George Pyle: Protect Ben Franklin’s gift to America; The Salt Lake Tribune, August 15, 2020

George Pyle, The Salt Lake Tribune; George Pyle: Protect Ben Franklin’s gift to America

"Can there be anything more American than the Post Office?

It helps that the history of what is now officially known as the United States Postal Service basically begins as the handiwork of the most American of us all, Benjamin Franklin...

Franklin turned a slipshod and corrupt system into an Enlightenment model of efficiency and service. He ended the practice of allowing local postmasters to deliver some newspapers but not others. He greatly increased the speed of postal delivery, published lists of people who had letters waiting for them at the local post office and offered them the service of having mail delivered to their homes, rather than having to call for it, for a penny....

The Post Office connected this country and did much to build it through an efficient and affordable method of communication. It provided invaluable accounts of the real human experiences felt in the Civil War and World War II. And, perhaps most importantly, in “Miracle on 34th Street,” it helped prove in a court of law that Santa Claus is real.

And now, in our nation’s hour of great need, it may be the bloodstream that saves American democracy itself by allowing all of us to vote in national and state elections with minimal exposure to the deadly and stubborn coronavirus."

Trump’s attacks on the Postal Service deserve sustained, red-alert coverage from the media; The Washington Post, August 15, 2020

Margaret Sullivan, The Washington Post

; Trump’s attacks on the Postal Service deserve sustained, red-alert coverage from the media
"But if journalists don’t keep the pressure on Postal Service problems, they will be abdicating their duty.

There’s very little that matters more than the Nov. 3 vote. Anything that threatens the integrity of the vote needs to be treated as one of the biggest stories out there — even if it’s not the sexiest."

Trump’s Attack on the Postal Service Is a Threat to Democracy—and to Rural America; The New Yorker, August 11, 2020

Bill McKibben, The New Yorker; Trump’s Attack on the Postal Service Is a Threat to Democracy—and to Rural America

"In 2012, when the Postal Service planned on closing 3,830 branches, an analysis by Reuters showed that eighty per cent of those branches were in rural areas where the poverty rate topped the national average. You know who delivers the Amazon package the final mile to rural Americans? The U.S.P.S. You know how people get medicine, when the pharmacy is an hour’s drive away? In their mailbox. You know why many people can’t pay their bills electronically? Because too much of rural America has impossibly slow Internet, or none at all. These are the places where, during the pandemic, teachers and students all sit in cars in the school parking lot to Zoom with one another, because that’s the only spot with high-speed Wi-Fi. You want the ultimate example? Visit one of the sprawling Native American lands in the West and you’ll see how, as a member of the Mandan-Hidatsa tribe in North Dakota told Vox, the Postal Service helps keep those communities “connected to the world.” Should the government destroy the service, she said, “It would just be kind of a continuation of these structures in the U.S. that already dispossessed people of color, black and indigenous people of color, and people below the poverty line.” The mail, Kleeb said, “is a universal service that literally levels the playing field for all Americans. It is how we order goods, send gifts to our family, and keep small businesses alive. In the era of the coronavirus, mail is now our lifeline to have our voices heard for our ballots in the election. In fact, in eleven counties in our state, they have only mail-in ballots, because of how massive the county is land-wise.”

The Postal Worker’s Christmas; The New York Times, December 18, 2018

Sarah Anderson,The New York Times; The Postal Worker’s Christmas

[Kip Currier: At this busy time for sending and receiving holiday cards and gifts, it's important to underscore the vital connection that U.S. Post Offices have in promoting democratic principles and access to information. Indeed, just last week while stopping in a rural Western Pennsylvania post office, I saw and heard first-hand from residents the important roles that U.S. postal offices play in the everyday lives of citizens, many of whom do not live near for-profit delivery companies.

An August 2018 piece, "The miracle of the United States Postal Service", written by a man who grew up in a Utah town with 171 inhabitants, explains:

Postal service has been absolutely central to the history and development of the United States, and the USPS continues to provide fast and efficient service despite being beset by enormous problems. If everything worked as well as the Post Office — and there's certainly room for improvement — this country would be a much better place...

Under the arguments of Washington and his ally Benjamin Rush, Congress conceived of a Post Office conforming to democratic values. Unlike European postal services, which were generally expensive provinces of the elite (plus state surveillance and espionage), the U.S. Post Office would ideally be available to just about anybody who needed it. Tampering of any kind, state or private, was outlawed.

