Public Employee Press

Union Scrapbook
Zita Allen named Communications Director of DC 37

“Communications is critical in the fight for social and economic justice,” says Zita Allen, DC 37’s new director of communications. “It can help change our lives.”

Until recently, Allen was communications director for the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, where she crafted media strategy for successful organizing drives at big-box retailers like Duane Reade pharmacies and the mid-size chain Footco. She has also taught strategic communications to labor and human rights activists at Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations and Columbia University.

In the 1990s, Allen was an associate editor of the Public Employee Press, winning several labor journalism awards, including the coveted Max Steinbock Award for “humanistic spirit in journalism” for a 12-page feature highlighting DC 37 members’ heroic work with people with AIDS.

Allen is the author of “Black Women Leaders of the Civil Rights Movement” and has been a regular contributor to the Amsterdam News, the nation’s largest African American weekly. She has had articles published in the Village Voice, New York Times and Essence magazine, among others.