Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the interpretation of facts and data.
Resist! I’ve been a resistor in my life but at other times I’ve let things slide.
Today we’re in a time of enormous political and cultural change. It feels overwhelming. I’ve been tempted to take cover, but then I come to my senses. I need to pay attention.
I heard this news report on the state of our National Park Service:
The Trump administration has explained the enormous cuts in staffing and programming with a few short words: “We’re dealing with waste, fraud and abuse.” It’s an inadequate response.
These cuts to the National Park Service were made without any kind of strategic thought or exploration. In fact, a move to centralize park staff was mandated and then later abandoned because centralization made much of the park work impossible. So cutting waste, fraud, and abuse doesn’t cut it here with the parks. Anyone with an ounce of common sense is aware that knowledge of an organization or institution comes before determining if and where there is waste, fraud and abuse.
There are three generations of National Park Service employees in my family: an uncle, two cousins and a nephew. Perhaps that’s why I have a special fondness for the national parks and the workers protecting them, but I know it’s more than that.
Up to now, the national parks have always been valued as spaces and places of enormous treasure. Oases of grandeur, beauty and calm. Many with a specific mission to provide the history of the area.
In 1864, Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite grant and now more than a century and a half later there are over “433 sites in the National Park System and about two-thirds of them are dedicated to preserving and sharing history. There are battlefields, seashores, memorials, factories, monuments, ancient pipestone quarries, the theater where Abraham Lincoln was shot and the stretch of the Tallahatchie River where they found what remained of 14-year-old Emmet Till.” (Jennifer Brooks, Minnesota Star Tribune)
If you’ve ever had a garden, a yard or frequented any kind of green space, you know that unless attention is paid, havoc occurs. Havoc occurs quickly and takes a much longer time to restore. Our national parks are at risk because of the enormous cuts: trash piling up, trails less navigable, toilets overflowing, longer waits to gain entrance, no staff at entrances, and limited guided tours. And that’s just a few of the problems.
And while the haphazard cuts and hiring freeze are one huge problem, the other is the dismantling of our history.
In March, President Trump signed an executive order that seeks to change how our history is portrayed at federal institutions, including national parks and other Interior Department sites. In July, Trump officials further directed national park staff to report all items in gift shops that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living” or that include “matters unrelated to the beauty, abundance, or grandeur” of a site.
Some of the valuable items up for review to see if they meet the Trump policy of restoring American values include: the biography of the first Native American woman named as the secretary of the Interior, Deb Halland, and The 1619 Project, a book documenting the history of slavery.
Who wants a whitewashed history story? History serves a purpose – both in our personal lives and our country’s life. We might not always like what we’ve done or how we’ve thought, but we can learn from it and become better people and a better country.
Jennnifer Brooks of the Minnesota Star Tribune has written about the Save Our Signs project: “Librarians, historians and public data experts at the University of Minnesota co-founded the project – a crowdsourcing site where park visitors can upload photos of historical and information signs they see in the parks this summer. See something, save something.”
We have just a few days left. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has ordered that all offending signs be removed by Sept. 17. So if you’re in a national park or know someone who will be, make a point of taking a photo of any sign that you think might disappear and send it to the Save Our Signs project.
Now when I hear the Trump administration talk about “waste, fraud and abuse” I think of the destruction that they have wrought on our national parks. Decades of work done by previous administrations to preserve and build up the parks are in danger of being completely destroyed.
