To the Editor of the Worker,
I am deeply concerned about the fate of both public lands and public workers in this country.
On the day of his inauguration, President Trump signed a litany of executive orders designed to gut social services and flood the minds of the people of America with fear. One of these orders directly ended my career. I had worked my dream job of doing ecological restoration with the National Park Service (NPS) as a seasonal worker, and when Trump ordered a hiring freeze for all federal workers during my off season. Additionally, they are proposing massive funding cuts to the NPS, the EPA, and the US Forest Service, among others. I was left stranded with no career to speak of after all the work that I had put in for the people of this country, and I am not alone in that regard.
The National Parks are some of the most universally beloved pieces of public land in the US, and they are one of our chief national treasures. People travel from all over the world to see our beautiful parks, and they provide important refuges for wildlife against cancerous capitalist development. Why, then, would the people in power attack these lands? Simply, for the sake of their own greed and for the sake of the capitalist class.
The Trump administration is seeking to undo all of the progress of the past century, undo everything that has been done to help the common people of our land. Without a full-fledged socialist or communist movement to attack, these puerile fascists are instead attacking the progressive policies of their predecessors. They deride civic servants, take apart government infrastructure for spare parts, and are now trying to open our beloved public lands for private exploitation. This trend is typical of neoliberalism, but never before in this country has it been done so quickly, and never has it been done without even a ruse of manufactured consent.
The attacks on federal workers coming from the Oval Office and Trump’s wannabe wicked vizier, Musk, have been meritless and deeply harmful. Thousands of federal employees with excellent records have been fired for “poor performance,” and those who haven’t been fired have been put under duress by threatening emails and the looming knowledge that their job might lose funding. From my time in the Park Service, I know that these workers, especially the scientists and technicians from the NPS, US Geological Survey, US Dept. of Fish and Wildlife, and the US Forest Service, often already work long hours for little pay in sweltering heat and numbing cold, battling ticks, mosquitoes, and poison ivy, for the sake of the people and wildlife of this country. For our country’s leaders, elected and unelected, to deride them as “leeches” is simply disgusting. My friends who have happened to keep their positions are starting to break down under the stress. One friend of mine has even begun losing her hair.
The working people of this country know better than to believe the lies of those snakes that lead our government. Already, people have flooded the National Parks with protests, and many wrongfully terminated federal employees are suing for their jobs back. I am worried, though, that all of these actions are defensive, that these movements seem to lack the support of elected officials, and that we on the left don’t seem to have the strength to make any forward progress. But this is not the time to back down.
To protect our public lands, our public infrastructure, and the health of our environment for the future, it is time that we as working people unite against the capitalist class. In our unions, in our workplaces, in our houses of worship, in our schools, and with wherever else we find ourselves, we cannot afford to keep silent. We need to be reaching the people around us to build an anti-monopoly coalition, because that’s our only way out of this mess. Only a center-left coalition led by the science of Marxism-Leninism will defeat these threats to our lives and our land. Let us hope we can built it well and quickly.
Sincerely,
Madeleine Cepak,
Vice Chair of the Sustainable Earth Council
League of Young Communists USA – Communist Youth of the PCUSA