It Could Happen Here - The Lost Post Office Union Episode

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

Somehow this episode vanished into the ether, so enjoy early 2024 Mia and now former letter carrier and union steward Tommy Espinoza discussing the state of workers rights at the Post Office.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Cool Zone Media. Either snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness can stop the Persian Courier service. Welcome to Nick Kadappi here, a podcast about postal services where we ask the question, can the American capitalist class finally stop the American post office? I'm your host Mia Wong and with me to talk about what is going on with the post office, What's going on with the post office unions and yeah,

how things are going downhill for the noble people who carry your mail is Tommy Espinoza, who's a union steward for the National Association of Letter Carriers. Tommy, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for giving us the mail here that dollars the mail carriers, a platform to stand on. Yeah, I'm really, I'm really happy to and I'm really happy to get to talk to you about this. So I think the place we should start is with a bunch of very, very weird stuff

in how labor law works. So, okay, for like most people in the United States, you have a federally protected right to strike if you have a union. That is not true for federal employees. That is especially not true for members of the post office. And that is a real issue because the government has decided that like, yeah, no, all these people who do a vital service are not allowed to go on strike. And it absolutely sucks. Yeah.

And so I think this this gets into sort of where I want to start, which is with the sort of history of the National Association of Letters Carriers, a union that is not allowed to strike and how sort of weird that is. So yeah, I was wondering if you could talk a bit about sort of the origins of the union and what effects that has had on how organizing works or doesn't work. Yeah, the right to strike has been a rather divisive topic. I'm sure you're familiar with unions and just generally people on our side of our side of politics

to be infighting a lot. It shouldn't come to a surprise. But so in 1969, just over 50 years ago, the salary for postal workers was under $2 an hour. People were working months straight with no days off and those were close to 12 hour days. And so these postal workers at the time qualified for welfare and decided in 1970 to go on strike despite it being illegal. This conversation is not new. It was illegal then, it's illegal now.

And I do want to be crystal clear here. I am not advocating for a strike. That would also be against the law. And we don't advocate for anything that's against the law. What I do want to advocate for is the right to strike. Because being quasi-federaleral there's a lot of limitations in what the NALC and the general postal unions are able to do. In total there are nine bargaining agreements and seven unions within the post office, some of which are the manager's unions, so

some of which are the manager's unions, so take that as it is. Yeah, on top of not being able to strike, none of our money that we collect as union dues can be used for lobbying purposes, so they can't support a single candidate or any of the parties involved. We have a separate fund for that with the NALC called the Letter Carriers Political Fund to try and circumvent the restrictions that are put on there. And as a result of that, it's like we're fighting with our hands tied behind our back. We are unable to organize effectively. Our union leadership seems to be afraid of protests and picketing for fear that it'll be misconstrued or labeled as a strike. And they're, I think, generally afraid of public

opinion. Yeah, that's a debilitating set of conditions because you've effectively taken away sort of the two major tools that, you know, unions of basically across all political stripes use, right? You've taken away the ability to strike. You've taken away the ability to use your dues money to influence elections. So this immediately means you've taken away the tool that sort of militant unions use, which is strikes, and you've taken away the tools that more conservative unions use, which is buying Paul attempting to buy politicians. And then also your leadership is like, we can't strike.

As we can't protest because someone might think it's a strike. And the public might commit it. It's like that. That doesn't seem I don't know. It really seems like it's like it's not only if you tied both hands behind your back. You've like tied them behind your back to your legs. You're now rolling around on the ground. Right. And so talk about what happens when we push past all of these barriers and just do it

anyways. You know, in March 1970, 210,000 postal workers defied law, defied the general leadership of the time. And it all started in New York where people clocked in and at nine o'clock they just walked out. Soon, let's see, it was Cleveland, Chicago, Los Angeles, the nation joined very shortly after once it broke the news that they were calling for a national strike, Nixon called in the National Guard to try and deliver mail. The National Guard had no idea what they were doing.

