‘Stop it now.’ Lexington protesters say political appointees shouldn’t mess with post office
Melinda Belleville has waited nearly three weeks for a large check to make the trip from Houston to her Lexington mailbox.
Mail delivery never used to take as long as it has this summer, as new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy makes operational changes that slow everything down, Belleville said Saturday. She stood with two dozen other people at a Save the Post Office protest rally outside the Liberty Road Station post office.
“The message I’m sending is: You have messed with my post office, which is in the Constitution. So I am telling you, stop it. Stop it now,” Belleville said.
DeJoy has enacted controversial cost-saving measures to cut overtime and transportation costs in the U.S. Postal Service and to remove mail boxes and sorting machines, although after an outcry by critics, he agreed to postpone further changes for now.
The Herald-Leader reported earlier this month that because of the operational changes, 23 trailer loads of undelivered mail accumulated outside the post office’s Lexington headquarters on Nandino Boulevard, up from the customary three or four.
Speakers told the protesters on Saturday that the post office is under political attack. The Board of Governors of the Postal Service is filled with Republican appointees of President Donald Trump, they said, including its chairman, Eastern Kentucky banker Mike Duncan, a longtime GOP campaign fundraiser and former chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Duncan, DeJoy and their colleagues want to help Trump win re-election in November by undermining the post office so that mail-in ballots — expected to be essential during the COVID-19 pandemic — can’t reliably be received by election officials, the speakers said. Trump regularly attacks mail-in ballots in his public comments, saying they make voter fraud more likely.
But even beyond politics, people need mail delivery as a daily service in their lives, said protester Aaron Viles.
“Four million people get their prescriptions through the mail,” Viles told others at the rally. “And their medicines are rotting right now because they’re just sitting there, they’re not being processed fast enough.”
In an interview later, Viles said he’s heard from teachers who aren’t getting their instructional materials delivered in time for the start of the school year and from veterans who are running out of their medicine before the next supply arrives.
“I’m an American,” Viles said. “I love the post office. It’s the most popular thing that government does — certainly more popular than Congress. The idea that this fundamental element of our democracy is being threatened because of stupid partisan maneuvering is truly offensive to me.”
