In response to jpmassar's recent diary, 'The Seeds of Protest Bloom. Staples Boycott Goes National', I have created a new petition on We the People, a feature on WhiteHouse.gov, the official WH web site. Here is the direct link to the petition:
Stop the Privatization of the United States Postal Service
I ask for your support. It needs 150 signatures before it will be publically published or searchable. If this petition gets 100,000 signatures by August 11, 2014, the White House will review it and respond. Please feel free to forward this link to others, or publish it on social sites.
Here's the body of this petition*:
We the People have a right to postal services that are provided by
uniformed United States Postal Service employees who have sworn an oath to
safeguard our mail and who are accountable to us.
We do not support the outsourcing of essential public services to untrained
workers in private companies with lower standards. These efforts would
significantly undermine the security and integrity of the country's entire
mail collection and delivery process.
Privatization will also have the effect of turning good, living wage jobs
into low wage private sector jobs. Our nation needs more good paying jobs,
not less.
Post Offices provide people some of the most visible and easily accessed
public services, and selling off or eliminating them will have a detrimental
effect on most local communities.
Will you add your name to mine?
*(As I am not the most creative writer, I have adopted some of the language/ideas of the petition from public sources, mainly the NEA president's statement on this issue, and the postcard published on stopstaples.com. I do not claim credit for the originality of the text, and my apologies if I have offended anyone.)