Round 1: Uber, New York City division. Last week, the de Blasio administration dropped its plans to limit the car-service app’s growth while it studies the impact of ride-hailing apps on traffic. The decision ended weeks of public squabbling. On its side, Uber had David Plouffe, its new chief adviser; robocalls; TV ads; celebrity Twitter accounts (Kate Upton, Neil Patrick Harris, and Ashton Kutcher weighed in); and the Governor, who called Uber a “great invention” of the “new economy.”

On the other side were supporters of the yellow-cab industry—a diverse and not altogether harmonious coalition, including fleet owners and drivers. On Wednesday night, about fifteen yellow-cab drivers assembled in a conference room at the headquarters of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, in Long Island City, to come up with a counterattack. The drivers were part of an élite subgroup: they owned their own taxi medallions, which they’d spent years paying for. (In 2014, a medallion went for more than a million dollars.) “We invested all our money—for me, over twenty-five years,” Amrik Singh, a Sikh with a turban and a white beard, said. “Who is thinking of us?” They called de Blasio “a coward” for failing to protect their investments by regulating ride-hailing apps. Satwinder Singh, another Sikh, provided an analogy: “The city is the father and mother. They created the yellow cab as the baby. Now they’re refusing to take care of it!”

Lal Singh continued the analogy, bringing up the fifty-cent tax on cab fares, which goes to the M.T.A. “We’re giving them eighty-five million dollars a year! And yet everybody accepts Uber is the stepfather and all the politicians are the stepsons!” The cabbies applauded.

Sergio Cabrera, who wore a car key on a lanyard around his neck, said, “We have to stop them.” Pasang Sherpa, part of a group of soft-spoken Nepalis, said, “We have to get all the medallion owners and make a procession to City Hall! For one hour.”

“For one month!” Sonam Sherpa, who sat next to him, said. He added, “I think we should do like in Paris,” where taxi-drivers shut down traffic at airports and major intersections.

Seydou Bah, thirty-one and from Mali, aspires to be an owner-driver. “If we do not stop Uber, Uber is going to terrorize us forever,” he said. He held up his cell phone and pitched an idea. “If people do not turn on their phones, Uber’s not going to make money. Why don’t we launch a campaign like that?”

Beresford Simmons, who is from Jamaica, rolled his eyes. “You think people will turn off their phones?” The conversation turned into a shouting match.

Cabrera tried to restore order. “Can I just say the plan?” he said. “Listen. We have—how many medallions are there? Let’s say five thousand. We need to form a coalition with the Sikhs, we need to get the Nepalese together, the Spanish guys, the Haitian guys.” He continued, “But the most important thing that we need? Is financing.” He proposed that medallion owners contribute a hundred dollars a week—“That’s five hundred thousand dollars!”—to hire lawyers and lobbyists. “This is a billion-dollar business. We can’t keep running it the way we did back in the day, when we used to buy used police cars and paint them yellow.”

Cabrera went on, “Why is it that these people are so in love with Uber? What is it that we don’t have? We have an app!” The taxi apps, Way2Ride and RideLinQ, were created by the companies that run the credit-card-payment systems, and they connect drivers with fares. He complained about the way Uber promoted its carpool program—“We yellow taxis do that, too, every morning at Seventy-ninth and York!”—and its ads claiming that yellow taxis refuse to pick up minorities. “This is one of the things that I want to fight!”

Simmons said, “Let’s be fair, man. Some of the drivers—I would say at least fifteen to twenty per cent—refuse to pick up black folks. They figure the average black person is going to Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens.”

Satwinder Singh said, “Everybody knows when you go to the outer boroughs people run away without paying.”

Simmons said, “Yesterday, it happened to me in Manhattan. A white kid on Bleecker Street wanted to go down to Alphabet City. He just got out of the cab and walked away.”

Simmons suggested coördinating with the taxi fleet owners. Cabrera responded, “Remember, the problem with those guys is they’re élite. They’re super-rich. They don’t want to mingle with us.” He went on, “It’s the same with us medallion owners—and be honest! We think we’re better than the regular drivers. And we’re not!”

The drivers clapped. One yelled, “Truth talk!” Cabrera shook his head. “I don’t want to be a leader,” he said. “I don’t have the patience.” ♦