Yes, much communication today does transpire through digital means, chief among them, smart phones. But many still use and depend upon analog services to send and receive a wide array of products and services (see the Op-Ed piece in today's New York Times), as well as for communication and information access. We still talk about Digital Divides--one of the most significant being lack of access to Broadband Internet service for many Americans; especially, in disproportionate numbers, Native Americans, as this disturbing February 2018 Politico exposé ("The least connected people in America") reported. Yet it's also crucial that we be cognizant of an Analog Divide that could occur if postal services are eliminated or drastically curtailed in rural communities. Amidst calls by some for privatizing the U.S. Postal Service, policymakers and legislators must fully consider this information-democratizing service as one of the innumerable interconnected building blocks upon which democracy stands and flourishes.

And if you should need more convincing, the next time you're in Washington D.C., do visit the National Postal Museum. Not as well-known as its more famous, "sexier" relatives (--I'm looking at you National Air and Space Museum!) in the famed Smithsonian Museums system (all of which are free!), I was thoroughly impressed by a visit to this gem of a cultural heritage institution a few years ago. Through a variety of exhibits and artifacts, visitors like me come to better understand the visible and less visible ways that the postal service promotes core democratic principles and supports the infrastructure of democracy. 

Despite the fact that it's not an official motto, the U.S. Postal Service is often associated with this quotation from an ancient work by Greek historian Herodotus: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." 

  

Though certainly inspiring and memorable, a different quotation more aptly encapsulates some of the fundamental roles that the U.S. Postal Service performs in a democracy like ours. As the U.S. Postal Service shares:

Another, less well known inscription can be found on the building that formerly was the Washington, D.C., Post Office and now is the home of the Smithsonian Institution's National Postal Museum. It is located on Massachusetts Avenue and North Capitol Street, N.E.

  

Messenger of Sympathy and Love 
Servant of Parted Friends 
Consoler of the Lonely
Bond of the Scattered Family
Enlarger of the Common Life 
Carrier of News and Knowledge 
Instrument of Trade and Industry 
Promoter of Mutual Acquaintance
Of Peace and of Goodwill Among Men and Nations]

"As in my grandfather’s day, today’s postal workers have a mandate to provide universal service, delivering mail and packages to every American household at uniform rates, no matter where they live. That mandate has helped bind our vast nation.

This principle of affordable universal service is under threat. This year, the White House Office of Management and Budget recommended selling the public Postal Service to a private, for-profit corporation.

On Dec. 4, a Trump task force on the postal system followed up with recommendations for partial privatization and other changes that would reduce services and raise delivery prices, particularly for rural communities."

Why the Post Office Makes America Great; New York Times, 1/1/16

Zeynep Tufekci, New York Times; Why the Post Office Makes America Great:

"I bit my tongue and did not tell my already suspicious friends that the country was also dotted with libraries that provided books to all patrons free of charge. They wouldn’t believe me anyway since I hadn’t believed it myself. My first time in a library in the United States was very brief: I walked in, looked around, and ran right back out in a panic, certain that I had accidentally used the wrong entrance. Surely, these open stacks full of books were reserved for staff only. I was used to libraries being rare, and their few books inaccessible. To this day, my heart races a bit in a library.

Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate the link between infrastructure, innovation — and even ruthless competition. Much of our modern economy thrives here because you can order things online and expect them to be delivered. There are major private delivery services, too, but the United States Postal Service is often better equipped to make it to certain destinations. In fact, Internet sellers, and even private carriers, often use the U.S.P.S. as their delivery mechanism to addresses outside densely populated cities.

Almost every aspect of the most innovative parts of the United States, from cutting-edge medical research to its technology scene, thrives on publicly funded infrastructure. The post office is struggling these days, in some ways because of how much people rely on the web to do much of what they used to turn to the post office for. But the Internet is a testament to infrastructure, too: It exists partly because the National Science Foundation funded much of the research that makes it possible. Even some of the Internet’s biggest companies, like Google, got a start from N.S.F.-funded research.

Infrastructure is often the least-appreciated part of what makes a country strong, and what makes innovation take flight. From my spot in line at the post office, I see a country that does both well; not a country that emphasizes one at the expense of the other."