The Post Office Is a National Treasure. We Can’t Let the Privatizers Destroy It.
The Post Office is a national treasure, providing service everywhere from the smallest town to the biggest city and offering a rare example in US society of democratic values prevailing over private profits. We can’t let the Post Office’s opponents use the coronavirus crisis to dismantle this vital universal service.
Postal workers prepare mail for delivery at the Kilbourn Park post office on May 09, 2020 in Chicago, Illinois. Scott Olson / Getty
The United States Postal Service (USPS) is in trouble. Long-standing efforts to dismantle the agency have seriously escalated amid the coronavirus crisis, with the Trump administration depriving the USPS of much-needed emergency funding in a bid to drive through a host of neoliberal reforms.
On May 6, President Trump appointed longtime GOP donor Louis DeJoy, a North Carolina businessman, as the new postmaster general. Curiously absent from DeJoy’s résumé is any experience working in the USPS — the first time in nearly two decades the postmaster general has not been selected from the postal service’s ranks. In a statement on DeJoy’s appointment, the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) — one of four unions that represent postal employees — said that if DeJoy pursues an agenda of privatization, he “will be met with stiff resistance from postal workers and the people of this country.”
There’s plenty of reason to suspect DeJoy will do so, falling in line with the man who selected him. In recent months, Trump has called the postal service “a joke,” insisted that it raise shipping prices four to five times, and repeatedly obstructed emergency funds for the agency.
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