ROCKLAND COUNTY, NY – Over 150 Rockland County residents showed up at post offices in New City and Nyack on Saturday, August 22nd, to protect the Post Office from Trump and declare that Postmaster General DeJoy must resign. This action was part of a nationwide mobilization that took place simultaneously at over 800 post offices across the country.

Organizations involved in this action included Rockland United, Rockland Citizens Action Network, Moms Demand Action, Indivisible, the Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights, MoveOn, NAACP, RuralOrganizing.org, Service Employees International Union, Vets for the People, and the Working Families Party.

This coordinated action occurred in response to recent events following Trump’s June 16th installation of mega donor, Louis DeJoy, as the new Postmaster General. In just two months, Postmaster General DeJoy has reassigned or displaced dozens of postal executives. DeJoy has called for hiring freezes, slashed hours, and created long delays, even stopping delivery in some places. Meanwhile, it has come to light that DeJoy had a multimillion-dollar stake in the USPS’s competitors.

The continued assault on the Postal Service is not only a clear attempt by Trump and DeJoy to sabotage vote-by-mail ballots in November, but also a hit on vulnerable populations across the country who rely on the USPS for essential goods, medications, and other services.

In a televised interview on August 13th, President Donald Trump told Fox Business morning that he would block additional funding and election assistance for the US Postal Service to sabotage mail-in voting. When asked, Trump said, “They want $25 billion — billion — for the post office. Now they need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots…But if they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting.”

Suzanne Hollmann, an organizer with Rockland United, stated, “We are determined to defend the essential services provided by the United States Postal Service—including our ability to vote by mail—and will push back on the Trump administration’s attacks.“ She showed up to today’s protest with a mask, hand sanitizer, and her elementary school aged son, who proudly sported a sign that read “Hands Off Our Post Office.”

Ivanya Alpert, former Village of Piermont Trustee and a steering committee member of Rockland United, expressed similar sentiments: “My 76 year old mother has never missed an election in her life. She is terrified of going to the polls to vote during a pandemic, but she will if she has to,” she said, “I can’t believe that Trump and DeJoy are willing to put older people like my mom at risk because they can’t win an election without voter suppression techniques like sabotaging the postal service.”

“In this crippling CoVid era, the postal service is more than ever an integral part of American life,” said Emily King, the organizer of the New City demonstration. “People in this town rely on the United States Postal Service for medications, paychecks, social security checks, and mail-in voting. They have found ways to create small businesses and non-profits that rely on the Post Office for reliable and reasonably priced shipping. Now even that lifeline is being destroyed by the government turning against its own public service. I wanted to bring this kind of rally in support of our postal workers to New City because they touch all of our lives. Every mailed-in ballot in Rockland will be delivered through this little branch to the Board of Elections. With half the employees, twice the work and now no ability to work overtime to finish each day’s workload, our postal people have been critically hamstrung by their own upper management. They have always been there for us. Now it’s our turn to stand up for them!”

Residents attending the rally clapped for those who were using the post office, encouraged everyone to buy stamps, and took a few minutes to thank the postal workers for all their hard work.

Photos by Rockland United.