There's an amazing video that I'll try and send you afterwards. It's just the National Guard at our cases where we sort the mail, and an interviewer is asking them, do you think that you're doing a good job? It's just like, no, it's just some kid. Don't get me wrong, I'm just some guy, but you need the training, you need to know what you're doing. It's not something that anyone can pick up in a day,

but it's a job that anyone can do. But yeah, for the first time, the mail had stopped. And that won us collective bargaining, binding arbitration, which is a process that I think most people within unions know what they mean, but to explain it, arbitration is what happens when our parties cannot agree on a settlement for a grievance and eventually we call in a third party, an arbitrator, to

decide for us and those are generally lawyers. On top of binding arbitration, it gave us a new pay scale and set in motion, I think over, it's got to be hundreds of raises between the colas and the new pay table. It used to be 21 years for you to reach the top pay scale, which is absolutely ridiculous. Yeah. Now I think it's about eight. Yeah. So the post office was forced to reorganized

and so was the union. This is where the American Postal Workers Union was born. And from this strike, we were able to settle on the national agreement. So there's the national agreement, which is our binding contract. There's the J-CAM, which is the Joint Contract Administration Manual, which is what the post

office and the union use as the interpretation of the contract. That way we are not arguing and spending time about what the contract could mean. We can just focus on whether or not someone broke our agreement. So after this, one would imagine that a quasi federal institution would honor the contract that was created bargain in good faith and treat their employees fairly. Isn't that right? Yeah, no, this is spoken like someone who has never watched

the federal government in action. Yeah, absolutely not. Before we get into issues that. We face today. I do want to say that one of the main goals of our contract negotiations or of this episode really is to create public knowledge of. How our contract is not being adhered to.

If there was one main goal that I'd have in mind is just to have the post office honor what they signed and agreed to do. Yeah, I mean, it's something that, that it's a part of being in a union that doesn't get talked about very much, which is that the contract doesn't mean anything unless the union enforces it. Because the moment the contract happens, the bosses will attempt to not abide by it. And this is what a lot of union militancy back in the sort of heyday of militancy was. I mean, like, you know, if you look at like, how the UAW worked in like the 60s, right, they'd have a guy with a whistle standing on the line.

And if someone did a contract violation, he would blow the whistle and everyone would just sit down and you'd immediately have a strike. Right. And it you know, and like that level of built and see, you don't need to like be at that level to enforce a contract, but you have to actually be willing to do stuff and to fight management over it. And if you're not willing to do that, your contract is effectively meaningless. And that's a real issue with a lot of unions, which just kind of circles back to one of the big issues that we face

is that if we were to do that, that would be a willing full delay of mail. And we could be charged for it. Just for trying to enforce the contract. Yep. Yeah. Which I think the thing I think is really interesting, just to circle back to the 1970s strike is that so the strike was illegal, right? Nixon brings in the army and the National Guard to break it. And the strike still wins.

And not only does it if it, you know, I mean, you could argue whether it achieved total victory, but not a single person who walked off the line got arrested, even though all of them technically committed a crime. And that's something that like, you know, I think. I mean, OK. The the enforcement of laws depends on sort of the depends on a set of relative balance of forces and whether people care about enforcing the law, which is how like, for example, if you pirate like seven movies and you get you get three copyright strikes, you go to prison. and you get you get three copyright strikes, you go to prison. But, you know, like the Sam Altman or whatever, like a company can literally steal everything on the entire Internet

and get money for it and no one will ever prosecute him. Right. And so so, you know, whether or not something is illegal is to a large extent or the difference between something being illegal and you going to prison for it Largely has to do with the balance of forces involved and that's something that you should keep in mind When and this is this is this is the thing that that cuts the other way a lot too, right? Like a lot like employers Just do illegal actions literally all the time and it doesn't matter because the state doesn't care legal actions literally all the time and it doesn't matter because the state doesn't care.

Yeah, by and large, labor laws in America are set up in favor of the businesses of the employers. If you're familiar with workers comp or any of the systems involved in the federal employees the Federal Employees Compensation Act. It's not enforced. We have cases that are pending arbitration where someone's been run over by a worker, has been run over by a postal vehicle. While they were working, the post office effectively takes them off of payroll to increase the damage done to the individual. Eventually, the Department of Labor says, yes, we will pay this individual and the post office is liable to pay them. But now they are off the rolls, which means there's a greater period of time before this individual gets their money. And there's a certain form that within the post office,

the managers need to fill out, I believe it's an 8130 or, you know, all these forms have some numbers associated with them, that they just refuse to fill out and there's no recourse. There's no path for us to take to make them hurry or make them get this individual the money that they're owed. And some people, this doesn't ruin their lives and they've already paid off their house or whatever. But I imagine for many, many working Americans, that's,

that's their livelihood immediately down the drain. Unfortunately, we need to go to ads for a little bit because unfortunately, my boss's boss's boss's livelihood depends on these ads. Mine technically does too, but like Lord knows I don't see that money. So ads. contributors, it's your perfect companion to stay on top of what's happening now. Plus, you'll get special content just for podcast listeners, like in-depth interviews and a roundup of the week's top headlines. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, I'm Danny Trejo. Would you join me at the fire and dare enter?

