The Driver

Ron Blount enlisted an army of cabbies to battle the parking authority. Is he the man to lead them?

by Isaiah Thompson

On a damp, windy night in July, some 50 cab drivers gathered in the corner of a vast parking lot abutting the airport to await the outcome of an election that would determine who would speak for the taxi drivers of Philadelphia.

Ron Blount, president of the Unified Taxi Workers Alliance of Pennsylvania (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Throughout the day, cabbies had voted at two polling places: Philadelphia International Airport and 30th Street station. At each site, folding tables were dragged out and ballot boxes — cardboard crates with slits carved in — placed atop them. Volunteers from the National Lawyers Guild and the Media Mobilizing Project, a nonprofit dedicated to connecting progressive movements with media technology, were on hand to act as independent monitors.

Four candidates were listed on the ballot, but everyone knew the race was really between two men: Ron Blount and Muhammad Chughtai.

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The two had once been partners, working together in the Brotherhood of Taxi Drivers and Owners to lobby the Philadelphia Parking Authority (PPA), which regulates the local cab industry, for better conditions. But differences in strategy, temperament and, maybe, ambition had led to a rift. In 2005, Blount had split from Chughtai and the Brotherhood to found his own group. The two organizations were rivals until March, when the parties sat down and reached a compromise. Cab drivers should speak with one voice, they agreed, and so they would merge their forces and hold an election to determine the president of the new Unified Taxi Workers Alliance of Pennsylvania (TWA-PA) — an unofficial union representing cabbies' interests.

The two men cut strikingly different figures. Chughtai, born in Pakistan, is thin and short. Blount, a black American, is huge, with huge limbs, huge hands and an enormous head. Chughtai had a reputation for smooth talking. Blount was best known for being outspoken, sometimes fiercely so. Where Chughtai employed a neck tie to get things done, Blount used a bull horn.

After the polls closed, the votes had been carried in two giant plastic keg buckets to the airport, where they were ceremoniously displayed to the cabbies who gathered there. The actual counting would take hours, and election organizers had rented a room at the airport to conduct it. But the drivers nixed this idea on the spot. There would be no separate room, no closed doors. The votes would be counted right there, in the parking lot, in full view of any cabbie who cared to watch.

And so they were. The folding tables were brought together to make one long console, manned by volunteers and surrounded by cabbies. Conditions were not ideal. It had rained earlier, and now the wind blew water off the trees and tugged dangerously at the corners of the ballots, so that each piece of paper had to be clasped firmly. It was too dark in the lot to read; to that end, a few drivers maneuvered their cabs in a semi-circle around the table and turned on their headlights. The light mingled with the mist and bathed the entire gathering — cabbies, computers, cars and all — in an orange glow.

Blount and Chughtai stood back in the shadows, waiting and pacing quietly among the cars, looking tense. Chughtai made sporadic and short-lived speeches, as if hoping to influence the outcome through sheer willpower. Blount spoke little, chatting quietly with his closest supporters, occasionally joshing a nervous-looking Chughtai and chain-smoking Newports.

At 11:45 p.m., the final tally was announced. Five hundred and fifty-seven cabbies had voted — a minority of the 3,000 eligible drivers, but still a significant group. Of those, the great majority — 361 — had voted for Blount. It was a landslide.

Blount walked to the front of the crowd to make the first speech of his presidency. His reputation was for combativeness and fearlessness, but he set a very different tone now. He was the lowest-ranking member of the TWA-PA, he said, not the highest. The important thing was that the drivers were unified, under one name and one leadership. They were ready to take control of their own destiny, to stand up to the forces that kept them down.

The optimism would soon be dampened. A month after the vote, the District Attorney announced that Blount would face a felony aggravated assault charge. The charge previously had been thrown out by a judge, but was being reinstated; if convicted, Blount would almost certainly lose his license, and, very possibly, his position with TWA-PA.

Citing Blount's legal situation, the PPA has refused to meet with him, even though he's been elected. Blount, meanwhile, has maintained his innocence, though he's come to question whether he's doing his cause more harm than good. His supporters think he was set up.

Driving a cab is, by most standards, a crummy job. Cabbies are assaulted on the job more than Americans in any other line of work besides police and private security guards — roughly two in 10 will be assaulted during their careers. They're 60 times more likely to be murdered on the job than other workers, according to a 2000 study by the U.S. Department of Labor — and that statistic signals a downturn in cabbie murders in the last 15 years.

