PSC/CUNY BIPOC Working Group will honor Black History Month with a powerful evening of dialogue, as we welcome labor activists, union leaders, and historians for an engaging panel discussion examining the intersection of race and worker justice. From the historic struggles that shaped our movement to today’s victories and ongoing challenges. We’ll create space for meaningful conversation about the path forward while sharing experiences and building community. This event will be held in person at the PSC Union Hall (25 Broadway, 15th Fl.)
RSVP with the form below to join us. Scroll down for further information on the panelists.
Alethia Jones, PhD (Distinguished Lecturer, Labor Studies, CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies) is a practitioner-scholar of labor, immigrant and black feminist movements. She designs spaces for transformative and liberatory learning that strengthens organizers and drives strategic social change. She was director of education and leadership development at 1199SEIU UHE, the nation’s largest healthcare workers union. She subsequently directed global fellowships at Open Society Foundations supporting activists, academics and executive directors committed to human rights internationally. She co-authored the award-winning book, A’int Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith (with Virginia Eubanks and Barbara Smith). She directs Civic Engagement and Leadership Development at the Murphy Institute and is incubating the Movement Educators Lab. Originally from Kingston, Jamaica, she resides in Brooklyn’s Little Caribbean neighborhood.
Janella T. Hinds brings a wealth of experience in both education and labor to her role as vice president for academic high schools. Now in her fifth term, Janella champions equity for students and empowerment for educators in each and every New York City high school. Janella’s education advocacy and advancement of the labor movement extends beyond the classroom to public- and private-sector union members across the city. She serves as the liaison to the union’s School Secretaries Chapter, and in addition to her responsibilities at the UFT, Janella has been re-elected to serve a fourth four-year term as secretary-treasurer of the New York City Central Labor Council. In that role, she is responsible for fiduciary oversight of this umbrella labor organization, which represents 1.3 million workers in about 400 public- and private-sector unions. Janella, who is currently teaching social studies at the High School for Public Service in Brooklyn, manages to balance classroom teaching and union work with skill and grace. Janella holds degrees from Princeton University and New York University. She is an active member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated.
NYSUT Secretary-Treasurer J. Philippe Abraham coordinates the union’s Member Benefits, Accounting and Facilities departments, the Prinstshop, as well as NYSUT’s social justice efforts. Elected to NYSUT’s leadership ranks in April 2017, Abraham is NYSUT’s first higher education member and first person of African descent to serve as a statewide officer. He came to NYSUT after serving for six years as the elected statewide vice president for professionals of United University Professions, NYSUT’s largest higher education affiliate representing faculty and staff at the State University of New York. In July 2016, Abraham was elected as an at-large representative for higher education on the National Education Association’s Board of Directors. In October 2017, he was elected a vice president of the American Federation of Teachers. Abraham, on leave from the University at Albany, was twice elected to UUP’s Executive Board. He chaired and co-chaired several statewide UUP committees, including Legal Defense, Affirmative Action and the Committee on Latino Affairs. He also served as a member of the UUP Negotiations Team and chief negotiator. On the UUP chapter level, Abraham was one of three elected senators representing UAlbany on SUNY’s Faculty Senate. He was elected to three terms as the chapter vice president for professionals. Born and raised in Haiti, Abraham is of Haitian and Dominican ancestry. He is fluent in French, Spanish and Haitian Creole, as well as English.
Professor Cameron Black, who joined the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies as an Assistant Professor of Labor Studies in Fall of 2023, is a historian of the United States and his fields of interests are in Nineteenth and Twentieth century Labor and Cultural history, Student-Athlete Protest in the 1960s, and the History of Capitalism. He studies the intersections of race, class and labor, and in particular, how we think about who qualifies as labor and what processes go into these distinctions. His dissertation, “From the Line of Scrimmage to the Picket Line: Student-Athlete Protest in an Age of Protest, 1968-1972,” focuses around student-athlete protest movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s and analyzes how student-athletes were conceptualized, managed and disciplined like labor from the early twentieth century instead of like students. He interweaves questions of race, labor, and culture to look at how labor resists the encroachment of management within their personal and professional lives, and how management and corporations handle these resistance efforts. As a graduate student in the History Department at the University of California-Berkeley, he received fellowships from the American Historical Association, the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, and the Bancroft Library.
Published: January 20, 2026 | Last Modified: January 21, 2026
