Dallas News Guild files for election, counts cards with civil rights leaders

  In a dramatic public debut of the Dallas News Guild Monday, several dozen members gathered at a city park across the street in front of the newspaper building to safely celebrate the official filing of union authorization cards with the National Labor Relations Board.

   Among the guest speakers was the Rev. Peter Johnson, a disciple of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and now considered the dean of the Dallas civil rights movement. [Read his full remarks here.]

   Wearing a Superman mask in the pandemic (“I have a Batman mask, too”), he addressed the staffers attempting to make history and organize a union for journalists at Al Día Dallas and The Dallas Morning News.

   “Listen, what y’all are doing as journalists is extremely important. Don’t ever belittle what you do. Without journalists, without newspapers, without the press, there’s no civil rights movement,” Johnson said.

   “Without the journalists in Montgomery, there’s no Rosa Parks. It was journalists that told the world about Rosa Parks and the segregation on buses. So don’t belittle what you do. What you do is extremely important.”

   Before journalists walked across the street and delivered more than 400 letters of community support for DNG to Morning News Publisher Grant Moise, several took  turns standing on a soapbox in the park to address everyone.

   Veteran reporter Dave Tarrant kicked things off by calling the union efforts a “sometimes quixotic adventure.”

   “There were days and nights in February when I wondered if we’ll ever get here. Well, we’re here!” His comments were met with energetic applause.

   “I’m here because we’ve long needed a voice in what’s happening,” Tarrant said. “We can’t keep cutting and cutting and making arbitrary decisions and expect the newsroom to produce great journalism. We’re doing this because it’s the right thing to do. It’s also empowering to produce better journalism for the community. And that’s really what we’re here for.”

Newsman Dave Tarrant called the movement to form the first unionized Texas newspaper newsroom in decades “a sometimes quixotic adventure.”

   “We want to preserve the newsroom and do it under the right conditions. …Today we are filing for an election, and we know we have the support to win,” staff writer Jesus Jimenez said.

   “I’m super excited. We just got the paperwork in and our case was assigned a number through the National Labor Relations Board. We’re official,” copy editor Leah Waters said, stressing that A.H. Belo can still recognize the union at any time.

 “If you read a byline in the paper, those people have busted their butts,” she said. “But for every person you read there are five people behind them whose names you won’t read – the editors, photographers, photo editors, the data people and the archives,” Waters said, addressing supporters.

  Business writer Dom DiFurio echoed that when he said, “A lot of people put in incredible amounts of time and investment to produce journalism that comes out of the building behind us. And journalism always comes first. I really do feel that’s why we’re here today.”

   “We’re trying as hard as we can to cover the communities in this city in the way that they need to be covered,” he said. “But we need management to step up and acknowledge that more can be done to provide us with resources and to listen to us when hard decisions have to be made.”

   Investigative reporter Miles Moffeit said he supported solidarity.

“I believe that newspapers have stood up for workers’ right for decades,” Moffeit said. “And we can stand up for our own rights. And that makes so much intuitive sense.”

   The union authorization cards were confidentially counted. The counting was led by community leader Jerry Hawkins, executive director of Dallas Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation.

   “We need really good journalists,” he said. “That’s why this is such an important thing that y’all are doing. It’s not just journalism – it’s workers’ rights, which is a really important thing for our society.”

Hawkins counted a total of 96 authorization cards, an overwhelming majority of newsroom employees.

Community leader Jerry Hawkins helps count the cards — an overwhelming majority of newsroom employees signed on.

As the legendary Rev. Johnson said, “So organize, organize, organize. That was the word in the civil rights movement. That was the word in the labor movement.”

  And here we are, organizing.