fatalities by exerting punitive disciplinary measures against immigrant delivery workers in the name of public safety. The transgressive, intersectional, and agentic movements of delivery workers expose the porosity of boundaries and trace out desire paths in the shifting cracks and crevices within oppressive systems. Traveling along desire paths involves risk, but doing so opens up possibilities of communities of resistance and healing that strive toward liberation as collective projects of delivering more just cities. vi DEDICATION For Rohan, born still in 2016, Nadia, born still in 2017, and Annalise Jeongah 정아 , born in 2018, all in New York City. vii Acknowledgements I am most grateful for the love and support of my community of care, healing, and resistance. First, I thank my partner, Jennifer Smith-Lee, for her enduring strength, love, and support. We have struggled together through our pain, healing, and joy. I could not ask for a better partner to face the miracles and tragedies of life. To the many delivery workers such as Dequan Lu of the Chinese Mutual Association and many others who contributed to this research, I express my utmost gratitude for allowing our team to bear witness to your lives, experiences, and stories. I heard your anger, frustration, tears, laughter, and hopes. I hope that this dissertation and our struggle together for mutual liberation honor your offerings. We will continue to fight together for our interconnected humanity. I consider this dissertation to be a collective product by the Delivering Justice Project team with the Biking Public Project. When I began dreaming this up this project, I had no idea how to do it. When Tarry Hum introduced me to Helen Ho, this work began to blossom and grow. It began with Helen, Dorothy Lê Suchkova, Mario Giampieri, and I in a small room and I began to feel not alone in this work – which means everything to me. Along the way, many others joined our work and made enormous contributions. I am awed by the dedication, care, and hard work by Xiaodeng Chen, Jing Wang, and Angie Estevez. I would also like to acknowledge the contributions of many others – Dustin Chien, Macartney Morris, Rosemary Bolich, Melyssa Banks, Hazell Imbert, David Meyer, Argenis Apolinario, Nick Wong, Marie Lindebo Leth, David Matten, Jaime Moncayo, Katie Salisbury, and many others. I also express my utmost gratitude for our #DeliverJustice coalition partners that include: Joann Yoo, Persephone Tan, and others at the Asian American Federation; Mel Gonzalez, Elizabeth Jordan, Meg Fosque, and others at Make the Road NY; Caroline Samponaro, Tom DeVito, Chelsea viii Yamada, Juan Restrepo, Marco Conner, and others at Transportation Alternatives; and Steve Wasserman at Legal Aid Society. Thank you to the faculty, staff, and students in Environmental Psychology, Critical Social Personality Psychology and other programs at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. I am most grateful for my faculty advisor, Susan Saegert, who supported and guided me well as I struggled with learning how to give myself permission to write what I most feared. I am also deeply indebted to and inspired by Tarry Hum whose help, care, and mentoring gave wings to this project and greater understanding. I am thankful for Michelle Fine for her unwavering support, helping me to understand participatory action research, and her example of what scholarly writing can be if we give ourselves permission. I also am deeply grateful for the love and support of Jude Kubran who always has time to give hugs and to hear our stories. Thank you to the community of care among the many scholars I have met at the GC: Alexis Halkovic, Jen Tang, Laurie Hurson, Kristen Hackett, Mimi Marinova, Todd Brown, Paula Di Stefano, Deshonay Dozier, Hector Agredano, Donatella Gallela, Jessica Murray, Sonia Sanchez, Talia Sandwick, Kim Belmonte, Kate Sheese, Shelley Buchbinder, Claire Cahen, Hannah Jaicks, Jenn Chmielewski, Adam Davidson, Devin Heyward, Wen Liu, Whitney Richards-Calathes, Tellisia Williams, Eleanor Luken, Sam Stein, Grace Cho, Bijan Kimiagar, Leigh McCallen, Naomi Podber, Mei Ling Chua, Bryce DuBois, Scott Fisher, Tia Fletcher, and countless others. I am most grateful for being a part of a community of bike and mobility equity activists, scholars, and practitioners at The Untokening, the Collective of Critical Transport Scholars, and elsewhere. Thank you to those whom inspire me and give me courage from their example: the brilliant work of scholar-activists Adonia Lugo and Melody Hoffmann who also both served as external readers on my dissertation committee, Sahra Sulaiman, Lauren Fischer, Tamika Butler, ix Naomi Doerner, Morgan Campbell, Emily Reid-Musson, Denver Nixon, Tiffany Lam, Lark Lo, Dulcie Canton, John Stehlin, Charles Brown, Olatunji Oboi Reed, Alexis Perrotta, Rosalie Ray, Julie Cidell, Laura Kling, Courtney Williams, Elly Blue, and countless others. Thank you to my family and longest friends: my mom and dad, Kane, Rosemary, and Enzo; members of the Smith-Collier family – Karen, Rufus, and many others; my dear friends not already mentioned such as Fred Moore, Matt Diver, Brent Schoradt, Tom Ryan, Mike Castillo, Paul Abeyta, Brad Kinder, Anne Sibert, Weijean Garland, Brian Weitz, Jen Daugherity, Jordan Holt, Greg Mavronicolas, Marion Gee, Autumn Bernstein, and many others. Thank you also to other healers in my life – Arielle Shanok, Mike Ishii, Barbara Seruya, Merav Gur, and Kendra Phillips. Thank you to my community of care and healing. x Table of Contents ABSTRACT iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii LISTS OF TABLES AND FIGURES xiv CHAPTER