Organizing Federal Workers to Protect Democracy

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain minor errors.

[00:00:00] Cayden Mak: Welcome to Block and Build, a podcast from Convergence magazine. I’m your host and the publisher of Convergence, Caden Mock. On this show, we’re building a roadmap for the movement that’s working to block the impacts of rising authoritarianism while building the strength and resilience of the broad front that we need to win.

Before we get started, I want to invite you, of course, to join our subscriber program. Have Convergence Magazine is an independent publication that relies on the generosity of our readers and listeners to create the rigorous, thoughtful takes that you’ve come to expect from us, week in and week out. You can become a subscriber at convergencemag.

com slash donate. Any amount helps, either as a one time donation or a recurring monthly or annual subscription. You may have noticed. that we are making some slight adjustments to our publishing schedule here in the new year. The audio podcast is going to publish to your podcast feed first thing Monday morning instead of Friday afternoon.

But you may not be aware that we do also live stream this show to YouTube almost every single Friday at 2 p. m. Eastern, 11 a. m. Pacific. You can subscribe click the notification button on Convergence’s YouTube page to join in this conversation live. Links for all that are in the show notes and we hope See you sometime on YouTube.

This week on the show, I am joined first by the editor-in-chief at The Forge, Clarissa Brooks, and the editorial director of In These Times, Jessica Stites, to discuss our recent collaborative publication, left out the missing election narratives. Then I’m joined by Race Forwards, vice President for Institutional and Sectoral Change Calc.

Kathy Albisa, as well as Lauren Leib, who’s the president of NTEU chapter 340, and Chris Doles, the president of IFPTE local 98, to discuss how federal workers are organizing to protect vital state services under threat by the Trump administration. But first, of course, headlines and oh boy what a week it has been.

I feel like this week has been honestly as confusing as it has been clarifying and I want to start out by saying that when we decide what to talk about at the top of this show, we want to make sure that what we are keeping you abreast of in terms of what’s happening, that we’re doing that in ways that actually help you do things and not just feel overwhelmed frightened, freaked out.

So much of the good work that we know that’s happening right now is going to be happening on a very local level. So if you’ve got something that you’d like us to discuss and highlight, you can drop us a Mailbag email to tell us more about what that thing is at mailbag at convergencemag. com. So now, the shit.

We knew that we’d see a flurry of executive orders in the first few days of the second Trump administration. We’ve talked on this show before about the fact that this overwhelming sense of chaos is literally designed to make you feel powerless, and part of the point of the executive order deluge is as Steve Bannon liked to say, flooding the zone with shit.

While many of these executive orders are extremely threatening and dangerous, they are still subject to judicial review and often require technical implementation. Obviously they do set the tone for what comes next and we do need to understand them and be vigilant to and prepared to protect the people institutions and resources that sit in their crosshairs.

Unfortunately, a lot of this important information is being buried by social media feeds because we are spending a lot of time reacting to provocative memes, like you know whose gesture and what it means for his politics. This the breathless mainstream coverage about is he or isn’t he is actually feeding this machine.

Again, it is designed to be demobilizing and the far right commentariat is also delighted to make fun of us. as a way of drumming up their bass. It’s also frankly not easy always to separate the wheat from the chaff, and it’s totally understandable that we get swept away from time to time. I do think it’s part of my job on this show to help you digest it, so let’s take a second and look at what’s moving and what might be actionable in what’s moving.

Trump’s maybe biggest swing for the fences this week was his attempt to repeal birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. A U. S. district judge, who also happens to be a Reagan appointee immediately blocked the order, which stops it from taking effect for at least 14 days while it moves through litigation.

Speaking of litigation, 22 states have joined Massachusetts vs. Trump, challenging the order. This should be wild, Trump’s lawyers are literally using the same talking points used to defend the Chinese Exclusion Act in the 19th century, so, that’s cool. I’m also in no way asserting that migrants and their families are safe from the Trump administration.

Across the country, Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have been ramping up activity to enact his plans, and he’s got a lot of sycophants in federal and state positions who are excited to ram through his most racist and aggressive deportation policies. I’ve been seeing plenty of people on social sharing vague posts about seeing CBP agents, but I want to remind you that those vague posts about just seeing agents don’t do a lot to help people respond and may just stoke fear.

To put it simply, be specific about who you see, Which is how many agents, how many vehicles, which agency they belong to, how they’re dressed, what equipment they have with them, as well as what they’re doing, specifically, and where they are. I’d also encourage you to connect with a local rapid response organization, and if you don’t know who that is in your place, Our location?

Figure that out now. Get online and find those people before something happens. I even have my local Immigrant Defense Network’s hotline saved in my phone and I encourage you to do the same. Verify their activity before you blast it out in public on social media. We’ve got to react to this stuff from a place of power and preparation, not online.

Of panic. Xiomara Carpeño, a member of our editorial board, has put together a quick primer on how to prepare and respond to ICE activity in your neighborhood that goes into all of this in a little more depth. We’ll put a link to that article in the show notes. We were also promised this executive order about gender, and boy did we get one.

Frankly, a lot of it’s pretty incoherent, and none of its targets are surprising, but once again, the most vulnerable trans people are the ones who are most targeted by the executive order. That’s trans women in prisons, trans people seeking relief from domestic violence, homeless trans people. All of these folks are being put at escalated risk under this order.

