The ANSWER Coalition is part of a new ad hoc labor/community coalition that is organizing actions in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere from June 25 to 28 to "Save the U.S. Postal Service," and to stop the layoffs and union busting efforts by politicians in Congress who want to privatize the postal service. Please read the call to action below and make a financial contribution to this critically important initiative.
HUNGER STRIKE to SAVE THE POSTAL SERVICE
June 25–28, Washington, D.C., and across the nation
Rally at US Postal Service Headquarters
Thursday, June 28, 4-6pm
475 L'Enfant Plaza in Washington, D.C.
Support the hunger strikers!
Stop the closures! Stop the cuts!
Call Out the Postmaster General!
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Ten hunger strikers are starving themselves to demonstrate that Congress is starving the postal service.
On Thursday, June 28 – their fourth and final day – the strikers will turn their protest against Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe. The PMG has announced that beginning July 1 he will begin the closure of half the mail sorting plants in the country and cut hours from 25 to 75 percent in half the nation's post offices. Tens of thousands of jobs will be eliminated and delivery standards relaxed.
The hunger strikers are calling on Donahoe to suspend cuts and closures, and allow Congress to stop starving the USPS by repealing a prefunding mandate and refunding a pension surplus.
America’s postal service is being starved to death. A 2006 Congressional mandate forces the USPS to prefund retiree health benefits 75 years in advance. 10 percent of the postal budget, $5.5 billion per year, goes to prefund benefits for people who aren’t even born yet. Not only would the postal service have been profitable without the mandate, the USPS has also overpaid tens of billions into two pension funds.
Not the internet, not private competition, not the recession – Congress is killing the postal service. Corporate interests, working through their friends in Congress, want to undermine the USPS, bust the unions, then privatize it. The Postmaster General’s response is to speed the death spiral by pushing forward massive cuts to service, closures of facilities and the decimation of living-wage jobs.
We invite all who care about our national treasure – enshrined in the Constitution, serving over 150 million households and businesses six days a week, providing universal mail services at reasonable, uniform rates – to join, endorse and otherwise support our hunger strike, in Washington, D.C., or in their local area.