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There's a harsh economic reality in the modern taxi industry, as well. Once upon a time, most cab drivers were considered employees of private companies, and therefore entitled to the protection of the Fair Labor Practices Act, which guarantees minimum wage and other safeties. But over the last few decades, the business changed. Cities began to cap the number of cabs that could operate on the streets by issuing "medallions" (basically, certifications), which could be bought and sold like any other property. With the number of medallions fixed — at 1,600 in Philadelphia — their price skyrocketed. In the 1980s, according to Blount, a medallion here was worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $15,000; today, one goes for more than $200,000. Being a driver-owner has become all but impossible for most cabbies.

And so the drivers lease. Today, the majority of Philadelphia drivers pay as much as $500 a week for the privilege of leasing a medallion. On top of that, they pay for the gas they use, the credit cards they process, the paper and ink that prints their receipts, the bill for their mandated GPS systems and the maintenance of their vehicles. To make a profit, a driver has to work 11- to 12-hour days, six to seven days a week. And because they're independent contractors, they assume full risk for injury, robbery and accidents, and are exempt from minimum-wage laws and workers' compensation.

They also have a hard time unionizing. Historically, workers faced with the sort of conditions cabbies deal with have sought to take collective action. But cabbies don't have an employer to act against; they just have numerous parties (regulatory agencies, medallion owners) bossing them around. Still, drivers in a few cities — notably Oakland, Calif. — have succeeded in forming formal unions. And in the last decade, drivers in locales across the country have decided to use the principal of strength in numbers to form organizations that resemble unions — prominent among them the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, which made a name for itself in 1998 by conducting a massive strike and making demands of New York's Taxi and Limousine Commission.

In Philadelphia, taxis are regulated by the PPA, which wrested control of the industry from the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) in 2005. The PPA promised to "clean up" the business, and at first, some drivers — including one Ron Blount — applauded the change. The agency had indicated a willingness to raise meter rates, which, under PUC, hadn't gone up in a whopping 14 years.

The honeymoon didn't last long. Just weeks after taking over the taxi industry, the PPA released a 98-page manual detailing new rules and standards, as well as a new system for fines, the likes of which Philly cabbies had never seen. Among the most hated of the new regulations was one requiring that all cabs be equipped with Global Positioning Systems and credit card machines designed by VeriFone, a New York-based company with which the PPA had recently struck a multimillion-dollar contract (several months later, the PPA consultant who had worked out the contract quit the agency to work for VeriFone). Drivers were required to rent the machines, and any cab without one — or even with another brand — could be fined. Additionally, VeriFone charged a 5 percent service charge for each transaction, reducing the cabbies' take.

Once the machines were installed, the cabbies' wrath grew: They were clunky and prone to sudden "blackouts," which would turn off meters and leave drivers to negotiate fares themselves. The PPA acknowledged this problem, and last year threatened to withhold $1 million from VeriFone. Many drivers say the problems were never addressed; one company, Yellow Cab, recently persuaded the PPA to let it return to its old dispatching system — some Yellow cabs now roam the streets with both.

The litany of drivers' grievances against the PPA goes on: Drivers say they are targeted by inspectors, unfairly ticketed and burdened with the financial risk of poor or crooked financial decisions made by others. But at the heart of all these complaints is one overriding theme: The drivers argue that they are exploited, given none of the benefits of employees yet burdened with all of the restrictions. It was this situation, and this sentiment, that led Philly cabbies to desire a pseudo-union of their own.

Ron Blount was born in 1959 and raised near 28th and Lehigh in North Philadelphia. His father was a city sanitation worker — a union man — and Blount recalls attending union meetings with him as a kid.

"My dad was illiterate, a dropout. He never learned how to read or write," Blount says. "But working for the union, he was able to pay his mortgage."

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Blount himself finished high school, joined the Navy, was honorably discharged and eventually returned to Philly. In 1983, he began driving a cab off and on while working other jobs.

He became a full-time driver in 1998, the same year the then-fledgling New York TWA staged its monster strike. Blount followed the goings-on with interest. This was before the PPA takeover, back during the decade-plus when PUC failed to raise meter rates even once. At the time, the Brotherhood had been inactive for years — formed largely to protest taxi fees at the airport, it had become the subject of ridicule when its former president, James Walker, quit driving to work for a large medallion owner — and so Blount, with a few others, organized a one-day strike to push for a meter hike. The hike didn't happen, but the cabbies got more press than they'd seen in years, and organizers decided to revive the Brotherhood under the leadership of Chughtai.

