U.S. Postal Service supporters in Rockville Centre joined a national movement Saturday to voice their concerns about recent changes made to the essential system. About three dozen people gathered in front of the Rockville Centre Post Office on Merrick Road, holding signs and listening to speeches made by event organizers as well as attendees calling for action against federal changes implemented in post offices around the country.
Marianna Bracco, founder of Indivisible Nassau County, organized the rally in conjunction with MoveOn, which aimed to hold thousands of similar rallies across the United States on Saturday morning. Speakers denounced Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who was appointed to his position in June. He and President Donald Trump have been accused of trying to undermine mail services through the Nov. 3 election. Changes made in recent weeks across the country have included the removal of mail sorting machines and mail drop-off bins.
“The Post Office is one of the most treasured institutions in this country,” said Nikhil Goyal, co-founder of Young Long Island for Justice, “and attacking the post office is an attack on our democracy.”
Goyal said he backs the movement for postal banking. Two years ago, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand introduced the Postal Banking Act to Congress, which would grant the USPS the power to provide basic financial services, including low-cost loans and small checking accounts. Quoting Gillibrand's op-ed piece published in the New York Times in April, Goyal said, “Nearly 10 million American households have no bank account, forced to use costly fringe financial products.” He said the return to postal banking would help to ensure the postal service “is not treated as a business but as a basic public good. It’s the lifeblood of our communities.”
The rallies coincided with a vote by the U.S. House of Representatives Saturday on the “Delivering for America Act,” a bill that prohibits the U.S. Postal Service from making changes to operation or levels of service from those in effect on Jan 1; establishes requirements for the processing of election mail; and appropriates $25 billion as an additional payment to the Postal Service Fund, of which $15 million would be transferred to the USPS Office of Inspector General. The vote passed the House 257 to 150. The Senate still needs to vote on the legislation.
Assemblywoman Judy Griffin was in attendance and spoke at the rally. “It’s unconscionable for a sitting president to dismantle the post office,” Griffin said. “Thankfully it’s been noticed and they’re curtailing any further dismantling, but they have to reverse what they’ve already been doing.” She said that, in many blue states, mailboxes have already been removed and need to be replaced. “They need to do everything they can to ensure that ballots are counted and counted in a timely manner. Everything should be done to support and protect Americans to vote safely.”
Rally attendee Minna Barrett, of Oceanside, is a psychologist who taught for the State University of New York for 43 years and has worked professionally with 9/11 responders since 2001. “The United States Postal System is the most democratic institution we have…if democracy is politics, we’re doomed,” she said. “For me, this is profoundly patriotic. The mail service began way before we were even a country, and was institutionalized in our human rights in the constitution. This is sacred…and people who don’t feel that way don’t have an understanding of what it means to really love the constitution.”
Loretta Heredia of Freeport, highlighted the problems from an insider’s perspective. She works at the Mid-Island Processing and Distribution Center in Melville and said she has worked for the postal service for 32 years. “Postal employees take great pride in the work that we do; we take an oath when we get hired that we will deliver every piece, every day,” Heredia said. “DeJoy and Trump have put the kibosh on that.”
The facility she works at, she said, has a large sorting machine, which she explained takes “weeks” to dismantle, and means it would also take weeks to reassemble them.
“That’s not happening, they’re not putting them back,” she said. “At the plant, we were always told we’re open 24/7, 365 days a year. Now we are being told, at a certain time, mail is to be stopped from being processed –it is to be left until the next day.”
She said that deliveries that normally take three days now can take more than a week to get to their destination because of this new policy. “The United States Postal Service is the only carrier that transports live farm animals,” Heredia said, noting that the service transports baby chicks from the Perdue company in Pennsylvania to farmers all over the world. “Eighty percent of [the chicks] are now dead on arrival.”
She said normally, live animals are mailed Express, meaning the shipment leaves immediately. “Farmers are now reporting that they are ordering 1,000 chicks, and 800 of them are coming dead because they have to be held until the next day,” Heredia said. “Our lives and democracy depend on saving the postal service.”
