L.E. McCullough: USPS delivers more than just mail

Title 39, Section 101 of the U.S. Code: “The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities.”

Trust. Peace of mind. Continuity. Dependability.

Those were some of the responses given by those attending a recent Squirrel Hill rally decrying postal service cutbacks when asked: “What is the most important thing the U.S. Postal Service delivers to you?”

An assembly of around 200, comprising grade schoolers to senior citizens, had gathered along sidewalks in front of the postal branch at Murray and Darlington avenues on an overcast, upper-80s afternoon, many holding colorful hand-made signs referencing various political crises of the moment.

Organized by the 14th Ward Independent Democratic Club to raise awareness for the ongoing #SaveThePostOffice National Days of Action, the event was low-key and congenial, punctuated by passing car honks and an occasional brief “Whose post office? Our post office!” chant.

But no one was hesitant about asserting the importance of the postal service in their own life sphere.

“The post office delivers my husband’s insulin.”

“It’s how we do our legal correspondence.”

“My business completely depends on it.”

“I like sending cards to my grandparents.”

“It’s how we always vote.”

The USPS has been disparaged as a haven of incompetence and volatility, e.g., “snail mail,” “going postal.” Now, it’s under politically motivated attack for being too efficient and stable.

Yet it remains an affordable communication channel available to anyone — adult or child, citizen or visitor, rich or poor — who walks through a post office door, a modest but resolute symbol of the fundamentally democratic nature of American society.

And possibly too Democratic in an election year where Republican party officials have incessantly stoked suspicion (with no genuine supporting data) that mail-in balloting will be more advantageous to opposition candidates.

In the years to come, the damage from the Trump administration’s brazen and calculated efforts to hobble the national postal system will extend beyond mere taint of election tampering.

It will have broken a civic institution that accompanied each step of the United States as it grew and took shape over the last three centuries. An institution that carries, literally, the ambition and enterprise of millions of Americans to every corner of the world each day.

A unifying institution that, more than even the armed services or public schools, has helped America become — and remain — one nation, indivisible, despite endless attempts to break it apart.

“And the carriers, mister. Don’t forget them. They’re the best.”

A small boy standing next to his mother pointed excitedly toward the corner, where a postal employee loaded a red-white-and-blue mail truck with the afternoon’s final dispatch.

An employee who likely had no idea she and her cohorts were seen, in the eyes of many, as something akin to heroes.

L. E. McCullough of Mt. Washington is a former press director at Hall Institute of Public Policy in Trenton, N.J., and author of “The American Voter 2012: Spotlight on How We Vote and Why.”