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Monami Maulik

Co-Founder
Desis Rising Up & Moving (DRUM)

Monami Maulik was born in Calcutta, India and migrated to the Bronx, NY as a child where she came to political consciousness as a working class immigrant woman. Monami graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Third World Development Studies with minors in South Asian Studies and Women's Studies from Cornell University in 1996. Since then, Monami has been working as an immigrant rights, labor, and youth organizer in New York City. In 1999, Monami co-founded DRUM- Desis Rising Up & Moving as one of the first low-income South Asian community-based organizations for social justice in the U.S. Prior to that Monami worked with the NY Taxi Workers Alliance, the Women Workers Project at CAAAV (Organizing Asian Communities), TICO (Training Institute for Careers in Organizing), and served on various city-wide coalitions and campaigns around prison abolition, youth, and People of Color organizing. Monami is the Community Funding Board of the North Star Fund, the Steering Committee of the NYC Organizing Support Center, and represents DRUM on the national steering committee of Racial Justice 911. In 2001, Monami received the Union Square Award as co-founder of DRUM and the Open Society Institute Community Fellowship of the George Soros Foundation. In 2002, Monami received the Jane Bagely Lehman Award from the Tides Foundation in recognition of her organizing for immigrants rights and civil liberties post- September 11, 2001. Monami has spoken to audiences around the U.S. and outside of the U.S. on immigrants rights, detention, and political movements of low-income Third World immigrant communities in the U.S. and presented on the human rights violations against immigrants in the U.S. post 9/11 at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights Meeting in Geneva in 2003.

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