Rev. Barber at the Capitol: “The president is not a king” (original) (raw)
Government workers resist Trump and Musk at Washington D.C. rally. | afge.org
WASHINGTON—There was an unusual speaker with a straightforward message amid the parade of lawmakers and union officials marching to the podium near the U.S. Capitol on February 11 to support embattled and endangered federal workers: The Rev. William Barber II.
What the Poor People’s Campaign co-chair said was quite succinct: “The president is not a king.”
“A president is not a dictator unless we let him be a dictator,” Barber preached.
“We stand with the workers, and they”—Republican President and oligarch Donald Trump, his multibillionaire puppeteer Elon Musk, and other oligarchs who support and plan to profit from the duo’s actions—“are fighting hard against us because they’re scared.”
“You can’t bow, I can’t bow. This is the time to take a stand,” Barber declared.
The Government Employees (AFGE) sponsored and organized the rally, which drew more than a thousand people to within sight of the U.S. Capitol dome. It was called to show solidarity with workers and against the destruction of the civil service and illegal closure of government programs by corporate capitalist Republican President Trump and his controller, Musk.
They’re aided and abetted by Trump’s anti-worker executive order edicts and a Musk task force of 22-somethings, the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE. The task force is all computer and spreadsheet geeks, who invade agencies, demonize workers, and commandeer sensitive records and personal financial and other info.
“Save the civil service” from Trump-Musk destruction “and you save the country,” its rule of law and the U.S. Constitution, declared Government Employees President Everett Kelley, whose union organized and hosted the rally.
Pointed message for lawmakers
But he also had a pointed message for lawmakers, including pro-Trump Republicans, who have so far turned deaf ears and blindly followed their ruler: “Demand the executive branch follow the law and support and defend the people we represent, their rights and their security.”
Barber’s remarks were unusual because the Poor People’s Campaign has been resolutely apolitical. It denounces politicians of both parties for ignoring the needs of poor and low-wealth people in the U.S. It’s concentrated on mobilizing them and registering them and getting out their votes for supporters of the poor’s priorities.
Worker rights, especially the right to organize, is one of those priorities. So is raising the minimum wage to a living wage. So are large cuts in war spending, with the cash transferred to health care for all, better education, and affordable housing, among other priorities.
So has the elimination of the Trump-GOP tax cut for corporations and the rich, and the exposure of partisan political right-wing preachers. Barber calls them un-Christian for equating Christ—or even God—with Republican dogma and capitalist repression of workers.
“The attack on you, the attack on the civil service is unacceptable, unconscionable and un-American,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. “We’ll stand with you until every one of Trump’s executive orders has been reversed.”
DOGE not only roots out the data Musk and Trump want—for their own purposes and profits—but it arbitrarily closes and padlocks agencies, firing all the workers. Trump plans to replace non-partisan civil servants with his loyalists, who would swear allegiance to Trump, not the U.S. Constitution.
“The civil service provides expert service from people who know what they’re doing. They’re not political hacks who sow chaos and confusion,” said Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., the party leader on the politically hyperpolarized House Education and the Workforce Committee.
“To the Republicans: Uphold your oath of office. Don’t aid and abet an autocratic administration,” AFGE President Kelley declared. “Use the power you have to protect the Constitution of the United States and the American people.” No Republicans spoke at the rally.
“And #2, defund the Musk empire” by yanking federal funds for Tesla plants and other enterprises, Kelley proposed. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., a Painters Union member who sits on the House Appropriations Committee—which is supposed to help distribute federal funds—promised to try that, but didn’t say how he’d succeed on the GOP-run panel.
“Number three, defund firms that engage in union-busting,” said Kelley. Musk’s Tesla and X, formerly Twitter, union-bust. So does another prominent Trump backer: Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. “Elon Musk and Donald Trump would like people to believe you have swanky jobs,” Rep. Emilia Sykes, D-Ohio, commented. “That’s what they have. It’s called projection” in psychology.
Some speakers put the impact of the Trump-Musk purge of workers in practical terms that even pro-Trump Republican voters could understand. Kelley suggested some Trump voters now “suffer from buyer’s remorse.
Didn’t vote for contaminated meals
“They didn’t vote for putting contaminated meals on supermarket shelves” because there aren’t enough Agriculture Department food inspectors due to the Musk-Trump purges.
“They didn’t vote to put our soldiers at risk by firing Defense Department employees and replacing them with contractors” who cost double as much as government workers and make more mistakes, added Kelley, himself a veteran.
