 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Taxi drivers in New York City in the US have been on a hunger strike for over 10 days demanding debt relief. This hunger strike is part of the protest being led by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance or NYTWA, a union of over 25,000 taxi and app dispatched drivers. For over 40 days, members of this union have been camped outside Manhattan City Hall. The union is demanded that Mayor Bill de Blasio implement their proposal to tackle the debt crisis crushing thousands of workers who own licenses or medallions to drive New York City's iconic yellow cabs. On average, the owner drivers owe $550,000 in loans. 95% of these drivers are immigrants. Over 900 have filed for bankruptcy since the price of the medallion shot up to $1 million in 2014 because of predatory lending and speculation. Since that time, nine drivers have committed suicide. My son has to quick school to go to work to help me taking care of the household. So it's a lot because in order for us to manage the medallion, we need at least $3,000 a month. So there's no money for us to survive. Originally from Haiti. Another four months, I'd be 65. I actually been talking to one driver right now. He owe $100,000. The guy is going to be 70 years old. He said to me, Dorothy, I need to retire. How am I going to do it? He has the medallion. He can't even sell it out because there's no buyer. The debt crisis is the result of an artificial bubble similar to that of the 2008 housing crisis between 2004 to 2013. The value of the medallion jumped from $360,000 to nearly $1 million. Once considered one of the best investments in the US, banks and private lenders handed out risky medallion loans to drivers who did not understand the terms. The New York Times found that some banks and loan lenders intentionally overpaid for medallions in order to inflate prices, further blowing up the bubble. Not only did government officials ignore the warning signs of an impending crisis, but they fanned the flames. The city government made $855 million in revenue off of medallion sales. Then in 2014, the city allowed an influx of ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft with zero regulations. This took a major toll on yellow cab drivers who saw their incomes plummet. The value of the medallion has also plunged to around $75,000 now. I started driving when I was 19, not 26 or seven years. My dad is a cab driver. He drove for 34 years. He owned his own medallion. It was a way that people thought that they could get somewhere, that they could own something. And the way that the city sold it is that it was a great investment. Our investment goes up to a million, and then it comes down a year later to $100,000. The word on the street is the medallion is at $70,000. The city sold it to us and made us think that we bought a piece of New York. We invested in the streets. We invested to keep New York safe, keep New York going. We all wanted to live the American dream. This is the American nightmare. Last year, the NYTWA proposed a plan to downsize and restructure medallion debt so that workers can pay it off while still maintaining enough money to live off of. According to this plan, the city or federal or state entity would act as a backstop for loans that are restructured to $125,000. Workers would pay an average monthly mortgage of $750 per month. Overall, the plan would cost the city no more than 0.09% of its $99 billion annual budget. The NYTWA plan has received support from high-level city government officials and even from nationally elected lawmakers. We are fighting for all this ground up behind me, plus there are 6,000 medallion owners, owner-drivers, and plus their family survival for the justice. We are so hungry and headache and dizziness and weakness. So myself, I have a diabetes, I have a heart problem, I have hyper pressure, I risk my health to fight for these 6,000 medallion owners for their driver, their family for survival. I am also fighting for my brother Kenny Chow family also. We are not going to live in this part until we win this crisis. Thank you.