A lot of the fight back against this order is still taking shape, since a lot of the order is about creating the sort of theoretical framework by which the federal government can separate people out by quote unquote biological sex and pointing to ways that they want that to be implemented, from sex segregated quote unquote intimate spaces to rules and requirements around it.

equal employment opportunity. This has far reaching consequences beyond the lives and livelihoods of transgender people, and we will be talking more about this as more information becomes available. All I’ll say for now is that a world without trans people has never existed, and it never will. So this is a lot.

It’s important to remember, organizing is still moving at state and local levels all across the country. Mobilization is underway for a critical state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, for example. Organizers in Philadelphia recently stopped the 76ers from moving their Arena into the city’s Chinatown neighborhood.

Immigrant rights groups across the country are also in high gear. Leading trainings. You might be able to find one either online or physically near you and working on the rapid response, organizing again, the spectacle is designed to frustrate us into compliance and demobilizes us. You don’t have to let it demobilize you.

For the past several months, we at Convergence have collaborated with our Movement Media Alliance colleagues at The Forge, In These Times, and The Real News Network to curate a collection of essays, reporting, and conversations by organizers, writers, and cultural workers across the country that represent narratives that we felt were missing in the pre and post election coverage of the bill.

of this election. The collaborative publication is titled Left Out, The Missing Election Narratives, and while some of these pieces are published in the latest print edition of In These Times, you can also find a link to the full collection in today’s show notes. Joining me to talk about this project are Editor in Chief at The Forge, Clarissa Brooks, and Editorial Director of In These Times, Jessica Stites.

Clarissa, thank you so much for joining me today. 

[00:08:18] Clarissa Brooks: Hey, y’all. 

[00:08:20] Cayden Mak: And Jessica, it is always good to see you as well. First of Jessica, could you just briefly lay out for our listeners where they might be able to find more about this project and what really the project is? 

[00:08:34] Jessica Stites: Sure, I think the best place is if you go to inthestimes.

com slash left dash out. We’ve got a landing page that has all the content and also It explains some of the reasoning behind it and the participants in the collaboration. 

[00:08:49] Cayden Mak: Awesome. And Clarissa, I want to ask you about the genesis of this idea and because it really the Forge took the lead on putting this collaboration together and what the thinking kind of was about why this needed to be a collaboration between multiple publications.

[00:09:04] Clarissa Brooks: Yeah, so we have been planning an election issue for a minute. But I think we all collectively came back from the results of the election. Like, something’s happening that we can’t put a finger on. And we just started brainstorming and thinking about what legacy media was saying about the elections.

That just wasn’t actually accurate to what our people were seeing and feeling. And we wanted to kind of float the issue around that. And we found a lot. From there, and we’re able to, yeah, just build up a different narrative about organizing and the left that, I mean, still to this day, isn’t being told accurately.

[00:09:42] Cayden Mak: Right on. For each of you and maybe we can start with you, Clarissa, are there, are there themes or narratives that the mainstream media missed that came up in this project that you found surprising or that you’re particularly proud that we got to surface through this collaboration? Yeah, 

[00:09:58] Clarissa Brooks: it’s always like, Whenever we get to talk about how young people understand politics, it’s always exciting.

So a friend of mine, Delaney Vandergriff, wrote an essay for Scalawag that we got to use about young people and Democrats that just feel so resonant. And I think with history is going to like be something that we’re proud to say that we published. And then also the piece that we got from Maria Esch about abortion in Arizona, which was a huge win.

And I just personally haven’t seen a lot of coverage about the wins that happened. And there were more stories that we wanted to do that we didn’t get to, but yeah, just things like that. I think what you said earlier about this spectacle is there to demobilize us. I’m seeing it happen in real time now.

So it’s good to know that we were able to bring a different side to things. 

[00:10:46] Cayden Mak: Totally. Jessica, any, any highlights for you or things that you were surprised by? 

[00:10:51] Jessica Stites: Yeah, I think a narrative we always see after every election is of the left as sort of a spoiler or disengaged with elections or, you know, responsible for bad outcomes.

And so One thing I wanted to investigate was how organizers actually engaged with this election. And I think I was surprised by the sort of how much the left like left it all on the field. In multiple ways, I think first to try to make a better candidate for the Democrats. I mean, I think the left was the only voice for a primary back in, you know, December of 2023 and just the uncommitted movement as this incredible grassroots movement, but that was also, you know, engaging with electoral politics in a very good faith way and saying like, you can be better and this is your interest to be better as well as a moral imperative.

We just told the story of that and all the work that went into it as well as, you know, this, this real moral dilemma that people ended up in when there was sort of a tipping point after the convention and we knew that Paris was not going to do something about Gaza, not going to make, you know, real steps.

And so sort of what do we do then? But just kind of staying with people as they put in all that work and not erasing it. And then at the same time despite Despite the many flaws of Kamala Harris just the enormous get out the vote work that came from the left that, you know, said, this is the terrain we want to be fighting on that, you know, not the terrain of a Donald Trump presidency and you know, their biggest ever union, get out the vote efforts in Pennsylvania you know, All this sort of all these electoral groups like Working Families and Sunrise coming together to like ship people to swing states to work with community groups money flooding into community groups.

I mean, it was enormous. I sort of feel like, okay, we can stand here saying we did all we could. 

[00:12:58] Cayden Mak: Yeah, yeah, I feel like so much of what people who are not connected to movement see is just the sort of like the spectacle and the polling and the like, data stuff, but these stories about like people on the ground really trying to make a difference are how elections are actually happening.

Yeah. fought and won. So I appreciate the collaboration. It really was a delight to work with you all. Before we go, also one more thing is do you think, what do you think is important about collaboration like this, especially in the moment that we’re in? I don’t know, Jessica, do you want to talk, start talking about Things that, that you think collaboration made possible.

