Rick Reinhard
Tens of thousands of people demonstrated for the Earth and against President Trump and his environmental and justice polices, April 29, 2017.
Workers from the Environmental Protection Agency were largely absent from Saturday’s People’s Climate March in Washington, D.C., due to what is said to be a culture of fear within the EPA.
Among the 200,000 marchers in Washington on April 29 were about a dozen members of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) wearing surgical masks marked with the word “silenced.” They were there to represent EPA employees who felt they couldn’t march for fear of retaliation at work.
“A lot of our EPA brothers and sisters, as you can see by my mask, are silenced,” Frank Silberstein of the U.S. Census Bureau told The Progressive during the march. “They are under the knife as we speak and anything can happen. So somebody has to stand up and speak for them.”
The 1939 Hatch Act protects the rights of EPA employees to attend political protests. However, in January, Trump banned EPA employees from “providing updates on social media or to reporters,” according to internal documents obtained by the Associated Press. The Trump Administration has denied that this is its policy.
“They are under the knife as we speak and anything can happen. So somebody has to stand up and speak for them.”
Saturday’s march came just one day after the EPA updated its website to “reflect the agency’s new direction under President Donald Trump and Administrator [Scott] Pruitt.” The update replaced pages on the website related to climate change.
“There is tremendous pressure at the EPA right now. If you walk down the halls you actually feel it,” said Nate James, president of AFGE 3331, the local that represents EPA employees. James said some staff are afraid to raise scientific concerns, a key function of their jobs.
The website substitution was the latest in a series of changes to the agency under the Trump Administration.
On March 12, the White House released a budget proposal that would slash the EPA’s current funding by 31 percent, eliminate more than fifty programs, close two regional offices, and discontinue the Clean Power Plan. The cuts would eliminate 3,200 EPA positions, or 20 percent of the agency’s workforce.
On March 28, Trump signed an executive order rolling back several Obama-era policies related to climate change. The location of the signing, at the EPA’s national headquarters, was seen as a warning by one employee.
“When you think that someone would be bold enough to come into your agency to do something against what you are fighting for, it causes a sense of fear,” said the employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “And I think that’s why it happened—to let us know, if you take steps or if you do things, I’m here and I can retaliate against you.”
The administration’s policies are aimed at eliminating regulations and barriers which, Trump claims, have harmed the economy and led to job losses, especially in the coal industry. In an infamous tweet, Trump called climate change a Chinese hoax designed to “make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
But Karen Florini, an Obama-era deputy special envoy for climate change who was also at the march, countered that the economy’s continued shift towards sustainability is creating jobs, not destroying them. Despite Trump’s policies, she is optimistic that this shift is inevitable.
“No matter what we do, the rest of the world is moving forward,” Florini said.
In late 2016, the financial advisory and asset management firm Lazard found that alternative energy sources are no longer more expensive than traditional ones.
A January report by the Department of Energy shows that the solar energy industry created twice as many jobs as the coal industry last year, and that employment in sustainable energy jobs is growing. Just last week, the Outdoor Industry Association released a report stating that the outdoor recreation economy generates 7.6 million jobs and $887 billion in consumer spending annually.
“My grandfather was a coal miner and it was a horrible job. It was a job that killed you,” said Cara Murray, who marched with the American Federation of Teachers on Saturday. “You don’t really want a job that kills you. You want a job that gives you a good wage. I think that’s the most important thing.”
Sarah Blaskey is a graduate student at Columbia University at the Stabile Center of Investigative Journalism.