Reality vs. Reality Television
AFSCME International President Lee Saunders wrote this column for the Huffington Post:
Renita Smith, a school bus driver from Prince George’s County, Maryland, was on her regular afternoon route when suddenly she smelled smoke. She pulled over and was about to call her supervisor when she saw flames in her side view mirror.
Acting quickly, she hustled the children safely to a neighbor’s yard. Then, amazingly, she went back on to the bus, even as the fire intensified, checking every seat and aisle to make sure every child had gotten off.
Asked later how and why she acted so courageously, she simply said: “I was just doing my job.”
Renita is one of millions of public service workers dedicated to strengthening communities by cleaning the streets, serving school meals, responding to 911 calls, staffing health clinics and helping people acquire skills and job training, as I used to do as a state employee in Ohio earlier in my career.
This fall, America’s public service workers are looking to choose a president who not only stands with them on the issues, but who understands what motivates them. Hillary Clinton has proven, throughout several decades in public life, that she shares our values and respects our work. Donald Trump, on the other hand, stands out for his raw contempt for everything public service workers stand for.
While nurses help veterans heal, Trump slurs Gold Star families and former POW’s. While home care workers feed and clothe people who can’t do for themselves, Trump mocks people with disabilities. While corrections officers keep their communities safe, Trump uses “law and order” as a racial dog whistle. While school employees help kids get a good education, Trump runs a Ponzi scheme disguised as a university.
When I was working at the Ohio Bureau of Employment Services, I knew every day that what I did mattered. Public service workers devote their lives to helping people, but Donald Trump has no idea what it means to be a part of something larger than himself. He stiffs vendors, busts unions and builds hotels with cheap Chinese steel. His whole business model has been about ripping people off instead of lifting people up.
Public service workers value service, sacrifice and humility; he celebrates greed, vanity and celebrity. We’re too busy worrying about reality -- paying the bills, making a difference in our neighborhoods – to be reality TV stars.
And it isn’t just that Trump has different values than us. His scorn for public services is so great that he won’t help pay for them just like everyone else.
Donald Trump has all but admitted skipping out on federal income taxes for several years – and he’s proud of it too. It “makes me smart,” he said in the first presidential debate, adding that his money would just be “squandered.” Campaign surrogates like Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani doubled down on this idea, proclaiming Trump’s tax avoidance an act of “genius.”
Paying your fair share, according to Trump and his allies, is apparently for chumps or suckers. He has conveniently excused himself, for example, from investing in body armor for our soldiers. He doesn’t want to join his fellow Americans in pitching in so that disadvantaged children can take advantage of Head Start. He doesn’t think he should help shoulder the cost of maintaining roads and highways that carry goods across the country.
And he didn’t just skip out on his tax obligation, he did it by running his business into the ground and declaring a nearly billion-dollar loss. He lost – in a single year – what it would take the average public service worker several hundred lifetimes to earn. No wonder he can’t understand the challenges facing working families.
Public service workers never quit. We do our jobs with pride and professionalism – and quite often, as in Renita Smith’s case, real heroism. We don’t expect much in return (it’s like Renita said: “I was just doing my job”). We’re not in it for fame and fortune. All we ask is for a little respect and some economic security. As President, Donald Trump would extend neither.