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 […]
Manuel Duran Wins Temporary Stay of Deportation
Last August, the NWU Delegate Assembly passed a resolution in support of journalist Manuel Duran Ortega, a Salvadoran immigrant seeking asylum in the US. Duran Ortega was a TV reporter in El Salvador who became a respected journalist in Memphis, TN, writing for the Spanish-language publication Memphis Noticias. While wearing a press badge and reporting at […]
President’s December 2108 Column
New Sanctuary Coalition I’m working on building a labor delegation to the New Sanctuary Coalition effort to bring thousands of people to the US/Mexico border to greet the Central American refugee exodus. The NSC Call to Organized Labor is here. Please sign on and share widely. So far about 100 union activists and unions have […]
October 2018 President’s Report
If there was any doubt as to who is telling the truth, all you have to do is watch the testimony of Judge Brett Kavanaugh and the Republican Senators’ Day of Rage against Dr. Christine Blaisey Ford. White, male patriarchy was on full display, not unlike a visit to the Ape House at the zoo, […]
Free Manuel Duran Ortega Now!
Manuel Duran Ortega is a well-known and respected journalist in Memphis, TN, who once helmed a TV station in El Salvador. After his life was threatened there more than a decade ago, he came to the US as an undocumented immigrant. Duran was arrested by Memphis police April 3, while covering a local immigration rights protest, which […]
A Spear in Our Side: When Police Charge Victims
After DeAndre Harris was brutally beaten by white nationalists in Charlottesville, VA, last summer, police charged the 20-year-old black man with assaulting the nationalists. Eventually he was acquitted, but this has become a pattern: Law enforcement underreporting hate crimes in America, while tacitly colluding with perpetuators by charging the victims. The impact is that those who would […]
NWU at Los Angeles March for Our Lives
So Cal members of the National Writers Union (NWU), along with an estimated 80,000 more, attended the youth-led March For Our Lives rally in downtown Los Angeles on March 23. In other areas of the country and around the world, millions of supporters turned out, including more than 800,000 at the march’s ground zero in […]
50 Years Since MLK’s Assassination
This month we remember the 50th Anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I had just turned 18, and was a student at Manhattan Community College. Students and thousands of others converged on Central Park for a mass rally while everyone was still in shock. Then, with hundreds of thousands of others […]