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And we are back. And yeah, I guess that leads into the next place you want to go to, which is talking about And we are back. And yeah, I guess that leads into the next place you want to go to, which is talking about what are the specific grievances today that you all are dealing with and the union is not dealing with? Right. So in terms of grievances within the union and our negotiation, a lot of it does have to do with the aforementioned workers' compensation. Employees are simply not getting paid.

I think the biggest problem with the union and the grievance procedure today is that management has figured out this really effective strategy. If they don't settle on the lower levels and it gets pushed up to arbitration, then we have a massive backlog of cases pending arbitration, which could be scheduled years out. Yeah. I think if you do the math for our current rate of handling these cases and how many cases we have, it'll take around 15 years to get through them all. Jesus Christ. And that's assuming there's no new ones. Yeah, yeah. That's like, you know, when you go to a restaurant and there's that little stanchion out there that says it's a five-hour wait from this point, that's the point that we're at.

Anything beyond today will be further along. says it's a five hour wait from this point. That's the point that we're at. Anything beyond today will be further along. Jesus Christ. And so I think that is just a major problem for us, clearly. Yeah. Management just not complying with any of this and it makes it so that our employees have to wait. Something I do want to talk about that's outside of the grievance procedure if we can.

Yeah, of course. Is just what's going on with the post office and the postmaster general. Yeah. All right. So I want to go at this from the customer perspective first, because I think that's the best way to relate to people. I think by and large, people are losing faith in the post office. Either you have no idea what's going on or you don't care, and that's fine.

I'd say before I joined, I didn't think of them at all. You know, they're just the guy that shows up at my house every morning. A lot of people seem to think that the post office is going out of business and our customers are facing increasingly long lines, misdelivered or lost mail, and an increase in postage for a service that is getting worse. People are paying more for worse service. And it's easy to point out those issues from the outside and be rightfully upset at them. I do feel like we're doing a disservice to our customers.

And I'm really not trying to attack them when I say that they're uninformed or clueless to the inner workings of the post office. I do directly want to attack Congress and say that when they post, they had pushed forward a bill called the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act in 2006, which required the post office to pre-fund

100% of its retiree health benefits and liabilities 75 years into the future. What? So overnight, the post office was handed a $5.5 billion burden. And that's where the whole, I don't know if you remember, I certainly wasn't conscious of it at the time, the Save Our Post Office stickers that were being sold

and trying to fund the post office. And really that's where the rhetoric of the post office is going under comes from. The other thing I want to point out is that we are quasi-federal. We actually accept nothing from taxpayer monies. It says it's a service, but really the post office is ran as a business. We don't even get subsidized because they don't need to. My local union president loves to remind us that the post office is a business that has a revenue of $78.2 billion. And he'll want me to stress that the point two is extremely important because point two of a billion is 20 million. They are not in jeopardy. We are not going out of business. And the postmaster

general, Louie DeJoy, he's the second highest paid public servant in America, just underneath the president of the United States. He's played board and clearance Thomas. Wow. Yeah, I think it was like 380 and eighty thousand a year or something like that. DeJoy was appointed by Donald Trump. I'm assuming that's kind of a baseless assumption. So forgive me. I'm not doing my research here, but I'm assuming that they're buddies because DeJoy has no idea. Yeah, wasn't wasn't he the guy that Trump brought in, like specifically to destroy the post office as part of the campaign to steal the election?

