On Aug. 25, community members assembled outside the downtown Long Beach Post Office, on the corner of Third Street and Long Beach Blvd, carrying signs that read “Save the Post Office!” “Save the Unions!” and “An Injury to One is an Injury to All.”
Their chants and signs brought enthusiastic reactions from the street. Pedestrians called out their support and raised their fists, while drivers honked enthusiastically, many stopping or slowing to shout encouragement. The drivers of passing Long Beach Transit buses made a point of showing their solidarity with the cause of their fellow union workers.
Liberation News spoke with one of demonstrators, who as the mother of a mail carrier, preferred anonymity for fear of retaliation:
“We have to defend these workers. I see them, like my son, how exhausted they are when they come home after working 10-hour days in the heat. We have to defend the postal service, because that’s what it is, a service, not a business. It is a service that our seniors rely on for their medicine, insulin, for their checks. In some places, whole communities rely on it, and now we may all depend on it to vote — and he’s trying to sabotage our voting system.”
When asked what needed to be done first, she answered without hesitation, “We need to depose DeJoy [referring to Postmaster General Louis Dejoy],” pointing out the extreme conflicts of interest that have been exposed both in his past investments in Amazon, the rights to revinvest on extremely favorable terms he has retained, and his existing tens of millions of dollars worth of holdings in XPO logistics, a postal service contractor.
The working people of Long Beach will continue to defend the USPS, both the necessary functions it provides, which monopolists like Postmaster General Louis Dejoy seek to privatize with the assistance of their lackeys in both the Republican and Democratic parties, and to defend the jobs and union rights of the workers who make that service run.
