Ocasio-Cortez, Meeks slam Trump cuts to U.S. Postal Service
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U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks (left) and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (right) speak with letter carrier Donella Kandell, Linda Bethea and Kandell’s son Morgan Smith.
By David Brand
Even on her day off, veteran mail carrier Donella Kandell couldn’t escape her work — or the tortuous politics that suddenly surround the U.S. Postal Service.
Kandell, a 15-year USPS employee, was shopping near the historic Jamaica Post Office Tuesday when she noticed Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Gregory Meeks and Tom Suozzi speaking out against postal service cuts amid a Trump Administration effort to discredit absentee voting. She stopped to watch, and to defend her essential role in American society.
“I love what I do, but it’s scary because we don’t know what’s going to happen,” Kandell said after the event. “We already feel the cuts.”
She and her colleagues have more tasks to do and less time to do them since the USPS slashed overtime and began removing distribution machines nationwide, she said.
“I just hope everything gets back to normal and they give us the time we need to do the job,” she said.
Letter carriers like Kandell have been abruptly thrust into a political fight over the future of the postal service, a battle that has only intensified as the presidential election approaches and states prepare to distribute tens of millions of absentee ballots. States have prioritized absentee voting to limit the number of people visiting polling sites amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The recent changes to the USPS are connected to Trump’s goal of eroding confidence in a mail service that predates the Declaration of Independence, the congress members said outside the Jamaica post office.
“The postal service is not only how we send a ballot, it is how we get our medicine, it is how we get our rent checks, it is how people are getting our tax refunds. It is a core service of any civilized society,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “An attempt to dismantle our postal service out of a selfish desire to sabotage our democracy and maintain a grip on power is an attack on all of us.”
Congressmembers Gregory Meeks and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez denounced Trump Administration cuts to the US Postal Service AP Photo/John Minchillo
The press conference was part of a nationwide effort by House Democrats to rally support against the cuts to the USPS. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has recalled members of Congress to vote next week on increasing postal service funding by $25 billion.
On Monday, the House Oversight Committee will question Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who announced the suspension of structural changes to the USPS until after the November election while the press conference was taking place.
Ocasio-Cortez said DeJoy’s pledge was meaningless. “He has lost the trust of the American people,” she said. “We need to get him under oath, on a committee letting us know what will happen and we need to undo the damage that has already been done.”
Meeks likened the absentee ballot smear campaign and postal service setbacks to the authoritarian actions of “fascist dictators of the 1930s.”
“Rain, snow, hail, nothing stops the mail. But here, in this year 2020, you have a president of the United States with the assistance of his political cronies, they’re slowing down the process… across America,” Meeks said.
U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks (at microphone) was joined by U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi (left), U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (right) and Councilmember Rory Lancman (second from right). Eagle photos by David Brand
“We are not going to stand by like they did in the 1930s and let someone endanger our very democracy, our postal service and our mail.”
Republicans have long sought to privatize the postal service, a goal that could be accomplished by breaking off pieces of the mail-sorting and delivery processes.
Meeks, however, called the latest actions “an acceleration.”
“You talk about mailboxes being removed. You talk about mailboxes being locked. You talk about postal distributors, machines, being taken away,” he said. “That is a continuing acceleration of the deterioration of the postal service as we get closer to the election cycle.”
Suozzi pointed out that overtime has been reduced over the past several weeks, causing delays in sorting and delivery.
“This is a fundamental break in our system of democracy,” he said.
