Good Governance is an American Value
Image by Joel Durkee.
Growing up, my Dad told me the best job I could ever have is working for the government for three clear reasons: stability, benefits, and impact. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this argument wasn’t terribly interesting to a high schooler craving to experience something new and different.
After I graduated college, I joined the Peace Corps and shipped off to a rural, underserved region of Cameroon. Cameroon is a country the size of California located in Central Africa known best at the time for its peacefulness and long-serving President.
In Cameroon, government employees, including teachers, police, health care providers, and governors, are sent to the area of greatest need, often separating them from their families and friends. The motivation of these public servants to serve was sometimes pretty low; I would go to offices and have to wait for hours for meetings.
Worse yet, kids would come to classrooms where their teachers wouldn’t show up for weeks because they left to go visit their families across the country. Rural health care centers often lacked doctors and medications, roads went unpaved, and illegal logging of the rainforest went unchecked.
The lack of committed government employees was felt every single day. In fact, the work I did often took the place of the work government employees could be doing. My Dad’s words came back screaming into my ears on a regular basis; turns out, government jobs do matter and the void left by a lack of employees or programs has a real impact.
In America today, we’re about to learn this lesson about what government means in our lives the hard way. I’ve had the privilege of serving as a civil servant – first at the US Department of Education, and second at the United States Agency for International Development – two agencies that the current Trump Administration has targeted for demolition.
I have been honored to serve my country. Work I have done over the course of my career has ensured that hurricane-ravaged schools in Texas were able to have the funds they needed to serve and help children get back to learning, Angolan children could safely cross the street without fear of injuries and death, and low-income Americans could access a free, quality preschool education.
Without a Department of Education, how will we ensure that all American children have access to a local public school with trained teachers, books, clubs, and special education services? If our children can’t access a local, quality public school, what future will they have?
In Cameroon, I saw how families had to sacrifice to find ways to fund their children’s education. Our children deserve to never have to worry about whether and how they are educated.
The United States Agency for International Development has historically been less well-known but make no mistake; the agency is still important to Americans.
The Agency buys crops from American farmers to distribute globally. It employs more than 10,000 Americans and invests in small and large businesses across the United States, generating tax revenue and economic strength across all 50 States.
The Agency represents the best of our American values, showing our strength and our compassion to folks around the globe while also empowering Americans at home.
President Trump, with the assistance of Elon Musk, has dismantled USAID over the last month. No more aid, no more jobs or investments, no more role modeling our values globally. I may have lost my “stable” government job this week, but I’m more worried that we’re losing our humanity as a country.
What will folks say about Americans now that more children, families, seniors, and disabled persons needlessly suffer both at home and abroad? What a country we are becoming.
We’re at a fork in the road nationally: we can head towards cruelty, or we can live our national values; we can be our worst selves, or we can be our best selves. We still have time to act, but we must first ask ourselves: what does good government mean in our lives and is it worth our time to save it?
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