Rally & Petition to Save Jobs | Academic Freedom Legislative Town Hall

Sign the Petition

Management has laid off and cut the hours of part-time staff at CUNY’s Queens College, and now they’re coming for adjunct faculty. Cuts to adjunct budgets mean union members without health care or pay, and students without the education they deserve.

The Queens College PSC chapter is organizing to reverse the layoffs and protect our colleagues’ jobs. Read more about their fight in Clarion. You can support the campaign by signing and sharing this petition and by RSVPing to attend the Rally to Save Queens College Jobs at 4:30PM on Monday, July 27th. The rally will be outside 100 Wall Street, the site of the investment bank where CUNY Board of Trustees Chairman William Thompson works.

Sign Petition to Save Jobs at Queens College

RSVP: Rally to Save Queens College Jobs

Register here for the Zoom

Join the PSC, Assemblymember Diana Moreno and State Senator Julia Salazar for a Zoom town hall on the mounting threats to our academic freedom and the ongoing legislative efforts in Albany to protect the rights of faculty and staff.

Salazar and Moreno are the prime sponsors of a bill that would codify the AAUP’s definition of academic freedom in state law, and strengthen union protections of academic freedom. It would also establish a private right of action allowing academic staff to sue their employer for damages if their academic freedom is violated.

Click here to read more about the bill in Clarion and here to RSVP here for the Zoom meeting link.

All PSC members are welcome to attend a mass online meeting of the Immigrant Solidarity Working group to hear briefings and plan forward:

• what the end of Temporary Protective Status for Haitians and Syrians means for CUNY students, workers, and our fellow New Yorkers;
• the campaign to shut down the Delaney immigration detention center in Newark, NJ;
• the petition campaign to fund immigrant student success centers with full-time staff on every campus; and
• the PSC’s weekly court watch work and the evolving tactics of ICE and DHS in the federal immigration courts.

Guest speakers will include Dr. Marie Lily Cerat, Haitian Studies Institute, Brooklyn College, and Jesús Perez, director of the Immigrant Student Success Office, Brooklyn College, along with other leaders from the working group and the Haitian community.

Come for the updates and analysis and stay to help shape our plan of action for the fall.

Register here to RSVP and get the Zoom meeting link.

Tips & Techniques for Tabling, Flyering and Petitioning

In-Person Workshop Wed., Aug. 19, 6:00PM

Join PSC Immigrant Solidarity leaders for an in-person workshop from 6:00-8:00 PM on how to effectively engage fellow members (and prospective members!) through petitioning, flyering and outreach. The Immigrant Solidarity Working Group is continuing their petition campaign to fund immigrant success centers with full-time staff on every campus. This workshop can help prepare you to support that campaign, our union membership drive, and any other organizing you engage in. RSVP is required for building access. Submit this webform to let us know you’ll be there.

Court Support Every Friday Morning

If you have been through the PSC’s online court support training, please join with fellow union members to bear witness and support immigrants who are called to the courts at 26 Federal Plaza. Spanish speakers are especially helpful. Meet any Friday at Pret, 7:30 AM at 319 Broadway, across the street from 26 Federal Plaza.

The AFT/AAUP Blueprint for Strengthening and Transforming Higher Education was the focus of the Higher Education Committee’s presentation at the AFT convention in Washington, D.C., last Saturday afternoon. Addressing the convention, PSC President James Davis called on AFT members across the country to channel their energy into supporting the goals of the blueprint: focusing on the midterms and policy solutions to address affordability in higher education; strengthening academic freedom; pursuing job security for all faculty and academic staff; and using our union power to fight for members and students on our campuses and in our statehouses. Read more in this AFT news article.

Nearly half a million New Yorkers lost their Essential Plan health insurance this month because President Trump and his cronies cut over a trillion dollars from basic services to fund tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.

PSC First Vice President Jen Gaboury joined a coalition of unions and progressive groups at a press conference and rally at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx today, Wednesday, July 22nd, to demand that Governor Hochul and the Legislature defend New Yorkers from Trump’s Medicaid cuts, tax the rich, and fund the healthcare and services that New Yorkers need.

“The people who lost their health care–that money is going into the pockets of the rich…We must tell Governor Hochul again – as we did last year – she must go and get the money that belongs to the people of New York back. Tax the rich! ” said Gaboury.

The labor community stood up courageously to Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota in early 2026. Unions coordinated with community organizations in an effort to keep residents safe from an invasion of federal officers who deployed unlawful tactics and even murdered U.S. citizens for protesting. Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice took retributive action by investigating and prosecuting as “domestic terrorism” the civil disobedience and protest-related petty offenses that occurred during Operation Metro Surge. In so doing, the Trump administration has again abused its authority and escalated its war on dissent, the cornerstone of a free and democratic society.

The PSC Executive Council condemns the Trump administration’s thuggish use of NSPM-7 to intimidate and criminalize protest and worker organizing and calls on the Department of Justice to drop the spurious charges of conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers during Operation Metro Surge. Workers’ participation in meetings at the United Labor Center, Minneapolis, do not constitute a criminal conspiracy. The tools that protest organizers use to keep participants safe, such as encrypted messaging platforms and phone apps that track ICE vehicles, do not in themselves represent a conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers. Sharing information is not illegal. Being an activist or a protester is not illegal. Expressions of contempt for ICE, whether public or private, are not illegal. Now is the time for the labor movement to stand up and demand that the charges against the Minneapolis 15 be dropped.

Labor Day comes late this year. So, the city’s labor movement will come together on Tuesday, September 8, instead of the Saturday after Labor Day. There is a different location and march route this year as well. The rally will begin on Liberty Street between Church Street and Broadway, with the march proceeding north on Church Street before turning onto Worth Street. Assembly will begin at 4:30pm, the rally will start at 5:00, and the march will step off at 6:00. Be a part of the strong PSC contingent to help demonstrate the power of labor in NYC. Sign up here to save the date and let us know you’ll be there.

RSVP: NYC Labor Day Rally and March, 9/8

Clarion has transitioned to a fully digital format. With online-only publishing, we’ll release new content more often, no longer tied to monthly updates, and continue expanding our newsletter with deeper coverage and updates.