Latest / The 238 Update / What Happens When the Guardrails Go? w/Anna Laird

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What Happens When the Guardrails Go? w/Anna Laird · The 238 Update

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the 238 Update, the voice of the workers who protect the environment.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Maria Robin Somerville, your host and producer.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: I was brought on to produce this podcast because I've been a podcast producer for about seven years now.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I also got involved because I have a personal interest in unions.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: From 2022 to 2024, I worked with other producers to create a chapter of the Writers Guild at the podcast production company where I then worked.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: That company no longer exists.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: But the experience I had there gave me a close-up look at the work that goes into building solidarity among workers and the importance of labor unions writ large.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: On today's episode, I'm speaking with Anna Laird, a former attorney for the EPA's Region 10 office in Seattle.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: She was terminated in 2025 after signing the Stand Up for Science Letter.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome, Anna.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I would like to know how you ended up in this specific area of law.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: I grew up in Yosemite National Park.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: My mom was an archaeologist and cultural anthropologist who worked for the National Park Service based in Yosemite.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: She did a lot of tribal relations and historic preservation, and our community was about 650 people, I want to say.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: And everybody just had such a genuine love and desire to protect our national park and all of its cultural and natural resources.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: I always was like, how could people possibly want to come in and ruin this beautiful place that I call my home?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's still where I go to make all of my big decisions because it, you know, because the protections in place have allowed Yosemite and all of our other national parks, I mean, so far, to retain that integrity and preservation of just this beautiful part of our country and our world.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: And also a big reason of why I wanted to work for the federal government.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: I think my whole life I saw my mom and her colleagues protecting, you know, this way of life in the national parks.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody in my community, everybody that I grew up with really focused on making sure that future generations could use and enjoy and experience the world the way that we get got to in Yosemite.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: I also watched them all go through their careers with this understanding that the main way to preserve and protect this beautiful area for future generations is to work for the federal government, right?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: In that context, the federal government was the one that was, you know, doing all of this work to maintain the trails, doing all of this work to make sure that wildlife is preserved, you know, maintaining wilderness areas, making sure not so many people go in them that they're overrun.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: You would expect people to understand on their own, but then you get tourists and visitors from all around the world, and you sometimes see the behavior that they choose to partake in in a beautiful place like Yosemite, and you're like, okay, yeah, this is why.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: This is why we have to have rules.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: This is why we have to have guardrails.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um I worked preventative search and rescue at the top of Vernal Falls one summer as a teenager.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: And what's preventative search and rescue?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: You basically stand at the top of the waterfall and say, Hey, maybe it's not a good idea to swim in the pool at the top of the waterfall because you will go over it and die, and some search and rescue will have to be mobilized and come and find you.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: And if there's somebody there to stop that initial bad decision from happening, it's less likely that we're gonna have to expend the resources and you know experience loss of life and whatnot.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: That like kind of changed my brain chemistry.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: When I went to college, I was really good at math, so everybody told me to study engineering, and I did.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: And then I realized nobody listens to scientists.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody loves to say I have this really cool innovative technology, but not many scientists are good at convincing people why they need to use it, right?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: So then I thought, okay, I want to be a lawyer, right?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: I want to be that translational person who understands the technology, but also allows people to understand why they need to use it and why this is in our best interest, and be a true advocate in addition to somebody who, you know, pushes the envelope as far as uh, you know, technology and policy and and environmental science goes, because those innovations in clean energy, in, you know, ways to to reduce carbon output into the air or draw carbon down from the air to combat climate change, to prevent, you know, mass extinction of endangered species, like all of those tools that scientists create to achieve those problems or to help solve those problems are useless if we are not convincing people to put them into practice.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so that is why I went to law school, always with the intention of working for the the EPA or the USDOJ doing environmental enforcement, representing the government in court, etc.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so I spent a couple years after law school um go working at a big firm and I was doing defense work and I absolutely hated it.