WASHINGTON—The Government Employees (AFGE), whose members are prime victims of President Donald Trump’s shutdown, furloughs, and looming firings, are striking back: They’re asking members and supporters to join the next round of No Kings Day protests, scheduled for October 18.
Since AFGE members are scattered all over the U.S.—85% live outside the Washington-Baltimore-Northern Virginia area—and in Europe, too, they’ll have a lot of No Kings events to choose from.
“Shutting down the government is another authoritarian power grab by this administration, which has threatened to lay off mass numbers of furloughed workers as part of an ongoing quest to gut federal programs and services the administration finds objectionable,” says AFGE President Everett Kelley, who, like many federal workers, is a military veteran.
With a bit more than a week to go before the marches occur, there are 1,650 events scheduled everywhere from Alaska to Hawaii to Florida to Maine—and in Paris, France, plus Venice, Rome, and Turin, Italy, Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto, Canada, Reykjavik, Iceland, and Melbourne, Australia. There’s a U.S. airbase in Reykjavik, with civilian workers, and AFGE members in Rome, too.
There’ll be at least eight marches, one labeled “Remove the Regime,” in the D.C. area, and at least eight more in New York City—including at Morningside Heights, Broadway and 47th Street, Forest Hills, and Riverdale.
One of the many marches in the Chicago suburbs will pass in front of the controversial ICE detention center at 1930 Beach Street in Broadview. There are three marches in the city so far: In Grant Park, Unity Park, and at 103rd Street and Western Avenue.
The marches are occurring as Trump furloughed 750,000 “non-essential” federal workers as a result of the Trump-GOP shutdown of much of the federal government. Trump told reporters on October 7 that if and when any of those workers return, they might not get back pay.
“It depends on who we’re talking about,” Trump said. “The Democrats have put a lot of people in great risk and jeopardy, but it really depends on who you’re talking about. But for the most part, we’ll take care of our people. There are some people that don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take of them in a different way.”
Trump did not specify what his “different way” is, but his Office of Management and Budget Director, Russell Vought, gleefully ordered agencies not just to furlough the workers, but to fire them both during the shutdown and afterward, for no reason at all. Vought, like Trump, is opposed to having any kind of substantial federal workforce, especially a unionized one.
And the corporate moguls who cheer the two on support the furloughs, called RIFs (Reductions in Force), and the firings. Corporations funded those recommendations in Trump’s platform, Project 2025. Vought wrote the federal workers section. He advocated mass firings and trashing of federal worker union contracts.
Lack of federal workers means lack of oversight and accountability, thus letting corporate CEOs grow ever wealthier while the income gap between them and the rest of us widens. No oversight means the corporations can also literally run amok and get away with all forms of exploitation and repression, along with unsafe working conditions and products. Nobody’s there to blow the whistle.
All this led to a protest letter from AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler to Trump, and to AFGE President Kelley urging his union’s members to join the October 18 No Kings Day marches.
“AFGE is calling on all our members to participate in one of the more than 1,650 events that have been planned,” Kelley added. AFGE has more than 300,000 members, but represents—or represented until Trump and Vought trashed their union contracts—more than one million.
The prior No Kings Day on June 14 brought five million people into U.S. streets for marches, protests, sit-ins, and study sessions, two and a half times the figure organizers originally forecast. It was “the largest single-day protest yet against President Trump’s authoritarian attacks,” Kelley noted.
“The upcoming day of action is the next step in this growing movement, channeling that energy into yet another coordinated, peaceful mobilization.” Kelley’s union is also encouraging individual workers nationwide to speak about the shutdown’s impact on their services to the nation, and the pain to themselves and their families. And AFGE is offering various support services for them on its website.
Shuler urged Trump to compromise with congressional Democrats, whose Senate votes he needs to end the shutdown, on the key issue dividing the two sides: Trump-GOP plans, enacted earlier this year, to cut 14 million people off Medicaid and double health insurance premiums for millions more. It would do so by letting a coronavirus-era tax credit for the Obamacare health care premiums expire. Over his protests, Congress enacted the credit at the height of the plague.
“Our livelihoods should not be used as pawns or bargaining chips, whether it is threatening one set of workers after another, canceling construction projects, or jacking up electricity prices on top of higher health insurance premiums,” Shuler wrote Trump. “We implore you to meet with the leaders of the House and Senate to find a solution that funds the government, fixes the health care crisis, and puts working people first.”
“The law is clear: All federal employees furloughed during a government shutdown are owed backpay when the shutdown ends. Any attempt to withhold the pay to which these workers are entitled would be plainly illegal,” added the four co-chairs of the Congressional Labor Caucus, Reps. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., Donald Norcross, D-N.J., and Mark Pocan, D-Wis.
Union backers and close allies of this round of No Kings Day protests include the Communications Workers, National Nurses United, The Labor Campaign For Single Payer, the Professional Staff Congress/AFT at the City University of New York, Pride At Work, the Service Employees, the United Electrical Workers, The Workers Circle, the United University ProfessionsAFT, the Union Of Southern Service Workers, and the University Of Illinois-Chicago Faculty Union. Other backers include Democracy Forward, End Citizens United, the ACLU, the Human Rights Campaign, Indivisible, the League of Women Voters, the League of Conservation Voters, the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, the Kairos Center—which backs the Poor People’s Campaign— MoveOn, Our Revolution, the Women’s March, and Win Without War. Details about the October 18 “No Kings Day” events are at www.mobilize.us or through www.indivisible.org.
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