Photo: Mike Macklin/WBZ NewsRadio
BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — Representative Ayanna Pressley and Senator Ed Markey joined union leader and federal worker Ellen Mei and her supporters at a rally in Boston Friday.
Mei, a Boston-based food assistance employee with the Department of Agriculture and president of the National Treasury Employees Union’s Chapter 255, says the Trump administration is firing her because of comments she made during an MSNBC interview on Oct. 2 about the effects of the government shutdown on SNAP benefits. Mei was a furloughed worker at the time of the interview.
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"My coworkers and I are feeling really conflicted in this moment," Mei told MSNBC host Chris Jansing. "So many of us have been overworked and exhausted since April, when we lost half of the staff in our office. And so we feel even guilty for seeing this as a reprieve, because what we really want to do is to be at work, helping the people who rely on SNAP and WIC to feed their families and to put food on their tables. We're feeling angry at being treated as political pawns, again, so that billionaires can have more money while the people that we serve are being, you know, strained even further in having to worry, again, about their benefits being at play."
Mei says the day after the interview, she received a Notice of Proposed Removal from the agency, accusing her of speaking on behalf of the agency and disclosing information without authorization. The notice told her that she will be let go 30 days after the end of the shutdown. Mei insists she was only speaking on behalf of herself and her union members.
At Friday's rally outside the Tip O'Neill Federal Building, Markey decried Mei's firing as an attack on her First Amendment right to free speech.
"The First Amendment is the heartbeat of democracy," said Markey. "People have to have a right to be able to stand up and speak the truth to power. That is what we are gathered here today to protect, to say is absolutely sacrosanct."
Pressley said that in her experience, every federal worker who has their life disrupted cared more about the work that would go unfinished than their own livelihood.
"Ellen, you put your livelihood on the line, you risked a job that you are damn good at," Pressley said. "You put a target on your back by standing up, not only for yourself and your colleagues but for the American people."
Pressley and Markey also sent a letter Friday to USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins, demanding Mei's reinstatement.
"Ms. Mei joined the USDA to serve her country and her fellow Americans who rely on the critical services of the Agency you are charged with leading and stewarding," the letter reads in part. "Like every public servant, she took an oath to serve this nation, protect and honor the Constitution, and dedicate her labor in pursuit of the USDA’s mission. Ms. Mei remains committed to continuing that mission and our shared constituents would be well served with her in her current position. I am urging you to rescind the NOPR and allow her to resume her duties when the federal shutdown ends."
Mei remains on administrative leave from her job, but says she will continue to fight her dismissal and will continue to speak out in support of food assistance recipients.
WBZ's Mike Macklin reports.