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like I was good at it, but I did not like standing up and saying, hey, it's actually okay that we emitted formaldehyde into the air.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like that that that's not why I wanted to do what I wanted to do.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's funny, like listening to you talk, your face and your voice changes when you're talking about like the national parks work and um you know how it felt to like be a teenager and what clicked for you.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: And like people who are listening can't see this video, but like I can I can see the the energy and the joy in your face.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, when we talk about the big firms, like it doesn't, it just doesn't hit the same.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: No, no.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: I look back fondly on my experience and growth that that occurred during my time at a law firm.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so I'm thankful that I got that experience, but I just it really is soul sucking.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so when did you when did you start at the EPA?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: I started in March of 2024.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: We had gotten a lot of super fund money in the door to do a lot of cleanup work in Washington.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: Region 10 serves um Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: So as an attorney advisor in the Office of Regional Council in Region 10, my work could involve any super fund sites or hazardous waste contamination in Oregon, Idaho, Washington, or Alaska.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I went to law school in Oregon and practiced in both Oregon and Washington.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: So my portfolio when I started at EPA ended up being mostly Oregon and Washington work because I was acquainted with how things operated there.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: So can you walk me through like what happened that led to your termination?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I guess it all starts it all starts with the 2024 election.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: I remember, you know, waking up the morning that we learned that Trump was going to come back for a second term in office.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I was on a call with my coworkers about a super fun site in Washington.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: And actually, it was me and my other coworker who was also terminated for signing this letter.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I just vividly remember we got on this call and he was like, Well, this, I know this doesn't feel like the day to do this, but we have to be aware of what's coming.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: We have to read through Project 2025.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's funny looking back because that day when we read Project 2025 together, I remember us all talking and saying, like, there's no way they could do that.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: I remember that feeling of like hope of talking to my older colleagues who had been at EPA for 30 plus years, saying, This is what's realistic and this is what's not realistic.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: But in region 10, we had a new administrator come in, a regional administrator come in, and then we just started getting a slew of policies from headquarters.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like one of my colleagues in Region 10 made buttons that said, I support my trans coworkers, and those were swiftly uh shot down.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: So you couldn't put it on the outside of your cubicle, but you could put it on the inside of your cubicle, which is just like crazy.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is kind of nitty-gritty, but do you remember like the messaging?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Did you all get an email?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Did was it was it said directly, like no, you know, no trans rights buttons on the cubicles or no trans rights buttons on your clothes?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like what was the was it more like no political messaging facing outwards?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was like one day we all came into the office and the like reversal of the DEI policy executive order was just plastered across the the hallway uh in the kitchen area.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: Somebody had printed out our oath of office, and at the bottom of the oath of office, there was a line that said, I serve the people and not billionaires.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: And my coworker and I shared an office, and we each had a pride flag in our pen cup.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: And that same day, somebody came through, you know, in my mind, I imagine, like Regina George from Mean Girls storming through and like ripping things off.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: But they ripped the like physically tore ripped the signs off of our office, took the pride flags out of our desk personal areas and hid them.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: We got into the office and we honestly felt so violated.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, I mean, of course.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: How could you not?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: Ultimately, it's private property, you know?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's private property, exactly.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I sent a very concerned email to my at the time boss's boss, so the the regional council herself.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, unfortunately, she was like, that's crazy.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's it.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, she she also felt the need to fall in line.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: And that was sort of the moment that I knew, like, oh, okay, things are going to be very different from what my colleagues think.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: They just started tearing every single thing down one after the other, like just so quick in quick succession, too, that it's like, okay, before you have an opportunity to like recover from the shock and actually react from what they're doing on a daily basis, something new happens, right?
