Listen to Burnes Center Senior Fellow Seth Harris’s conversation about worker power, the labor movement, social justice, and podcasting with Jamala Rogers and Bianca Cunningham, co-hosts of Convergence Magazine's Black Work Talk, and Adam Keller and Jacob Morrison, co-hosts of The Valley Labor Report.
Our guests discuss how they coordinate their podcasts and their other jobs, what workers in their communities are currently talking about, and how unions can build power among workers in the South.
Listen to The Valley Labor Report here.
Listen to Black Work Talk here.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Overcast.
Jamala Rogers has held and currently holds leadership and membership in organizations that share her vision for a more just and peaceful world. Jamala is an unapologetic feminist and is deeply involved in the development of women and increasing their full participation in social movements. Jamala is a featured columnist for the award-winning St. Louis American newspaper, St. Louis’ largest black weekly. Her columns also appear in the Capital City Hues (Madison, WI) and the LA Progressive. Jamala is the author of The Best of the Way I See It, a compilation of her political writings over a 20-year period. She is also the author of Ferguson is America: Roots of Rebellion. She is host of Voices from the Battlefield, a weekly radio program on Black Radio Hall of Fame. Jamala is co-host of Black Work Talk, a production of Convergence Magazine. She also does a weekly podcast of short takes called Just Expressin’ Myself on Black World Media Network.
Bianca Cunningham is Campaign Director for Bargaining for the Common Good at Action Center for Race and the Economy. A former Verizon Wireless worker, she led her coworkers in seven stores across Brooklyn, NY to join CWA in 2014, making them the first unionized retail workers in the company. She later led a 49-day strike to secure a first contract. Bianca co-founded the DSA’s AfroSocialists and Socialists of Color caucus, a caucus for Black Indigenous and people of color within the organization. She most recently was on staff at Labor Notes where she sometimes wrote and more often facilitated training on Race and Labor.
Adam Keller is the co-host of The Valley Labor Report, Alabama’s only union talk radio show, a union stagehand with the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 900, and a union activist. Keller is currently organizing with Alabama Arise, a non-profit advocacy group focused on supporting low-income people suffering from poor policy decisions.
Jacob Morrison is the co-host of The Valley Labor Report, Alabama’s only union talk radio show and President of the North Alabama Area Labor Council. Morrison is a member of his local union the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) 1858. Ignited by a passion to serve working people, as soon as he joined his union he put himself to work on a mission to invigorate the labor movement in his area. He made connections with other unions in his area to begin to pick up the pieces of the inactive North Alabama Labor Council culminating in the council being newly chartered in 2020. He is also sometimes a freelance labor reporter.