It was after the PPA takeover that Blount and Chughtai split. The agency had approved a meter raise, but Blount believed it was being neutralized by higher rental rates for cabs. Chughtai, he says, had been swayed by the PPA — which eventually gave him a seat on its advisory board — to accept the meter increase without demanding a rent freeze. Chughtai, for his part, says Blount simply wanted to be in charge.

In any case, Blount and his supporters formed a new group, the Taxi Workers Alliance of Pennsylvania (Blount had argued for "Philadelphia," but was voted down), and set out to build it up. Cab drivers are notoriously difficult to organize: The very nature of their job keeps them physically isolated from one another, and there are drastic differences of language, religion and culture within the work force. When cabbies do group together, it tends to be along ethnic lines. But Blount seemed able to transcend all of this.

"There are a lot of divides to cross, and Ron always figured out some very subtle strategies," says Todd Wolfson of the Media Mobilizing Project, which has documented TWA-PA's efforts over several years. When the group was just getting started, Wolfson says, Blount would call meetings at Kabobeesh, a Pakistani-owned restaurant on 42nd and Chestnut. "We'd get a big plate of goat curry," Wolfson recalls, "and there'd be 15 drivers sitting in the back, sharing curry and talking about the GPS system ... Pakistani drivers, Bangladeshi drivers, Haitian drivers — they all find a way to relate to Ron."

The 16 or so drivers who now comprise the TWA's organizing committee are an astoundingly diverse bunch, a fact Blount emphasizes whenever possible. "We're trying to get representatives from every ethnic community on board," he says. This is not so much idealistic as it is pragmatic: Mohammed Shukur, a TWA-PA senior vice president, is from Bangladesh, as are many of the drivers who work the airport. Alliance secretary-treasurer Patrick Anamah is Nigerian, like many other Philadelphia cabbies. Blount's staff also includes members from Jamaica, Ghana, Pakistan, Ivory Coast, Peru, Mali and the U.S. He's currently trying to reach out to Iranians, Russians, Haitians and Sikhs to bring them on board, as well.

This focus on diversity has been key to Blount's success. But he brings something else to the table, too, his supporters say: a sense of where cabbies fit into the bigger picture, and how they might actually accomplish their goals.

Michael T. Regan Tekle "Tex" Gebremedhin once clung to the wheel of his cab as cops tried to pull him away. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

"Ron knows when to think in the short-term, and when to make a decision about something that's for years to come," says Steve Chervenka, TWA-PA's political director (he prefers the title "secretary of war") and Blount's right-hand man. "He's a terrible manager — terrible," Chervenka adds, grinning. "But he can see ahead."

What attracted Chervenka to Blount was that they both saw the drivers' plight in a large context. "I come from Pennsylvania coal miners, and I compare the cab business to coal mining," he says. "Especially in the early days, the miners got paid by how much they produced, not by the hour. At the end of the day, all their expenses were deducted from them, too — even water."

Blount believes cabbies need to be thinking broader than just meter rates. Over the last few years, he's built an extensive network of allies. When the Inquirer revealed last November that the PPA was flush with revenue, despite having failed to deliver $20 million promised to Philadelphia public schools, Blount and other members of the alliance joined Parents United for Public Education in demonstrating against the agency. When the social justice group Jobs with Justice staged an event calling attention to the lack of benefits for security guards at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Blount and his members were there, too. When the PPA held a hearing to discuss proposed changes in their regulations, TWA-PA flooded it with drivers and allies. Much to the PPA's annoyance, the activists took over the meeting.

Blount has been a grassroots organizer, careful never to stray far from the places where cabbies gather. He spends obsessive hours at 30th Street Station and the airport, listening to driver concerns and doing what he can to follow up. When a cabbie close to him gets sick, Blount has been known to drive his cab for him, turning over the money he makes; when a driver is wounded on the job, Blount visits the house — something PPA authorities never do. And yet, he's also visited the offices of Mayor Michael Nutter, Gov. Ed Rendell, Speaker of the House Dennis O'Brien and House Rep. Tony Payton.

Little by little, Blount and TWA-PA have begun to get things done. In 2006, they staged a big strike, in coordination with the New York TWA, protesting the GPS units and new mileage limit. The systems went into place anyway, but over the next two years, TWA-PA helped persuade the PPA to raise meter rates again, as well as add an additional 50 cent surcharge per ride for rising gas prices. The TWA started a Web site, a newsletter, a radio show, and established themselves as a persistent thorn in the PPA's side.

"Ron Blount is somebody who is not afraid of who is the officer or who is the person he's going to approach," says Anamah, TWA-PA secretary-treasurer. "When Muhammad [Chughtai] was [president] of the Brotherhood, I didn't see him going to Harrisburg. But Ron can step into any office. And when you discuss with him outside, you find out he's somebody who understands what [you're] going through."

Anamah says Blount has proven his sincerity. "The only problem, the only battle I fight with him all the time, is his temperament," Anamah says. "I've gone to two PPA meetings with him; when he wants to raise his voice, I will kick his legs. I tell him, as a leader, you can do that — but not always."

Blount, for his part, defends his outbursts. "There's a difference between putting your hand on someone and fighting for someone's rights," he says. "I'm not going to allow anyone to violate the rights of these taxi workers. ... If I've got to bang my hand on the table to say what you're doing is wrong, then that's what I'll do. It's part of my tactics."

On March 6, 2008, according to police, Blount picked up a 32-year-old woman named Megan Saunders at the airport, and drove her to her home in Society Hill. Saunders tried to pay for her ride with a credit card, a police report says, and Blount told her the machine was broken. He offered to take her to an ATM. Saunders declined. Blount opened the rear door and told her she'd gotten a free ride. Then, allegedly, Blount attacked her.

Saunders would later testify that Blount slammed her head against the door of his taxi, threw her into the back seat and began to choke her, according to the Daily News.

"I'm like, Oh my God, I'm going to die in broad daylight," the Daily News quoted Saunders as saying.

Blount was charged with five criminal counts. One of them — aggravated assault — is a felony, which could cause Blount to lose his driving license. At a preliminary hearing two months later, that particular charge was dismissed by Judge Jacquelyn Frazier-Lyde, and Blount's livelihood seemed safe. Last August, however, the charge was reinstated. Blount will go before a judge again this month.

Blount's court-appointed lawyer, Richard Quinton, says he and his client are "fully confident that there was absolutely no assault that took place, and we are looking forward to proving his innocence at the trial."

Blount has faced charges before. In 1986, he was found guilty of assault, from a charge he brushes off as a street fight; his record was then clean until 1997, when he was charged with various misdemeanors relating to several altercations with his then-wife. The judge, after hearing testimony from Blount's wife, describing the charges as a "grab bag," and the assistant District Attorney — agreeing in court that some were "duplicitous" — voluntarily withdrew them. Blount says the allegations were completely false, the incident was a nonviolent dispute, and that he and his ex-wife remain friends.

On the specifics of his current case, Blount declines to comment, saying only that he is innocent, and that the charges against him are part of a smear campaign to discredit him and, by extension, TWA-PA. Blount's supporters also point out what they see as a strange aspect of the situation.

When Blount was arrested, it was not at his home address — which was listed on the warrant — but at PPA headquarters, to which he had been called for what the Inquirer called "a routine inspection."

Blount says the inspection was not routine. At the time, he was driving the cab of a friend, Michael Braverman, who was hospitalized with serious pulmonary fibrosis (Braverman died shortly thereafter; the money Blount made went toward Braverman's rent and hospital bill, according to Braverman's son, Doug). It was Braverman who received the call at the hospital from PPA, Blount says.

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"They said, 'tell Ron to bring the cab down now,'" Blount recalls. "And that's when they had their little circus."

Police were waiting for him when he arrived, Blount says, as were a dozen PPA officials who came out of their offices clapping as handcuffs were placed on his wrists.

Police spokesman Lt. Frank Vanore says it's possible the police worked with the PPA to apprehend Blount. "We might have called them and said, 'Send him in.' We do that all the time," Vanore explains. PPA spokeswoman Linda Miller contends that the agency learned of Blount's arrest from the police, and simply cooperated with them in helping to identify and locate him. "The PPA has had no other interaction with the Police, District Attorney, or the Courts related to this matter," she writes in an e-mail.

But Blount's supporters are convinced that the PPA somehow engineered Blount's predicament — either by orchestrating the arrest or, later, persuading the District Attorney to reinstate the felony charge.

"I don't see a situation where Ron would hurt a woman," says Anamah. "I know too well that they just want to make sure he is out of the cab industry. That is why they are fighting tooth and nail."

"For PPA, we create a lot of problems," says organizing director Tekle "Tex" Gebremedhin, a longtime friend of Blount's. "Now for Ron they try to take him out with a felony. But to prove innocent in America, you got to spend money."

Regardless of what the PPA did prior to Blount's arrest, the agency has not shied from using the charges as a political tool against him. The morning after Blount was elected — during the time when he faced only misdemeanor charges — the Metro quoted PPA taxi division chief James Ney, saying he was "quite concerned with the president they've elected, who has outstanding charges against him ... We're wondering why the drivers would elect someone like that."

Whether such a remark was appropriate, given the presumption of innocence, Ney defends his words. "There are some very, very serious charges against the man," he told City Paper. "We are entrusted with protecting the public."

The drivers don't buy it.

"They don't want Ron to be president because he's effective. Because he's a pain in their rear end. ... Everything Ron has done is costing them money," says Chervenka, Blount's right-hand man. "The PPA has converged against Ron Blount. But they're stupid. When you go against Ron Blount, the drivers are going to choose Ron Blount."

This past Monday, at 4:30 p.m., Blount sent an e-mail to the TWA-PA listserv. The subject line read: "Resignation of Ron Blount."

Michael T. Regan "I compare the cab business to coal mining," says Steve Chervenka, self-described TWA-PA secretary of war. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

In it, Blount announced that he was stepping down as president of the alliance, citing his ongoing court case and his concern over "stories" — a reference, presumably, to this article — that might distract TWA-PA from its purpose (Blount had been worried about his prior assault charges being made public). He was proud of the alliance's accomplishments, he said, and would be "more than willing" to share his advice.

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On the phone that night, Blount told City Paper that, between the charges against him and the PPA's obvious animosity, he felt he was becoming a liability for Philly's taxi drivers.

"I took them as far as I could take them," Blount said. "They'll get a fresh start now. I'll keep working, maybe as a consultant for them or something like that."

Then he said his girlfriend was on the other line, bade a polite goodbye and hung up.

Blount's announcement, it soon became clear, was a surprise to his supporters.

"He said that?" asked an incredulous Chervenka, who was home watching the Eagles game. "I saw that he had sent me an e-mail, but I didn't read it." After a pause, Chervenka added: "I know the people around him aren't going to let him resign, I'll tell you that much. ... All day he was doing things for the union. I just don't believe this."

Is Blount a liability for TWA-PA? In speeches and interviews, he's always played down his own leadership. But there can be little doubt that, over the last few years, he has increasingly become a center of attention, both in the media and in TWA-PA's jousting with the PPA.

There can be little doubt, as well, that whatever PPA authorities think of the alliance itself, the animosity some officials feel toward Blount — and possibly vice versa — is personal.

A few weeks ago, TWA-PA officers met for a general meeting at Lava, a community space in West Philadelphia. Sitting in a circle of plastic chairs, the group looked a bit like an underground union from the 1930s.

Blount brought up a letter that had been sent to TWA-PA members by the PPA's Ney, inviting the group to meet, on one condition: The PPA, Ney wrote, was unwilling to meet with "anyone involved in criminal proceedings." Blount was not mentioned specifically, but the meaning was clear.

The drivers were furious. John Houghes, one of TWA-PA's spokesmen, spoke up. "You're our leader. And I don't think you should let them dictate how we meet them."

"If you stop," added another driver, "they will say you are weak."

A motion was made to demand the PPA meet with Blount, but Blount interrupted before the officers could vote.

"Lately, everything we've asked for, they've given us," he said. "Now they want to meet. We should extend the hand of peace."

Herein lies the rub: Even when Blount is the problem, Blount is the solution. Were he to resign, TWA-PA might find a quicker ear in the inner sanctum of the PPA. But it's not clear who would speak for them. Blount, with his sharp strategy and his deep, deep commitment to the cause, is the group's natural leader. It isn't every day, after all, that you find a taxi driver who'd rather go to Harrisburg for a meeting than the airport for a fare; who'd rather give up leadership of his union than see it suffer because of him.

The day after Blount announced his resignation, he spent several hours out of contact even with those close to him. By evening, though, Chervenka and others had corralled him into a meeting with the TWA-PA trustees. There, Blount was told that, as per the organization's bylaws, his resignation was being rejected.

"While the trustees understand Ron's rationale for stepping down," they wrote in a statement, "the trustees reminded Ron of what he said the night he was elected, 'I am a servant of the drivers, they are the leaders of the movement and I work to serve them.'"

Ron Blount's supporters had sent their leader a clear message: He belongs to them.

(isaiah.thompson@citypaper.net)