[00:13:37] Jessica Stites: Yeah, I, it was sort of amazing being in this room because of the breadth of connection on the ground. I could say, Hey, does anyone know, you know, like a Palestinian organizer in Dearborn or like someone in North Carolina? And someone would go, Oh yeah, I’m close to this group or I know this organizer. So just being able to represent the full grassroots left felt amazing.

[00:14:01] Cayden Mak: Yeah, anything for you, Clarissa, about what collaboration made possible for The Forge? 

[00:14:05] Clarissa Brooks: Yeah, I think similarly, this was my first time doing something like really big and fancy, so getting to do it with Jessica was like such a joy. And then just like our election calls were so grounding, just to be like, okay, I can like funnel my feelings into a thing.

And the best part about collaboration is always, like, you get to see the world with bigger eyes than maybe just what your world looks like, which is what we realized. And some of the low of the election results was all of us being like, Oh, my friends are seeing this. My family’s seeing this. Our algorithms are all very different and how that impacted the election so much was important.

But yeah, it was truly one of like the funnest work things I’ve ever done. So I’m so proud of it. Truly. It’s been my personality for a few months, so. 

[00:14:53] Cayden Mak: Awesome. Well, it’s really awesome to work with you all. Again, we’ll put a link to the landing page in these times in the show notes so y’all can check it out.

Jessica, Clarissa, always good to see both of you and take good care. We’ll see you again soon. Excellent. For our next segment by way of introduction, I’ve been thinking a lot about how friend of the pod, Daniel Hunter one of the folks who started Choose Democracy, how one of the things that he tells us.

to that we have as a job for us, the general public, but I mean, also for movement media, right? That like one of our jobs right now is to celebrate people who are in positions to do the right thing. This encourages others to join them in doing the right thing and also makes it harder for the people in power to get back at them and to exact revenge.

And one area where I think this is really, really important. Live right now is for the millions of people who work for the government, the federal workers in particular do a lot of things for us, many of which may be invisible, but are also deeply critical to everyday life to talk more about the challenges and opportunities facing government workers in this moment and how they’ve been preparing.

for the second Trump administration. I’m joined by Kathy Albisa, whose work at Race Forward has focused on organizing government workers to address structural inequalities, and federal workers, Lauren Lieb, who also happened to be the president of NTEU Chapter 340, and Chris Doles, who’s the president of IFPTE Local 98, to talk about these efforts preserving vital state services for this coming period.

Kathy, it is great to see you. Thanks for joining us. Thank you and thank you for joining us today. Lauren and Chris, it’s nice to meet both of you. Yeah, thanks for having us. 

[00:16:34] Chris Dols: Yeah. Really appreciate all the work you do. 

[00:16:35] Cayden Mak: So let’s start out with the big picture. Kathy, I’d, I’d like to start with you to give us kind of a quick overview of the work that’s kind of set, set the stage for this moment.

The work that you’ve been doing around organizing government workers for racial equity. 

[00:16:50] Cathy Albisa: So we work with government workers at all levels of government, actually from federal to state to local. And I know there’s a lot of organizers out there, so I’m going to put it this way. When you think about organizing workers within government, think about organizing a workforce, not just to change terms and conditions of work, which are important, but to actually transform the very institutions they’re in.

Government workers often come to the table because they’re mission driven in the same way that People in movement organizations are. They want to ensure public health. They want to ensure good transportation. They want to ensure a safe environment. So those workers are, are eager and keen to organize into improving the very structures in which they find themselves working.

And by giving them support, bringing together, creating a container, there’s enormous potential for changing the day to day democracy that we experience. 

[00:17:43] Cayden Mak: It makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah, it sounds like it’s very related to the sort of like bargaining for the common good kind of framework that we get from like a lot of folks in teachers unions movement, stuff like that, that this is the quality of the work environment is affects a lot more than just the workers themselves.

I’d like to hear also from Lauren and Chris about each of your work and, and how you got involved in, in your union locals. Chris, let’s start with you. What’s the work that you do and how did you get involved in federal union movement? 

[00:18:11] Chris Dols: So I became a federal worker almost exactly eight years ago.

I I like to joke, I started my federal service the same time Donald Trump did in January of 2017. I had been, I’m a, I’m a dredger by vocation. I spent eight years traveling the country dredging various. ports and building beaches. And most of that work was contracted to the company that I worked for at the time by the army core of engineers.

And like many of us in the dredging industry the stability and work life balance of. Dredge life doesn’t really lend itself to raising a family. And so I made the switch to the government side. It’s a very common trajectory for a lot of us federal workers. And so I’ve spent the last eight years as a cost engineer and a dredging subject matter expert in the Army Corps of Engineers.

And like I said, I did join the federal service at the same time that Trump’s first term. was getting going and I was very pleasantly surprised to, upon taking the position, learn that I had a union. I’m a civil engineer. I never really expected, despite always being a pro union guy, I never really expected to land in a unionized workforce.

Most. You know, white collar civil engineers aren’t union but it was very pleasantly surprised to find out I was, especially in the context of, you know, a Trump administration that made its views of public sector workers very clear especially in 2018 as the attacks on the federal unions really ramped up and that was the same year that my daughter was born and it was actually around issues of, of protecting a childcare subsidy.

That was very nearly cut. My local is the first thing I did with my local was to defend the army fee assistance, childcare subsidy at the army corps of engineers. We’re all civilian employees. And there’s this, there’s a generous childcare subsidy that those of us with children benefit from, and they were trying to cut it.