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: So also around that time that all this stuff got torn down, some of my coworkers, not me, um, at this point, right, received they were part of the first like probationary period wave of cuts, right?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: So they just got an email one day saying, you know, you you are hereby terminated because you're in your probationary period and we don't need a reason.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um bye, you're locked out of everything.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: It was either on Valentine's Day or the day before, and they like all of the doge, you know, people started calling it the Valentine's Day Massacre.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I all of my onboarding paperwork said that I had a one-year trial period.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: Mind you, I started March of 2024.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I was somehow miraculously saved from this mass firing of probationary people.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: I have a question about the probationary firing.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: Regional administrators are like the only people who kind of the current administration has the ability to pick, but if but now if we're in a situation where you know all these people are laid off, like there is that just a window for the administration to come in and you know exert influence in a place where there isn't a lot of turnover usually.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: They they 100% used that power or they used that probationary firing instance as a way to instill fear into people to get them to do what they wanted.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like exerting this amount of influence over career staff is unheard of from what I understand.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: This is a rumor.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: Rumor had it that all the probationary people in each office were put on a list, and the the managers had an hour to rank people best to worst, and the bottom 10% or whatever got terminated.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: So it just it was like the start of this administration throwing noodles at the wall to see what would stick.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: And and so that already instilled all of this fear in everyone.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: And you could feel that like among your colleagues, you could feel an office.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: People were scared, people were, you know, closing their computers, muting everything before they spoke because we didn't know if they were, you know, listening in via Teams.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody just immediately was like, lock in, right?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: Do not give them any reason to whatsoever find an excuse at all to get rid of you.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: Some of my best friends are the people that I went through this experience at EPA with.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, we joke and we say that, you know, we were trauma bonded for life now.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: One of my good friends is still at EPA and she is feeling such like the impacts of it.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_02: How do you normalize when 80% of your coworkers aren't there anymore, but their work still is, right?
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like that work just doesn't get done, but you feel the impacts of that work not getting done.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: The American people feel the impacts of that work not getting done.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_02: We see, you know, climate change ramping up.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: We don't see, we see cyclospora outbreaks, we see all, you know, all of these, all of these impacts of not having people watching out for and putting guardrails on poor behavior of corporations who will run with any opportunity to not clean up their tar, to not prevent formaldehyde from getting into the air.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, like it's it's just we've had multiple chemical plant explosions and all of these things that have happened because nobody is there anymore.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and the people that are there, they have been like so beaten and bruised throughout this process that it is like, how could we reasonably expect them to do the same level and amount of work that they were doing before?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: We could start to see the writing on the wall.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: We got the fork in the road, stupid email, um, where pe they, you know, they offered you you could stop working and get paid till the end of September or the end of the year, um, as long as you didn't work.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: Because what was important to them is that the work does not get done, right?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: In that moment, there were so many discussions with my coworkers about like, what do you do, right?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: Do you give into the fear and take the off-ramp and take take the fork in the road?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: Or do you stick it out and risk getting the rug pulled out from beneath you?
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not trying to judge any person in that situation.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: After everybody left, whether it was from the firings or from accepting the fork in the road offer, my office, we had 18 fully funded positions.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: We went down to six people.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: We're lawyers, we're dealing with cases.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: Those cases didn't go away.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_02: So then it just turned into triage, you know.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: People are leaving, people are retiring, people are taking fork in the road.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: How are you supposed to hand off a legal case with all of these deadlines in that amount of time?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: You can't.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: Things fall through the cracks.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: And the people who were left had to pick up the pieces.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: That also meant being left without a manager.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: I remember us all getting together, you know, the six of us remaining and strategizing, right?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: We had to say, like, how do we best handle this?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: How do we track everything?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: How do we track what we don't even know?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: How do we know what we don't know?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: Because we don't know what John was working on.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: We don't know what Kate was working on.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: I had my one-year review and I got you know my records that said, you know, you're done with your trial period, bump up to the next GS level.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I felt more secure.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm taking on all this work.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'm being, you know, the region representative for all of these groups at headquarters and handling a ridiculous amount of cases, so much so that like I got a cash award.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: I received so many emails of like, we can't imagine how you're doing this.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for doing it.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: The the stakes are so high and exactly.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I care.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: I care too much for this to just fall to the wayside.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: So that was sort of like the situation I was in, and I went on you know, vacation.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: Finally, I had saved up vacation.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: I went down to visit my family in California, Yosemite, and I was in the backcountry, and I came back out of the backcountry to just a ridiculous amount of texts, calls, emails.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody was trying to get a hold of me, signal chats, all these things, and everybody's like, Are you okay?