Yeah, so there's been a lot about DeJoy defrauding the election process. I wasn't part of the post office to see the inner workings of it. So it's kind of hard for me to say if it was hearsay or not. But I believe it because DeJoy has no idea how to run a post office. He's never been involved with this kind of business. He is in the same way that Trump is a businessman, a horrible businessman, and his delivering for America plan could really be redefined as consolidation efforts for a business. So what they're doing is they're consolidating

infrastructure and the workforce, which means closing post offices in order to save money and shoving three installations into one building. That's why the lines are getting longer. It also means that from dispatch, the employees have to drive an extra mile or two into their working zone, which of course means that we're going to go into overtime. And this just throws a wrench in the mail handling process. He has single-handedly made the service a lot more reliable, and I do think that you're right. Unreliable. Yeah, sorry, more unreliable. And I do think that you're right. Unreliable. Yeah, sorry, more unreliable. And I do think that you're right. He

wants to destroy the post office, not only for the election, but to the point where it makes more sense to go private. Now is the time to point out that DeJoy is a major shareholder in FedEx, in FedEx, which is the subcontractor for the USPS and he has millions of dollars in equity involved. He's got skin in the game. I love open corruption. So great. And so on the local level on what's going on in my office, I actually have one of the better offices

that I've seen or heard about. I have been sent to other offices and I have experienced firsthand the bullying and harassment from management, pushing us to go faster. But even at one of the better offices, I work 60 hour weeks, I don't have set days off. It's not even a rotation. When I get home, I'm spent and my commute isn't that bad. I think I'm about 15 minutes each way. And I really can't imagine driving two hours after an 11 hour shift just to eat and come back and do it again. I mean, that's just unsafe.

Like that's... Yeah, it would be illegal, but since it's in the contract, it's not illegal. Oh my god. So the sacrifice that you make when you're joining the post office. Well, I guess I should explain when you join as a letter carrier, the first 90 days, they can fire you for any reason. And you're something called either a CCA or a PTF, and that means part-time flexible or a city carrier assistant. You are only guaranteed four hours for showing up for work.

You're not guaranteed to be scheduled. So if they don't like you, they just will schedule you once a week for an unknown amount of time until you quit. And if you're in a busy place, then that just means that they're going to work you to death. So when you join the workforce, immediately you lose time with your family, you lose time with your loved ones and your friends.

And I myself am so fortunate that all my loved ones have been beyond understanding. But every time I talk about it, I get asked the same thing. Why don't you quit? And the truth is, this job is awesome. I love it. I want to work it. I just want it to make sense and be livable. And I'm not going to give up just because we haven't reached the point where it is.

You know, if you walk away now, it doesn't get better. I'm sure someone would take my place, but it helps to have people stick around. Catch Jon Stewart back in action on The Daily Show and In Your Ears with The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. From his hilarious satirical takes on today's politics and entertainment to the unique voices of correspondents and contributors, it's your perfect companion to stay on top of what's happening now. Plus, you'll get special content just for podcast listeners, like in-depth interviews and a roundup of the week's top headlines. Listen on the iHeart

Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, I'm Danny Threl, won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters, to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnaal Tales from the Shadows as part of my cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and batter than ever.

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She was like, oh, dad, all they were doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like, I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, oh my god, it's go time.

You actually sent it? Listen to the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network. The iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you go to find your podcast. Snakes, zombies, public speaking, the list of fears is endless. But the real danger is in your hand

when you're behind the wheel. Distracted driving is what's really scary and even deadly. Eyes forward, don't drive distracted. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. That's actually a pretty common, I mean, this is one of Amazon's strategy, right, for student warehouses. They intentionally want to cycle through people because the more new people you have I mean, this is one of Amazon's shreds, right? Through their warehouses, they intentionally

want to cycle through people. Because the more new people you have continuously cycling through, the less organized and the less sort of like, less knowledge they have, less you have to pay them, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so if you can just cause high turnover rates on purpose, that's a thing that a lot of these sort of business ghoul, like nightmare factory people like love in their workforces and makes everyone else's life just a living

hell. But you know, they're getting they're still getting paid. Right. And so I try and hold that in mind when I've been overworked and I'm at the end of one of my major shifts because I had to carry part of another route because someone else called out. I really have to stop and think to myself that this other person who called out is just as exhausted as I am, is probably going to get a letter of warning for calling out. That's another issue. They don't want you to use your leave. Jesus Christ.