And we successfully beat them back. And I I guess I got the taste of what it looks like to build solidarity, to organize with my coworkers. And it was a big victory and I haven’t really looked back since. My local, local 98. Led that fight really nationally, even internationally. And we continue to grow.

I think we’re a very strong local. We’re very principled. We do, I think, some good organizing. And the reason I know Lauren, I think the reason we’re here today is because Local 98 has, I think, recognized rightly that no matter how strong a given one local might be ultimately we’re part of a, of a federal sector where there’s, you know, 2.

1 million of us federal servants, not counting the post workers and all the contractors and everybody else that makes up the federal sector. But one local is not going to be able to, You know stop the, the attacks. And, and ultimately we need, we need a sectoral strategy and well, I’m sure we’ll talk more about it, but that’s where Lauren and I met each other in the federal unionists network.

And yeah, that brings us up to today. It’s skipping a lot of details, but 

[00:21:17] Cayden Mak: awesome. Cool. Yeah, it also does help that YALE’s acronym is F. U. N., which is really, like, we love a good acronym that is also a word. Lauren, could you tell us a little bit about the work that you do and how you found yourself into the federal workers movement?

[00:21:31] Lauren Lieb: Yeah, yeah. I’m, so I work for the Bureau of Land Management, so it’s kind of part of the Department of the Interior. And I’m a Fluid Minerals Land Log Examiner, so it tells you nothing, right? But basically the agency I work for is basically one of, like, the largest land management agencies.

We manage over one tenth of the nation’s like surface area and about 30 percent of our like mineral state. So like oil and gas, coal, you know, silver, copper, all of those things. And do a lot with like, you know, recreation. It’s a multi use mission. So, you know, cultural, historic preservation, ecological conservation, protecting biodiversity, range line management.

So all of these things, all of these mandates that we have And figure it out like how to manage our federal lands. With those kind of often competing mandates, so it’s very interesting work, but I do work. In the oil and gas division And but what I do is specifically i’ve been working with working on like bonding oil and gas operators and going after and helping a lot with the orphan well program, so Trying to plug and reclaim like the You I think there’s about 15, 000, like, abandoned wells just on federal lands in the United States.

And so it’s all the onshore, like, everything on land. So not the offshore drilling, but, you know when you hear fracking, a lot of that’s stuff that we’re involved in, or at least, you know, trying to regulate and manage responsibly. So I yeah, just work with that to make sure that the people who have profited off of those oil and gas wells also do their due diligence and plugging and reclaiming them to minimize the impact to our environment and our communities.

So it’s a lot of work. And as you can probably tell, we’re heavily politicized lately in, in public discourse and in the media. And so when I joined Yeah, I became a federal employee. Like we were not own organized. We were not a unionized office. But we did actually organize during the last Trump administration.

What happened was they used our agency as a testing ground for, I think, what they’re trying to do again, which was basically eradicate it. and eliminate a lot of our headquarters counterparts by forcing them to move outside of D. C. and dispersing them all throughout, like, the West. And that basically led to, we lost about 85 percent of our headquarters counterparts and so much institutional knowledge.

And that was really a wake up call for us that if we, we need to have a union to basically have a say in the decisions that affect us. To protect us from those attacks so that we can continue to serve the public and protect our public lands. So we organize and we are fighting back because we know that the work we do is important.

And so it’s been, yeah, just an incredible experience. And we too know that. We need to be broadening our collaboration and our organizing capacity because it’s a big fight ahead of us, but we know we can win when we’re all in it together. 

[00:24:36] Cayden Mak: Yeah, one, one sort of like technical follow up on that. I’m curious to know, like, in the, like, when you’re talking about reducing And, like, eliminating those, like, headquarters positions.

Like, what is, what is the sort of direct impact on your work of, of that kind of downsizing? 

[00:24:55] Lauren Lieb: A lot of work doesn’t get done, to be honest. You have to find somebody else to fill in those gaps. We’re losing, you know, important guidance on how to interpret some of these regulations. It created a lot of fear and it also really prevented The agency from being able to fill those positions.

So it’s, you know, like robbing Peter to pay Paul, like people are like then moving up and then the work on the ground level isn’t getting done. So it’s, it really created a very chilling effect on like, do I want to progress within this agency? Should I leave things like that. So it, there’s just, I think the impacts are still playing out to be honest.

It’s, it’s almost too early to tell the full scope of, of. Of that decision, 

[00:25:37] Chris Dols: if I may first I should tack on the necessary disclaimer, because anytime I mentioned that I work for the Army Corps of Engineers, I’m actually required by regulation to state that none of my views necessarily correspond with those of the Army Corps of Engineers or the Department of Defense.

You’ll be surprised to know. But I have to say it, and I don’t know if Lauren, you have to say it too, but it might be worth it. It’s good looking out. 

[00:26:04] Lauren Lieb: Yeah, no, our views are our own. I’m on my non duty time. I’m off the clock. And I’m here in my own personal capacity. But I’m just sharing my experiences as, as a federal worker, but yeah, they do not reflect the agency or, or my union.

[00:26:17] Chris Dols: Yeah, but I want to build on the point because you know, I think in some respects what we’re facing is a continuity of, of, of attacks that we’ve had for decades, you know, those of us who, you know, may be in certain political circles, talk a lot about neoliberalism, neoliberalism has been corroding the government for a long time.

And I think it’s very intentional that. You know, traditionally public assets have become either explicitly privatized or de facto privatized. So the public assets of just the information that makes our agencies, make it, makes it possible for our agencies to pursue their missions. That has been either again, systematically or just de facto transferred to the private sector.

And it’s really. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s bad faith by the people who are doing it. Because the same people say, Oh, we’ve lost government efficiencies, but those losses of efficiencies are traceable to the very cuts in, or, or, or the transfer. Of headquarters and the inevitable cuts in jobs and the loss of expertise that comes with it.

So I think it’s just worth, worth stating that in some respects, what we’re dealing with is just a continuity of past attacks, but I do think, and we’ll probably get into this, there is something of a qualitative change happening right now where I think they’re trying to consolidate the victories of the last 40 years into a much more serious attack on the, the democratic civil service that we would, that we occupy.

[00:27:53] Cayden Mak: Yeah, no, I think that’s a really important context for the moment that we’re in and that like a lot of the work that we’re trying to do here at Convergence is also be like, look, this is part of a longer term project by people who think that like everything should be basically run by private corporations.

And I think that like your description of neoliberalism is also really good where it’s like, I don’t know, it’s the whole, like, the best way to predict the future is to create it by, you know, sort of like like cutting the foundations out from under agencies that do critical important work for us.

And then being like, why are they so inefficient? It’s like, why would you? It’s like, it’s like the, the sort of like ideological equivalent of like kids being like, stop hitting yourself, you know? Like but yeah, I think that’s, that’s a really important, really important observation. I, I am very curious about the qualitative change because I think that, you know, talking about all the executive orders that have come down this week, like, We just touched the tip of the iceberg at the top of the show.

And that like the 20 odd that we’ve seen this, this week are really going to be the tip of the iceberg. What is that qualitative difference? I mean, I spent two days 

[00:29:03] Cathy Albisa: reading every single one. And there’s about over 50 at this point. Some of them are, are not particularly relevant, but there is, there are through lines.

And there is a, a, a method to the madness in the executive orders, right? You see a cluster that are simply advancing raw racism. Right. You see the attacks on equity. You see the attacks on the federal aviation administration saying they hired people with infirmities and we know who they’re talking about.

Even informing an advisory council, they took a swipe saying science has been degraded by People concerned with identity. So you have this through line of absolutely racist executive orders. And they are not just about the composition of the federal government. They’re about eliminating environment programs.

They’re about eliminating all work that would benefit communities of color. And they include the, the, the The substance of attack right on things like clawing back the inflation reduction and grants, which were awarded through a kind of equity lens. And then you have. This loop going right to the federal worker piece, two groupings that are a vicious attack on federal workers, right?

Literally threatening by their thinly veiled threats about changing what the performance plans are and who gets to supervise them and whether they’ll get to be reassigned and taking away their job security. And those, together with another grouping that are freezing regulations, right, literally not letting government do its work, except for ICE, other law enforcement, uh, agent hiring freeze.

And there’s also a regulatory freeze. So they’re stripping government of every capacity, along with terrorizing workers. And what many people believe is that this is just part of what they call the unitary executive theory strategy, which is an argument. All power of this vast federal government should rest in one person.

So if Trump says a particular product is not a carcinogen, you cannot dispute it. And if you are, if you do, you’re a cowed, unprotected, and threatened workforce that isn’t going to be there very long, right? So it is, it is not the, I think the qualitative difference is that it’s gone from neoliberalism on steroids to concentrate corporate power to actually shifting into trying to create other autocratic power, really dismantling very core democratic notions.

And I, and the last thing I’ll say is if you think each round of backlash in the United States, especially to racial justice, you see things like dismantling of the public through the neoliberal agenda, right in the wake of the civil rights movement, when there were sort of victories on inclusion. And then you see the second, this next backlash, right?

This is what Reverend Barbara called the third reconstruction. The first one was obviously the actual first reconstruction. Then you see this willingness to actually dismantle democracy itself. Rather than have multiracial democracy. And that’s not the only driver, but it is a key historical pattern.

And I see the workers being the targets as a way of getting to adequacy and control this vast executive branch. It’s responsible for so much of our day to day well being.

[00:32:43] Cayden Mak: Yeah, yeah, no that tracks and one of the things that that makes me think about too is just like actually how critical the fight back in the first Trump administration was within Federal Civil Service and, and the, the kinds of agencies and organizations that Lauren and Chris work for that, like, the way in which you all basically became a front line of defense for a lot of us in ways that I think were not made super legible, and I, I imagine some of that Maybe strategic and tactical, but also some of that, I think is just the fact that, like, people who don’t work in the federal government are not aware of the fact that there is a union movement and that there is organized fight back and, and, and collective bargaining within the federal government.

I see Lauren, you’re nodding along. You’re like, yeah, I’m curious to hear from both of you, like what like about, like, That experience of being, I guess, like, in that front line during the first administration and how that’s kind of informing your approach now. 

[00:33:45] Lauren Lieb: Well, I think it’s, you know, generally too, because a lot of us sometimes didn’t even know we had a union, didn’t know other employee unions existed didn’t know it was possible to form a union, you know?

And because we are so fragmented, I can, the public sector unions, we have so many different, you know, nationals and so many different like local and chapters within that it was a lot easier to pick us off, you know, especially if we were not organized. And so for us to be able to, you know, Organize and build up that rank and file unionism within our agencies to.

continue to do the work because Congress established that, like, collective bargaining for the public sector is in the public good. That is in the law. And it helps us serve the American people. But what we also realized during that last the last round was that it can’t just be us. It has to be the, like the other, the, the broader labor movement and the social movements and the, all the other people doing the work, because whether you’re involved in, you know, racial justice, environmental justice, climate change, expanding healthcare, those like, that’s the work that we do to protect those services, but also like our fight is your fight.

And we need to stand together because like, In this time with all the chaos with all of these attacks, we can really come together and build something very transformative to bring about, you know, a country that like we deserve and the community that, you know, to look out for each other. So I think really that’s what we’re like, our goal is in these next four years and, and actually into the coming decades, because this is a marathon, not a race, right?

That’s 

[00:35:23] Cayden Mak: right. That’s right. 

[00:35:25] Chris Dols: Yeah, if I could add, I think it’s worth noting that You know, the Donald Trump of 2024 is quite different from the Trump of 2017. Because back then I actually think there was a viable. Justification to the populist title, right? Right wing populist, racist populist, but populist nonetheless.

A real, like, there was a class dynamic, class edge to his criticism. There were mostly symbolic attacks on monopolies. There were some actual, like, Attempts to limit monopolies in the federal government through FTC and other agencies. There was rhetorical you know, devices used to, to talk about, you know, the elites and some of that stuff is of course still in there, but the substance now looking at the lineup of billionaires at his inauguration this week and the Absence of any, you know, ongoing talk of breaking up monopolies.

I mean, big tech has completely lined up behind him. We’re not going to see any of that talk of breaking up Google or any of the other, like the, the, the, I think the populism attribute of Trump is gone. And the faster that we, the workers in the federal government and the working class more generally can recognize that he’s abandoned, even though it was always bad faith, but he’s actually rhetorically.

And I’d say politically abandoned. The, the, the base that I think animated his support, I think it might be a while, a mile wide, but I think it’s an inch deep. I’m not as pessimistic as some, I don’t believe we’re living in. I don’t believe we’re facing an insurmountable challenge here. I think they’re already overreaching.

And I think the fact that he’s thrown his lot so explicitly in with Musk and Bezos and Zuckerberg and the, the, the, the kind of, the Unanimous consensus of the right wing billionaire class is, I think, a huge political opportunity for us. But those of us in the federal sector, whose bosses are now not just the establishment politicians, but also the establishment billionaires We have an obligation to figure out a way to not just link arms with each other.

So we’re trying to do with our network, but also with the broader working class. And, you know, Lauren alluded to, to you know, the Trump last time it was, it was thanks to the work of the flight attendants during the shutdown in 2018, early 2019 it was that act of solidarity of, of Sarah Nelson as president of the, of the flight attendants union, coming out and saying, Because you’re not paying the, the air traffic controllers, it’s not safe for flight attendants to fly.

And Sarah Nelson, with that one speech, she, she, she, she exercised more power just through the threat of workers collective action than all of Chuck Schumer’s Democratic Party leadership in the Senate combined was able to do. And they brought Trump to his knees back then. And I think that there’s a formula here.

That’s premised in class collective action and class solidarity that can actually unravel this coalition, and it’s gonna be up to us to to build that. 

[00:38:26] Cayden Mak: Yeah, I, I do think that there’s, there’s something really important there about how like, the, the klepto and the kleptocracy is becoming, like, way more explicit, it feels like, this time around.

And I think that, like, you know, democracy in the workplace and democracy at the ballot box also go together, right? That, like organized communities are organized not just, like, in neighborhoods, but also in workplaces, and that, like the way that we practice democracy with each other seems also important to prepare our movements to be able to govern in meaningful ways, is also what I’m hearing you saying, that, like, by By doing organizing together, we can demonstrate what democracy actually looks like to, I think, a lot of people who are, have kind of had it, right?

Like, who are, have bought into a framework, like, a framework of governance and government that is fundamentally anti democratic and that’s, like, ideological in nature. And yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m really interested in like that piece too, that there’s like concrete examples of ways that we can, we can like practice co governance basically.

As. Yeah, go ahead. 

[00:39:39] Cathy Albisa: Well, and I don’t know if everyone saw the articles about the German ambassador’s leak. 

[00:39:44] Cayden Mak: No. 

[00:39:44] Cathy Albisa: Trump actually used the term in, the German ambassador Reuters got a leaked document in his report back. And it, it basically said everything we already knew. He intends to dismantle democracy, but very interesting, the use of certain language, where he talked about, Trump having a vision of co governance with big tech, which really kind of aligns with the executive order on supposedly free speech, which is really executive over on order on unchecked misinformation that will help him co govern with big tech, right?

That’s, you can see that coming. And I think the alternative, just looping back to what Lauren was saying, right, is what is our co governance model between, The administrative branch that does the day to day work between movements and governments, and how, I just want to bring this one up too, because I talked about race, Chris talked about class, we both believe in both, one of the things that I see that is incredibly heartening is the amount of solidarity and support coming from All government workers towards the workers in the equity space that have just been put on administrative leave.

All of a sudden the conversations are popping. How can we help? And I think this is a moment where we can break out of the sometimes silos, sometimes different analysis, and actually integrate that race, class, and gender analysis in that broader co governance vision. And then there would be no chinks in our armor, right?

And so That is also another opportunity. Democracy, but what kind? It’s a multiracial, inclusive democracy that is equitable for all communities, from white rural communities to communities of color that have been targeted with inequities. That vision, we need to be able to articulate it in a way so that there is no chink in our armor.