“You keep food safe to eat and water safe to drink,” said Sykes. “And when the Environmental Protection Agency came to East Palestine, Ohio,” after the horrific Norfolk Southern train derailment, fire, and release of toxic chemicals, “They made sure the people of East Palestine had clean air, clean water and monitoring” of contamination from the leaky tank cars.
“An attack on you is an attack on the American people,” added Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., who, after speaking in D.C., rushed off to an anti-Trump, anti-Musk, anti-DOGE rally at Social Security headquarters in Woodlawn, Md., a Baltimore suburb.
Musk and Trump are targeting both the workers and Social Security payments, other speakers said. “Without federal workers, the country grinds to a halt,” said Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., a former L.A.-area Electrical Worker as their chief counsel.
AFGE’s rally attracted National Nurses United, Communications Workers, Service Employees, Professional and Technical Engineers, Treasury Employees, Postal Workers, Auto Workers, Electrical Workers, the Association of Flight Attendants/CWA, AFSCME, the Machinists, the Painters, Unite HERE, the Steelworkers and the Amalgamated Transit Union.
One notable union absentee: The Teamsters, one of the few unions to stay neutral in the 2024 election. Their headquarters is a city block from the rally site on Capitol Hill.
The BlueGreen Alliance, a joint union-green organization, and Jobs With Justice also came, as did the Union of Concerned Scientists, Free DC, and several members of the CPUSA.
The rally showed mass solidarity with the millions of public workers, especially federal workers, whom corporate criminal President Trump, convicted of campaign finance law-breaking in New York and his owner, multibillionaire Musk, target for the trash.
Their tools to destroy the federal civil service, and replace it with the 1880s-style spoils system of the Gilded Age are a series of Trump executive orders. They cut the workforce, and try to strongarm workers into taking so-called—and unfunded—“buyouts.”
The executive orders also freeze hiring and break the law and the constitution by closing agencies and impounding funds Congress appropriated and shutting agencies Congress established. Their aim, many speakers said, is to institute their own right-wing pro-corporate agenda, especially to fund a future tax cut this year for corporations and the rich.
Their big tool is the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) a Musk-headed task force of 22-something computer geeks, blessed by Trump, to invade federal agencies, remove and analyze vital data—everything from your tax return at the Treasury Department to your firm’s minimum wage and overtime pay violations at the Labor Department.
It’s also to replace non-partisan civil servants with Trump loyalists.
Fired everyone
In at least one case, the agency named the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, which actually pursues corrupt corporations who fleece people, Musk’s DOGE shut it down, padlocked the doors, and fired all workers, except for brown-shirted security guards.
DOGE also defies congressional oversight, even though the U.S. Constitution says the president “shall take care that the laws” Congress passes “be faithfully executed.”
Trump isn’t doing that, and Musk’s DOGE is aiding and abetting that lawlessness, congressional speakers told the crowd. Signs at the rally referred often to “stop the coup.”
Trump and Musk are enacting all this by executive orders and edicts right now “because they’re afraid of you,” Barber told the crowd of several thousand people. The duo also knows their program would never get through even a GOP-run Congress. Congressional speakers promised to tie it up in knots.
Rep. Pocan, a member of the Painters, made the point that Musk “spent $277 million to buy Donald Trump’s ass and put it in the White House” in the 2024 presidential campaign.
“And all of these attacks are coming out of Project 2025,” the Trump Republican platform authored by the extreme-right Heritage Foundation, and headed by Russell Vought, now Trump’s Office of Management and Budget director and the second-most powerful federal official. “An unelected billionaire has been bulldozing the workforce,” Pocan said of Musk.
“It is unsurprising that an administration run by billionaires is eliminating oversight and firing dedicated federal workers,” AFSCME President Lee Saunders said.
“They know federal workers protect the public against corporate abuse and won’t allow them to use taxpayer dollars as their own personal slush fund.
“So, instead of trying to improve the lives of working people, they are creating a staffing crisis…that hurts children, seniors, people with disabilities, working people, and those most vulnerable. We won’t stand for it, and we will keep fighting back.”
Other speakers warned Musk and Trump won’t stop with cowing federal workers, but will extend their corporate hold to the entire country. That prospect led several speakers, with Rep, David Norcross, D-N.J., an Electrical Worker being the first, to lead the crowd in chants of “Fuck Trump!” Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Ore., added Musk’s name to that chant.
It also led to an ad-libbed version of Which Side Are You On? sung at the end of the rally by Elise Bryant, a News Guild member and director of the D.C. Labor Chorus. Its end:
“Trump’s now coming for us. He wants us all to fail,” she sang. “But we all know what we want. We want Trump in jail.” “Which side are you on? Which side are you on?” Bryant got a big roar.
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