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: Are you okay?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: God, I'm so sorry, blah, blah.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, What is happening?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: I have no idea what's happening.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just coming out of a beautiful few days in the wilderness, like in my place.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I finally opened my email, and the regional administrator had emailed me putting me on investigative leave pending the results of an investigation because of a petition, a letter that I saw in our signal group chat and signed when I was on vacation home.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: And so just to interject, this is the stand-up for science letter.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: This is the stand-up for science letter, and it circulated from one of our union representatives.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and the hard part about this was that like pe some people were named, some people assigned anonymously.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I signed anonymously, but my name was listed.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have any like hard feelings about that because I should be able to sign something and put my name on it, right?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like me as a person, me as like somebody growing up in this beautiful place who loves and cherishes our natural world, I want to be able to say, hey, maybe kids shouldn't get cancer.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe we should use health-based data, like true scientific data to back up and inform our decisions.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: That's not crazy to me, right?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: And if that is so crazy that it, you know, it irks them so much, it makes them feel so insecure that they have to get rid of us.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: I remember being like, oh my god, this is it.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: They finally got me.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like, my dream is being taken from me.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: What do I do?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: I did something wrong.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: No, I didn't.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: This is what I believe in.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: This wasn't bad.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: I I'm allowed to like have my opinions and to stand up for what I believe in.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: I attend protests.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'm allowed to do that, right?
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like, that is our our right.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: What being an American.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, I also think the irony of, you know, you work for the Environmental Protection Agency and the fact that someone who is a federally mandated people to protect the environment can't say, like, hey, I think people actually should know what's in their water and in their air is like crazy, right?
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: And even my mom was like, Do you ever wish you didn't sign that?
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like in the aftermath, do you wish that you could take it back and still have your job?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, no, I I don't because I want to be able to stand up for what I believe in.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: It is not the action that is that employees took that is the issue, it is the administration's response to it that is the issue.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't want those two to get mingled.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: We are allowed to do what we want to do in our personal capacity, and they are not allowed to take such a, you know, strong fist to us in response.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: What I'm hearing from talking to you is that like this letter was sort of like one way that they were gonna find to to shave a little off the department.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: There were many, many tentacles of this operation, you know.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: There's part of me that wonders if it wasn't the letter, would it have been something else eventually?
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: 100% it would have been something different.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: So I was put on administrative leave and they kept extending it by two weeks.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: For almost two months, they gave us two-week notices.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, your leave is extended, you're on investigation for another two weeks, whatever.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, which, like, how long does it take to conduct an investigation like this?