[00:41:37] Cayden Mak: That’s right. That’s right. I’m, I’m curious to hear from you all for, you know, for our listeners who don’t work in government how, and obviously, like, they need to keep up with what’s happening with you all keep up with these developments, like, how, how do you envision everyday people supporting civil servants in this time?

What are, what are the, what are the things that, like, the social movement left also needs to be thinking about? You want to start? Yeah, go 

[00:42:03] Lauren Lieb: ahead, Lauren. I think. I may not be able to say as eloquently as Chris or Kathy, but I think, you know, joining us. Connecting with us, you know, similar to how we’re talking about, you know, us expanding that model or adopting the model of bargaining for the common good that bringing in federal sector employee unions with private sector employees and like the community organizations, like the social movements that are already doing the work, like, let’s start coming together and strategizing and organizing our bases towards these common objectives.

Because, you know, again, like that, baseline, like, you know, talk about, like, you know, unions are the most, like, democratic thing you can be part of, right? Like, an injury to one is an injury to all. Everyone has an equal voice in the decisions that affect them. And, you know, talking about the collective, like, economic uplift of all of our, like, all the people like, when workers benefit, you know, win, everybody wins.

And so I think, you know, if the way we can come together and you know, Collect, you know, come together with our shared resources and ideas to strategize towards like, you know yeah, our goal to realize our goals was going to be a really big thing. So reaching out to us getting, you know, talking to your local federal employee unions in your area.

Reaching to out us at the Federal Unionist Network, you know, we can get you plugged in into where, where the fights are and how we can work together. 

[00:43:28] Chris Dols: Yeah, I think if I may, the, the the example that I think was brought up earlier about how Bargaining for the common good is often attributed, rightly, to the great work that was done, like, in, in local public sector, teachers, the Chicago Teachers Union in particular, and I was, I happened to be in Chicago in 2011, in that first historic strike, and you know, that slogan Our children’s learning conditions are our teacher’s working conditions managed to flip the script up until then for decades, the Chicago, you know, political establishment successfully pitted parents against teachers.

And anytime teachers threatened to strike or did any type of took any kind of collective action, they were politically isolated. But by identifying that they were not just striking for wages and benefits and, and, you know, bread and butter teachers issues, but actually for the quality of public education in the city of Chicago, they managed to assert this, what we now, I think know as, you know, common public bargaining for the public good.

We often talk about it as common Common good unionism in the federal sector. And I think what we’re trying to figure out right now very urgently is how to turn that into a national strategy for the entire federal sector, because so much of what we do is in the public interest. And so much of the attacks that we’re facing is about.

Gutting those interests and actually turning the government into primarily a vehicle for, you know, facilitating laissez faire capitalism, maximizing profit, minimizing regulation, and all those things that, you know, the billionaire lineup at Trump’s inauguration is, is after and one, Thing I just want to point out is that like, it’s not always been that way.

I mean, there’s been ups and downs in the federal labor movement where sometimes very, very narrow interests have prevailed. And I think it’s worth noting. And I think we owe a lot of credit to professor Joe McCartan. Who’s a friend of the fun and who does great work. He wrote a book on the history of PATCO.

People who are familiar with labor history know about PACO and I know that up until reading Joe McCartan’s book, I had a pretty kind of limited understanding. I, I, I was, you know, I recognized it as a defeat. I recognized it as, you know, part of the employer’s offensive and all that. But what I didn’t understand until I read that book is that like, actually, They made some huge mistakes.

Petco was extremely narrow minded made basically no. I mean, Joe argues that they made no attempt to, to build out solidarity. Not within the federal sector, not within the broader airline industry. There was a historic antagonism between them and, and, and pilots that they helped contribute to. And I think that we need to learn that it’s, it’s, it’s going to be solidarity.

And, and, and, and, and, and collective action and, and joint unity with the social movements that depend on quality government. That’s the, that’s the formula for the future of a sectoral strategy in the federal government that can fend off these attacks. 

[00:46:25] Cayden Mak: Yeah, yeah. And Pat, Pat Coe is the air traffic controllers.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Kathy, you have a thought on this? I’ll just 

[00:46:33] Cathy Albisa: add that This is the vision, that is the strategy, but there really is something, because it is today, and there is really something you can do right now. You know, Russell Vought’s confirmation, he is a sworn enemy of civil servants, and most of us for that matter.

He’s demonized them, said that he wants them dramatized. His confirmation is happening right now when people on the Hill are questioning. If you have a representative, call them, push back on confirmation to people that are trying to destroy the very agencies they’re supposed to run. Let’s take that fight seriously.

That is something we can do right now. And then Strap all these structural attacks because they do distract us with as I think you were saying earlier, memes you know, dramatic side conversations while they are actually dismantling and, and structurally, you know, Changing the way government works, and I think it’s important to keep ourselves educated on that.

[00:47:28] Cayden Mak: Yeah, absolutely. The the thing that, the things that they’re doing that are truly outrageous don’t often make it into the outrage machine. And that is, that is what we are trying to do here. So, I think you know, there’s, there’s a lot to chew on here and there are a lot of they’re going to be a lot of punctuated moments in, in the months and years to come.

I’m curious how listeners who want to keep up with y’all’s work, where they can find you, where they can learn more about fun and the work that you’re doing to, to kind of like unify the sector. Yeah, Kathy, do you want to start with the work that you’re doing and then we can go to Chris? Yeah, sure.