I'm going to file an unfair labor practice because they've been doing that a lot at my office as well. It reminds me a lot, our issues of your recent episode, I think it was you, about the nurses union, the shift change episode. Their members are dealing with a lot of the same things where the unions are so big that they become detached from the membership and we are finding out afterwards what our bargaining agreements are, what our strategy was. Everything's after the contract has been signed and that's just not how unions were meant to be. They're

meant to be from the bottom up by the workers, for the workers, but it really does feel like it's like national is its own entity. And so I guess that would bring us to talking about the union and the future of the union. Yeah, let's get into that. So I got to be careful here because Brian Renfro, he's our national leader of the union. He's been struggling with problems in his personal life. And I don't feel like I'm ousting him as it's public knowledge, at least within the post office, it's public knowledge.

He's dealing with substance abuse, with alcoholism, and that's something that hits very close to home within my family. And I really don't wanna demonize that he's struggling. But what I do wanna say is, when you're going through something like that, and you've accepted a position on the national level like this, you really need to either step down or appoint someone to handle things

in your place. As negotiations started over a year ago, he kind of went missing and it was later revealed that he was an inpatient, which is fine, get your help, but there was nothing left, no notes left for us to strategize with. And our membership is just in the dark. And beyond that, the leadership has gone missing. It's very dark times for the NLC. What is that that's also just sort of like an organizational. Problem right like if if you're if you're organization is set up in such a way that a small number of people being incapacitated means total paralysis and no one is any idea what's going on. That's just a bad way to run something.

And especially, it's a terrible way to run a union because the union's power is supposed to be from its organization and from the collective power of a large organized group of people who can make decisions for themselves. And if that's not happening, and you get to the point where these decisions are being made by a very small number of people who can just sort of vanish like that's

for whatever. And, you know, literally whatever reason that is. Right. It could just be you get sick. It could just be like whatever happens. That's just a terrible way to organize things. And I guess it's also like I want to make take it like a little tiny tangent to be like, if you're doing any organizing project, your goal is to organize yourself out of a job like you're like. Ideally, if you were in an organization, it should be able to function without you. There should not be having an indispensable person is a fiasco.

Don't do that. This is true of both like your tiny local mutual aid group, as much as is true of your giant national union. So this has been this has been Mia talking about the indispensable person don't have. Well, yeah, that's kind of the funny thing about joining a union from an anarchist perspective. It gets a little funky how hierarchical they typically are and the problems that we know we are going to face when you have a system that's built like a pyramid. Yeah. Oh yeah and so I was saying we're

in dark times but there's such a bright future that I can see for us. Branch 9 of the NALC and namely this individual Tyler Vassar who when I had originally posted on Reddit asking for attention he's the one that I thought would be great for this interview. His branch, branch 9, has passed a resolution to form an open bargaining strategy for contract negotiations. And I hope this sweeps the nation. We're not allowed to strike, as I've mentioned, and our leadership is so shy when it comes to activism or mobilization of the workforce.

They don't want to touch the topic. The closest thing we have to it is a rally that is enough is enough that's being held in Baltimore soon about the violence that's being done to postal workers. We're being robbed and we're being harassed. But even then, we're missing a large chunk of the danger that is posed to postal workers. Because yes, we're being robbed on the streets, but we're also being bullied and harassed inside of our workplaces by management, by the people who are supposed to empower us

to do the job effectively. And so, they don't wanna touch the topic of a strike, I think, for fear of retaliation. But to me, pushing for the right to strike is a – I'm not sure how to word this. It is such an important part of the NALC's identity, the postal strike of 1970, that it seems silly to ignore it today and pretend like it didn't happen. So for the future, I think that activism is our key to success.

I think that the old heads that lead our union come from a time where unions were frowned upon, where activism was frowned upon. But I think that public opinion will be largely in our favor and that public opinion can really put pressure on the legislative branch, on Congress. And if we are transparent about our union, what we're asking for, the issues that we're facing,

I think that the public would be on our side. If the people in America knew that management was falsifying time records or training records and interfering with workers' comps' claim and back pay, or that they're not paying the settlements that they've agreed to pay, that they're not scheduling arbitration sessions big or small, that they would care and that they would join us in the streets. One major thing that happened, I think it was last year in the summer, we had a letter carrier. His name is Eugene Gates, who died in the Texas heat.

