‘Whose post office? Our post office!’

Bronx and Harlem communities united with postal workers have been able to transform recent sham hearings the U.S. Postal Service has held in order to close 34 New York City post offices. Teach-ins, informational picket lines and news conferences around these hearings have attracted growing community support and anger, especially focused on the threatened closing of 17 branches in the Bronx.

Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe is fronting for Wall Street in a fraudulent privatization conspiracy to close 3,700 post offices nationwide. This could lead to the layoff of hundreds of thousands of workers, and constitutes a viciously racist war on poor and multinational communities that depend on this vital service.

The Community-Labor United for Postal Jobs & Services Coalition has inspired community organizers and residents from the Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea as well as Harlem and the Bronx to join hands. Chuck Zlatkin, legislative and political director of the American Postal Workers Union, testified at one hearing: “It is a manufactured crisis. No small post office shall be closed solely for operating at a deficit. That’s the law. We have to come together.” Johnnie Stevens, an organizer for the coalition, told Workers World: “We need a mass visibility campaign to alert labor and communities to the dangers of this postal crisis.”