Pay the 200 Former Black News Channel (BNC) Media Workers!

The National Writers Union stands in solidarity with the 200+ former Black News Channel (BNC) workers who were impacted by the company’s abrupt closure. On March 24, 2022, employees learned that the paychecks they were expecting would be delayed. On what should have been payday, March 25, 2022, BNC ceased operations two years after its […]

Meet the FSP 2022 Organizing Committee

Starting in December 2021, the Freelance Solidarity Project (the Digital Media Division of NWU) has a new organizing committee. Congratulations to the eight members who were elected by the membership! The committee is listed below and will hold their positions for a one-year term. They will work on making FSP an even stronger, more inclusive, […]

A Year of Living Dangerously

In many ways, the past year has been a test for all of us and for our union. May 25 marked the one-year anniversary of the police killing of George Floyd and the anti-racist uprising that followed. The past year also featured the US Presidential election and the fascist storming of the US Capitol. It […]

Erased

Every day, I get glimpses of the erasure of Americans of color. My May 8 New York Times arts section (“For a Great Escape, Try a 1940s Musical”) describes the era when white movie stars like Fred Astaire and Shirley Temple danced in blackface to tap and jazz, trained by African American dancers, allowed to appear in […]

Celebrating Frederick Douglass Day

This year on Friday July 3, 2020 we presented Frederick Douglass Day — An Alternative Fourth of July Celebration via Zoom, gathering Frederick Douglass speech readers, Lissa Tyler Renaud, Kim McMillon, and Robert Cuffy— from NYC to Oakland. We also featured “live” music over Zoom from saxophonist Richard Howell in the SF Bay Area, and bassist Hilliard Greene in NYC.  We first presented our […]

IFJ North America Region Meets

IFJ’s North American Region met on May 13, to discuss and coordinate our response to the Covid/financial crisis facing our members and our industry.  The meeting included the participation of Unifor (Canada), NWU (US), TNG-CWA (US), NUJ (UK and Ireland), and the Deputy General Secretary of IFJ. To underline the gravity of the situation, the […]

SoCal Chapter Chair Plays Benefit Concert

Writer, musician, activist and NWU chapter head, Ismael Parra held a concert fundraiser with the theme “The Struggle for Peace and Planet” on November 23 at an art studio in Los Angeles The concert was a fundraiser for the play Many May Not Return written by NWU member David Trujillo. The play will run January […]

Freelance Solidarity Project Organizes with NWU

In the spring of 2018, a group of volunteers began discussing how freelancers could benefit from the gains of collective bargaining. As thousands of workers have unionized with the Writers Guild of America, East and the NewsGuild-CWA, the question of how we could stand in solidarity with staff workers while advocating for our own rights […]

Yusef Salaam on Writing While Black

In commemoration of African American History Month, NWU’s New York chapter presented “Writing While Black” on February 13th at NWU headquarters in midtown Manhattan. Veteran journalist Herb Boyd, who is also an Amsterdam News columnist, led journalists Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Yusef Salaam, along with poets Eartha Watts-Hicks, JP Howard, and Raymond Nat Turner (co-chair of NWU’s […]