Postal Service

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  9/10/2020
  

  American Democracy Is in the Mail

  by Daniel Carpenter

  The Postal Service has been a circuit of information vital to democracy, a non-exclusionary employer, and a service connecting all communities in the nation. It's also been a tool of conquest and voracious capitalism. For good and ill, the history of the USPS is the history of America. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  8/31/2020
  

  Black Americans Worry Postal Changes Could Disrupt History Of Secure Jobs

  Historian Philip Rubio comments on the historic importance of public employment, especially in the postal service, for Black Americans to avoid hiring discrimination and achieve economic security--gains threatened by plans to privatize the Post Office. 

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• SOURCE: TIME
  8/24/2020
  

  How a Political Dispute Over the Early American Postal System Could Have Jeopardized the Whole U.S. Constitution

  by Robert W.T. Martin

  The nation has always depended on systems for sharing information and ideas. Disruptions to those systems can be devastating. Ask the Anti-Federalists. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  8/21/2020
  

  What Would Ben Franklin, Our First Postmaster General, Think Of Louis Dejoy?

  Richard John, Joseph Adelman, Winifred Gallagher and Devin Leonard offer insight into how Ben Franklin committed to innovation and service improvement to build up the colonial postal service and how the service became an institution tying the new nation together. 

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• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  8/19/2020
  

  “The Post Office Has Always Been Political”

  Postal historian Philip Rubio explains that the agency has never been completely separate from politics, though legislation passed in 1970 was supposed to cement the agency's independence. 

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• SOURCE: Medium
  8/21/2020
  

  DeJoy to the World: The Mail Will Not Come

  by Bill Dunlap

  William Dunlap, a former Assistant Postmaster General who helped implement the 1970 Postal Reorganization Act, warns that the most serious cost of recent "reforms" may be to undermine public confidence in the Post Office as a non-political public service. 

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• SOURCE: Democracy Now!
  8/24/2020
  

  “The Damage Has Been Done”: Historian Says Trump’s Postmaster Has Undermined Faith in 2020 Election

  History professor Philip Rubio was a USPS mail carrier for 20 years. He believes that Postmaster DeJoy has "demoralized postal workers."

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• SOURCE: WESA
  8/17/2020
  

  USPS Not Meant To Be A Revenue Generator But A 'Public Asset,' Says Historian (audio)

  Postal historian Richard John says that the USPS is not a business and should be treated as a public resource.

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• SOURCE: The Guardian
  8/21/2020
  

  Searching for America's 1930s Post Office Murals: A Photoessay

  Photographer Justin Hamel is about a quarter of the way to photographing 1,200 New Deal-era murals in post offices across the United States.

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• SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
  8/18/2020
  

  Cutting Back the U.S. Postal Service would Hurt the Lifeblood of Democracy

  by Richard R. John and Joseph Turow

  Despite its impressive track record, the Postal Service has become a target for free market think tanks convinced that corporate America could run the USPS better than the government. 

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• SOURCE: TIME
  8/18/2020
  

  The Politics of Postal Reform Have Always Been Part of USPS History

  by Ryan Ellis

  An excerpt from Ryan Ellis' book "Letters, Power Lines, and Other Dangerous Things: The Politics of Infrastructure Security."

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• SOURCE: Politico
  8/13/2020
  

  How Trump’s Attack on the Post Office Could Backfire

  If the USPS slows down, mail-in ballots won’t be the only collateral damage, says historian Philip Rubio.

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• SOURCE: Washington Monthly
  8/18/2020
  

  Susan Collins Engineered the USPS Disaster She’s Now Protesting

  Trump may be trying to sabotage the election, but the war against the Postal Service goes back decades.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  8/12/2020
  

  Trump Is Hobbling the Mail the Old-fashioned Way

  by Winifred Gallagher

  If Republicans wanted to limit voter turnout and raise doubts about the election’s integrity, creating chaos within the Postal Service and undermining its independence would be an efficient way to pursue that goal.   

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  8/11/2020
  

  Trump’s Attack on the Postal Service Is a Threat to Democracy—and to Rural America

  You’d think that the Republican Party, which depends on the undue weight given to rural voters for its continued political life, would be particularly solicitous of the post office. But, at the higher reaches, its ideological preoccupations are stronger: the post office is a government service, and therefore bad; it should be run instead by people who can make money from it.

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• SOURCE: The Baffler
  8/6/2020
  

  You've Got No Mail

  by Philip Rubio

  Americans should not have to keep worrying about the attempted theft of our nation’s postal service.

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• The Post Office is Mentioned, but Not Protected, by the Constitution

  by David Head

  If the day comes when the USPS, like privateering, has outlived its usefulness, the Constitution will prove no obstacle. The only question that matters is the practical one: does the postal service accomplish its mission better than the alternatives?

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/15/2020
  

  The Postal Service Is the Most American Thing We’ve Got

  by Ted Widmer

  It would be difficult to think of a time when we have depended more on the United States Postal Service.

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• SOURCE: National Geographic
  5/18/2020
  

  The Tumultuous History of the U.S. Postal Service—and its Constant Fight for Survival

  The agency has shape-shifted to overcome crises for more than two and a half centuries—and emerged as the nation’s most trusted institution.

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• SOURCE: Columbus Dispatch
  5/1/2020
  

  Preserving Postal Service and Mail Voting is Essential

  by Andrew W. Kahrl

  If you are shocked that Republicans would use this crisis to end the postal service as we know it, then you haven’t been paying attention.