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 […]

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, who were allowed to appear […]

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 […]

House of Representatives Passes Copyright Small Claims Bill

On October 22, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the “Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2019” (CASE Act), H.R. 2426, by a vote of 410 to 6: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/2426 The NWU along with many creators’ groups and the member organizations of the Authors Coalition of America  endorsed the CASE Act. The NWU submitted detailed […]

Arizona Labor Packs a Punch

In the run up to the 2018 election, an office in the back of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Hall in Tucson served as cramped headquarters for a new kind of labor campaign. A hand-made poster on the wall compare the two most recent Arizona District 2 Congressional members’ lifetime legislative scores showed why […]

George Lakey on the Plus Side of a Polarized Society

NWU member George Lakey spoke recently about how the Scandinavian countries went from a deeply polarized region in the 1920s and 30s, with Nazis and Bolsheviks fighting each other, to the most economically equal region with the highest productivity and most generous benefits in the world. Lakey, a recently retired professor at Swarthmore (PA) College, […]

Follow Ongoing Events at the UN Commission on the Status of Women

Journalists face daily threats of being attacked, imprisoned, threatened and harassed for doing their job. A survey of over 400 women journalists in 50 countries by the International Federation of Journalists showed that “almost one in two women journalists have suffered sexual harassment, psychological abuse, online trolling and others forms of gender-based violence while working.” […]

NWU and allies urge easier, cheaper copyright registration for online work

The NWU and National Press Photographers Association filed written comments yesterday with the US Copyright Office to create a new procedure to register multiple written works first distributed online. The intent is that the collection of works can be registered for a single fee and with a single application. This proposalwas made in response to a petition initiated by the […]

They Went to the Mexican Border to Help

My husband, Jose Rosa, and I responded to an outreach call from the New Sanctuary Coalition (NSC), and went to the Mexican/US border in late January. NSC has invited our union members to stand in solidarity with those who’ve been traveling in recent months in a caravan from Central America. Four NWU members have taken up that […]