Vivek Bald's video, Taxi-vala/Auto-biography is an important milestone for South Asian cab drivers and for all New Yorkers. The 48-minute work reveals the rich voices and treacherous lives of cabbies at a critical time. Increasingly, drivers face racism and xenophobia from the public. Police brutality is rising, while driver-bashing is tacitly supported by society; on Broadway, Jackie Mason viciously insults drivers, yet provokes laughter instead of outrage. In this barbaric climate, videos like Bald's are of vital importance.

Bald explores the lives of 12 drivers -- from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India -- with breadth and complexity using their own words. The video opens with drivers explaining why they left their native countries. One driver says that he had few job prospects since he lacked elite connections, while another says he wanted to break free from the constraints of family obligations. All those interviewed describe a fairly similar version of the American Dream that enticed them -- whether it was filtered through movies or through rumors circulating in their home towns. They came because America was said to be a high-tech, high-wage land of opportunity. As Irfaan Rafiq puts it, "We used to think...we just need to go to America and then everything. will be okay. We just work eight hours and every day we will get a hundred dollars."

The American reality turns out to be a cruel joke; these immigrants find themselves at the bottom rung of urban, working-class America, scrambling to make ends meet: "Everybody out of job, so much expense, taxes very high, food is very high...how can we survive with that?" asks Zahid Butt. Interviewees describe roaming from one menial job to another, from dishwashing to selling newspapers. From this perspective, cab driving seems much more appealing because it offers a sort of self-employment, potentially greater profit, and job availability.

But here again, reality fails to deliver: drivers explain that even working 12-hour shifts, six days a week, the wages are meager after paying for the daily lease price -- which goes straight to the owner -- and gas. On top of that are the constant dangers of driving on the streets of New York. Several drivers speak of frequent muggings and murders and anti-immigrant, racist attitudes of cops. Saleem Osman, organizer for the Lease Driver's Coalition (LDC), describes his own and other drivers' constant encounters with police brutality, and the need for drivers to unite to defend their rights. This section culminates with a powerful sequence of image and sound portraying the drivers' massive protest over these issues that shut down lower Manhattan.

Faced with the "opportunity" of a slavish, hazardous job and plenty of grief, drivers must come to terms with their dashed hopes. In his interviews, Bald reveals differences in how drivers process similar immigrant pressures. For many, the disappointment seems overwhelming as they describe the miserable routine of driving/eating/sleeping . Still, a few drivers eke out the positive: "[Driving] has its own fantastic advantages...You meet different people, each day is an experience if you really take it." Similarly, drivers cope differently with the idea of "going back." Some describe the U.S. as a new home even as they occasionally travel to South Asia, while others wish to escape from "here" as quickly as possible. Still others have become indifferent to their location and focus instead on practical matters.

As he provides a conduit for drivers' experiences, Bald reveals his own story and thinking as it developed during the five years of working on this documentary. He opens up to the audience, delving into his complex motivations for making the video. Bald tells us that he is grappling with the meaning of "community" -- being biracial, of Indian and Scotch Australian descent, and having grown up in the U.S. -- even as he points camera and mike at more recent South Asian immigrants. In an interesting twist, Bald inserts this personal perspective between interviews, forcing viewers to examine Bald's complex relationship to the drivers he speaks to. This style challenges typically unequal relations of power between filmmaker and subject in documentary film and video, and reassesses the entire process -- the presence of the camera, the interviewing, what questions were asked and why. One begins to wonder about the range of possibilities: What if the drivers created their own video diaries? Would they grow through the process the way we can see that Bald has? Would they ask themselves different questions? It's as if Bald is handing over the keys to all who watch, saying, "Here, you try."

This interplay between Bald and drivers produces a compelling tension, as Bald starts to notice conflicts between his beliefs and those of drivers. At one point, Bald asks why there are so few women driving cabs. Responses range from "It's impossible [for women]" to Jasvinder Singh's comments about the double standard parents apply to sons versus daughters, giving young men greater freedom while restricting young women. Bald admits his questions do not get to the root of the problem -- sexism and patriarchy -- and may end up making the drivers look bad. When drivers' answers do not jibe with Bald's commitment to women's autonomy, equality, and strength, he does not openly challenge drivers. But Bald concludes that his refusal to do this ultimately holds back true unity. Political differences and opinions have to be put on the table and worked through. Only then can we address issues around who has power and who does not within given communities.

As the film progresses, Bald shifts the focus from everyday experience to the larger picture, reminding us that these South Asian men are not simply cab drivers, but rather the latest newcomers in a nation of immigrants. Like those before them, working-class South Asians must fend for themselves amidst unfamiliar, complicated social rules in the U.S. As immigrants of color, they are thrust into a charged, racial environment, which in turn encourages them to practice racism in order to assimilate. Saleem Osman puts this situation in a bigger context; he likens the "green card system" to colonialism. American movies project the riches of this country while the government lures naive foreign customers by broadcasting that "limited visas are available." Those who buy in arrive to find themselves forced into jobs nobody wants, yet they are scapegoated for it. Furthermore, their right to be here is challenged any time it is politically convenient. Osman explains the wicked mix that cements a system of division and control over working people: the U.S. government and corporations deny jobs to poor Americans, especially people of color, while carefully spoon-feeding recent immigrants with racist beliefs.

Bald brings this point to life on screen in the final section. Over a gripping visual sequence that mixes U.S. civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s with anti-British protests by South Asians during the colonial period, he narrates how each new immigrant group to the U.S. is taught to accept and actively practice American racism. Bald's conclusion suggests that if we ignore our common histories of struggle as Asians, Natives, Blacks, and Latinos and neglect the hard work of building real unity, the descendants of those who colonized our ancestors will continue to oppress us now, in a new land.

(Reprinted from Peela Paiya, the magazine of New York's Lease Driver's Coalition, Summer 1995.)