We 

[00:48:02] Cathy Albisa: are, we will, starting next week, be putting out A Democracy Under Fire. Bulletin where we will be talking about all these issues So if you come to the federal strategies page next week on the raceforward. org website we will be thrilled to sign you up or just email fire at raceforward. org. That’s federal initiative for race and equity and we will be having take actions keep people abreast giving them analysis and inviting you to events so that we can come together build community and And build a bigger way 

[00:48:35] Cayden Mak: Fantastic.

[00:48:38] Chris Dols: Yeah. Just how to find us. The federal unionists network is primarily a WhatsApp community with at this point, dozens of different groups within it for those listeners who are federal workers. You should absolutely join the community. And the way to find us is probably best through our website, which is federal unionists.

net. And there’s a form in there and you sign up and you’ll start getting emails and make your way to the, into the WhatsApp community. Everybody should fill out that form. If you want to stay in the loop. We’re going through a very steep growth moment right now for reasons folks can imagine. One thing I would plug is that just because you’re not Well, first of all, the federal sector, I think, is much larger than the two or three million of us who technically work directly for the government for the reasons we’ve touched on, right?

Neoliberalism has privatized large aspects of what historically is done by the federal service. So a lot of people who work in NGOs or nonprofits or who are contractors in different ways, I would consider part of the federal sector. It’s one of the ways they keep our sector divided in addition to, you know, the many bargaining units they carve up the actual government with.

So, you know, maybe some listeners don’t think of themselves as federal sector, but if you recognize your work as actually tied to providing federal services, services to the public, then maybe you are part of the federal sector. And we encourage folks to think, you know, creatively about how you might actually be part of the federal sector, even if you don’t get your paycheck from Uncle Sam.

But for those who aren’t in the federal sector, I just think it’s worth recognizing that, you know, an injury to one is an injury to all. They are coming after us because, you know, we often talk about the federal government as the model employer, better or worse, the model right now is to kind of rub workers noses in it and make them, you know, relearn who they work for as, as one, you know, billionaire CEO put it a year and a half ago.

And they’re trying, or, or as, as, as Russell vote puts it, you know, he’s trying to traumatize the federal workforce. They’re trying to recalibrate. And the reason they’re trying to do that is that they can de decrease expectations. All across the class. So even if you’re not in the federal sector, I think you have an interest in seeing the success of the federal labor movement because we are all part of one movement.

And so, yeah, help us out, get involved, get our emails, sign up at federalunionists. net. And as there are calls for solidarity, as there are the inevitable campaigns, Whether it’s messaging or otherwise, we would love to have all the solidarity we can get. We know you guys have a lot of organizers and your listeners and you know, we need your solidarity.

And I’ll just say, we also think very creatively in the fun network about how we can not only advance our interests, but how we also see our work as potentially supporting the work of the movements because so much of the services we provide. are in fact, the things that the movements are after, whether it’s climate justice or otherwise.

I’ll just stop with this, which is the other, yesterday I was walking into the federal building. And as we’ve seen for, for years now, a massive line of people trying to get into our country legally, and they’re constantly there. And I’m constantly thinking about what can we as federal unionists do? the federal buildings across the country to just make our spaces more welcoming.

And so we haven’t started to do it. It’s the first time I’m even saying it out loud, but like, there’s so many ways that I think we can demonstrate solidarity ourselves. So it’s not just asking for a one way street here. We’re very much interested in, in, in, in teaming up with everybody who’s doing great work in all of the social movements because you know, we all need each other now more than ever.

[00:52:02] Cayden Mak: Yeah. It’s fantastic. 

[00:52:04] Lauren Lieb: Yes. Standing shoulder to shoulder, side by side. And again, too, I just want to say, like, you know, I don’t have any formal, like, you know, platforms to plug, but again, you know, you can reach me, like, in the fun community and by getting plugged in. So yeah, going to federalunionist. net there’s a form to fill out there to get in connection with us and, you know, happy to serve that conversation.

I 

[00:52:26] Cayden Mak: really appreciate you all joining us today and taking the time. Chris, like you, I feel like we at Convergence are not as, uh, like, like we, we feel a lot more optimistic about this moment than I think a lot of people do. And, and I think it’s important for Those of us who have that optimism to like share it with folks, because I think there are a lot of people who are getting swept away in, in the absolute deluge of bullshit they’re trying to feed us.

So, you know, I, I, I appreciate this deep grounding also in like some real material organizing. It’s been a pleasure to talk to all of you. Thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having us. Thanks for all the work you do. 

[00:53:05] Lauren Lieb: Yeah, appreciate it. 

[00:53:06] Cayden Mak: Yeah. And I hope we get to talk again soon, too. We’ll definitely keep up with y’all and y’all work.

Yes. Great. Take care. 

[00:53:12] Lauren Lieb: Thank you. My 

[00:53:14] Cayden Mak: thanks again to Clarissa and Jessica for joining me at the top of the show. You can find links to the Left Out collaboration in our show notes. And of course, thank you so much to Kathy, Chris, and Lauren for joining us for that really invigorating conversation about federal worker organizing.

This show is produced by Convergence, a magazine for Radical Insights. I’m Caden Mock and our producer is Josh Elstro. Editorial support this week was provided by Marcy Rhyne. Kimmy David is our production assistant. Redid our fabulous cover art and also does our social media. If you have something to say, please do drop me a line.

You can send me an email that we will run an upcoming mailbag episode at mailbag at convergence mag. com. And finally, if you would like to support the work that we do at convergence, bringing our movements together to strategize, struggle, and win in this crucial historical moment, you can become a member at convergence mag.

com slash donate. Even a few bucks a month. Transcripts a month goes a long way to making sure that our independent small team can continue to build a map for our movements. I hope this helps.