We want to remind each eligible voter in the Greater Dayton Area that your participation in government makes democracy work. The polls will be open on Nov. 4 between 6:30 AM and 7:30 PM. Be sure to thank those poll workers for their service to the community!
- Jacqueline Housel, President League of Women Voters of the Greater Dayton Area
It’s 2005: serving the U.S. government as a federal employee means honor, empathy, stability, and respect from the nation you dedicate your life toward. It’s more than a job. It’s a calling to protect the freedoms and happiness of the American people, with the side benefit of a paycheck that helps your family get by. You feel lucky to belong to a country that takes care of its own.
It’s 2025: being a federal employee means living in constant uncertainty. Uncertainty about being RIFF’d. Uncertainty about what those in power will decide while they keep their titles, wealth, and unshaken certainty without blinking an eye.
It’s kicking off October with a government shutdown — spending half a day signing furlough paperwork before being sent home. Then watching your paycheck get halved, then IOU’d, as the holidays inch closer. It’s watching Congress vote again and again, unable to reach agreement, while federal employees take on side gigs to keep food on the table. Because no one knows how long this will last.
An October haunted by worry, not just for federal employees but for their spouses and children. Hope deferred. The same Groundhog Day headlines of a continued hell for families.
There’s no one person to be angry at. How do you express rage and grief when it’s the system itself that’s failed? Who can blame anyone Googling “how to move to Canada” as November’s season of thanks begins while shutdown-impacted federal employees are left behind?
- Whitney Russell, Dayton
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
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