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: Ridiculous.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I was finally terminated at the end of August, um, along with I think 11-ish of my colleagues across the country for being in my probationary period, allegedly.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Crazy.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, despite my my one-year trial period being up, um they retroactively went back and changed my paperwork to say that I had a two-year probationary period, and that because I was still within two years, they didn't need a reason to terminate me.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: But I think exactly like a month and a half after I was terminated, I had knee surgery for a torn ligament in my knee.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: I couldn't walk for about six weeks, which when you're dealing with something as heavy as you know, losing your dream job is is uh is tough, right?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: The depression sucks you in.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: And my mom came up to take care of me, which was really wonderful, and I got some really good family time, and surgery went well, and I'm better for it.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then as soon as my mom got home from taking care of me, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, which was just like salt to the wound, kind of of like, hey, I signed this this letter saying we should, you know, protect people from getting cancer.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: And and they said, Too bad, so sad, you're out of here.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_02: And then my mom gets cancer.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like I lost my my job of trying to prevent this, and then it happened to my mom, my family.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: And that was just like so gut-wrenching.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, of like over the course of three months, I lost my job, lost my ability to walk, and my mother was terminally ill.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: She is doing well.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: She went through chemo and has positive news for now, but that's still out in the ether.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we don't we don't know what's gonna happen.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: I took a full year off of being a lawyer after that incredibly traumatic experience of working at the EPA during this time and losing my job.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I've landed at the city of Seattle in their environmental and contracts and utilities section, which is really wonderful.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_02: They are just incredible people here.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I love my coworkers.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: Other government agencies are snatching up people who are leaving the feds because we are good workers, we are good employees, we are passionate about what we do.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_02: It feels so personal.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: It feels so personal to me.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: It feels like they're taking all this from me.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: It feels like they gave my mom cancer, but they don't see you as people.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: Which is so heartbreaking because I feel like the government has never been like that before.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody, you know, nobody who I worked with at EPA had ever been through a riff, a reduction in force, um, which was the threat if enough people didn't leave through the fork in the road.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's death by a thousand cuts, see it as like, okay, you are ripping the heart out of the federal government, um, which is devastating.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_02: And and I know that EPA is not the only agency that's felt it, right?
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like my family and friends who still work for the Park Service are getting it just as bad.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like my stepsister runs the entrance station at Tioga Pass in Yosemite, and she has experienced more physical violence threats and just incredibly dangerous behavior directed towards her as somebody who's turning people away from a national park because it is being pushed beyond its limits.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: That like she is she is sometimes afraid to go to work.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: They don't, they cut law enforcement.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: There's nobody there to enforce things.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: Bears are getting hit by cars more than more often than usual.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, people are literally pooping on the side of the road and leaving toilet paper because of how the facilities haven't been cleaned because there's nobody there to do it.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I mean, I know it's real, but it almost sounds like a metaphor.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's like we have a government that has allowed people to just like completely disrespect all the structures and and rules, right?
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like it is a it is the perfect example of you expect people to, you know, have human decency and then you see someone sitting on the side of the road.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: Excuse my friend.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's just ridiculous.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's just ridiculous.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm working on this little project that's just with one specific union and one department, and but but you see the way this is symptomatic of like a much larger problem, and it reflects something really deep and foundational about the state of our country.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm curious, what does all this indicate to you about the priorities of our leaders?
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess in all this darkness, like how do you maintain hope?
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: Do you see any kind of like path forward?
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, that's that's hard.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: I've for the last year, I haven't.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: This has been like one of the darkest years of my life.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it's really hard to see where we go from here.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think our leaders are so focused on money and wealth that everything else has fallen to the wayside.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I am very optimistic that, you know, more gonna come back from that.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: The pendulum is gonna swing.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, people loved saying that at EPA.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_02: This is a dark time, the pendulum's gonna swing the other way.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's definitely not gonna happen as fast as this destruction happened, but I do believe that we will get back what has been taken from us, no matter how long it's gonna take to rebuild it.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_02: I just am so motivated by Gen Z that like I really do think that they're gonna come in and save us.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: As a cusper, I can't say that I am a Gen Z myself, yeah.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: For me personally, and I think for a lot of Gen Z people too, is like never underestimate the power of like pettiness.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I think we're all so petty in the best way.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, wow, you wronged us, you ruined this for us.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: Look at what we can do in response.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: Part of me thought, okay, everything has been basically taken from me in this last year.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_02: I might as well just like jump ship and and leave the country or whatever.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then I was like, no, I really do love it here.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: I just am like, how dare they?
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_02: How dare they think they can also take that from me?
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I refuse.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: I refuse to let them take that.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I want to do whatever is in my power to be like, you tried your worst, and I still survived it.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you to Anna Laird for joining us on this episode of the 238 update.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: If you work at the EPA and you're not yet a dues paying member, go to AFGE238.org.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's AFGE238.org.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: This podcast is brought to you by AFGE Council 238 and its affiliated locals.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening.