The Yemeni Bodega Strike

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — Given the chance, most any New Yorker will tell you that bodegas are a city institution, like libraries or the subway. They are overwhelmingly immigrant-owned and open 24 hours, dispensing basic groceries, household needs, and bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches at all hours.

Accordingly, it was jarring for many New Yorkers to see the ultimate symbol of consumer access suddenly close en masse. In a strike organized by Yemeni-American business owners, approximately 1,000 bodegas and other businesses shuttered on Thursday in protest of, which went into effect last week. The strike was inspired by a organized by the New York Taxi Workers Association, another Muslim-majority organization in the city. “This shutdown of grocery stores and bodegas will be a public show of the vital role these grocers and their families play in New York’s economic and social fabric,” read a . For eight hours across the city, many delis and corner shops went dark and as many as 5,000 people gathered for a rally at Borough Hall, a government complex in downtown Brooklyn.