Jesus, yeah. Because management told him not to take as many breaks or he would face discipline. These pressures that we face when you're threatened that you will lose your job if you don't listen to us, you will push yourself to the point of exhaustion and further. Yeah. I think that the post office killed Mr. Gates, and there wasn't as much outcry or anger behind the movement. I often find myself thinking that while I don't have the answers, I do know that we need to care more.

Yeah. And it's hard to care when you're exhausted, I acknowledge that. Yeah, well, I think there's two things about that. One, I mean, I don't, and this is something I've gotten to with a lot of the sort of interviews that I've done on this show is that. I think. A lot of very, very basic jobs have labor conditions that are unimaginably appalling that people just don't know about. And I think people are very sympathetic to once they

actually understand what's happening in the kind of just a horror show stuff that's happening in these workplaces. And the second thing I think that's sort of important in terms of getting people to, you know, like try trying to actually do like mass mobilizations, even just to get people to understand what's going on is that I think a lot of people who are facing these kind of conditions think that they're alone and think that it's just something that happens to them or they've been in them for so long.

They think that it's sort of normal and having a bunch of people go no like a this happens and B it shouldn't happen is extraordinarily powerful because you know that that that feeling of isolation is is the thing that all of that, you know, that your bosses depend on to make sure that, you know, you just keep going along with these conditions, even though they are just objectively horrific. And I think any strategy that's not based on that is just not going to go anywhere. Right. And one of the strategies that I really want to push forward as I grow within the union, and don't get me wrong, I want to stay a steward. I think that educating our members and being part of the workforce is my place in the union.

But what I want to push is for a union solidarity, I want the NALC to hire organizers, specifically organizers, to try and get the public mobilized and as well as the workforce so that we can put pressure on Congress, so that we can show our bargaining teams that we support them, and so that we can have clearly defined bargaining terms. And yeah, I think that having solidarity between unions and reaching out to the other movements in a time where union support is higher than ever is such a clear path that we are just ignoring for whatever reason because people are afraid to speak out against the post office. And so I'm really not sure what's going to happen with our current contract but I do know that the fight

never ends and that while we stand on the shoulders of giants we have to pay respect to these giants by not giving up now. And I'm a relatively new employee and steward, but I'm really walking in the footsteps of some warriors. The branch president I mentioned, Ken Lurch, has given me so much support and education and has done so much hard work over the years, that I don't have to reinvent the wheel, of us do we just have to continue the struggle. Yeah and I think I think that's a great place to end you unless you have anything else that you want to make sure we get to? No nothing nothing on this

topic. Yeah so how can how can people support you and postal workers just in general if there's a specific place you want them to go? In general, there is on the NALC site, which is just nalc.com, there is a section where you put in your address and it'll give you the email addresses, the phone numbers for your representatives so that you can make some noise. Again, we're amazingly limited in what we can do, so there's not really anything that you can donate to help us, including the Letter Carrier Political Fund. But yeah, just pay attention to us.

Maybe leave a bottle of water out in your front door, says for the postal worker. You know, there's nothing better that you can do than talking about it. Word of mouth is the best advertisement. Well, yeah, we will put that in the show notes. I hope you all win. And I don't think I've ever said this genuinely in my life, but thank you for your service.

I appreciate that. Yeah, I never imagined myself to become a federal employee. And it is just as bad as I imagined. Yeah. So I do want to shout out, actually, it's a little meta, I guess. But I do want to shout out actually, it's a little meta I guess, but I do want to shout out some important episodes of It Could Happen Here that hit me very closely if I can. Yeah, yeah, go for it.

Because a lot of the people listening will be postal workers that have been pointed in this direction. Please look at the Myanmar episodes, the free Burma, the Burmese revolution, and look at the work that, Mia, I believe you've done the same work as James with Border Kindness. Those are two topics that I think y'all hit really well, and that really touched me as a person.

Sometimes I'll re-listen to those episodes when I'm having a hard day, just to remind myself that it's all the same. It's all the same fight. Yeah, it absolutely is. And I mean, I think that's sort of the beauty. I mean, it's both the beauty and the horror of this world is that on the one hand,

all of us are being crushed by the same sets of forces. But on the other hand, it means that whatever fight that you're taking is also a part of the larger fight, forget all of us free. Yeah, exactly. So just fight the burnout and stay in the fight. Yeah. Yeah, this is been Nick Kadapa here. Go make trouble for people who suck. It Could Happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media,

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