Sarah Jaffe

And you probably know how to do your job way better.

We're living through this moment where the public sector is just being demonized.

And it's also really interesting because I think people are starting to realize that that's wrong.

Part of what's happening and part of what the folks I've been talking to a lot at the Federal Unionist Network and others, they're really making a defense of the idea of the public good.

You know, the idea that there are jobs at the Port Authority, that there are jobs at the Park Service, that there are jobs at the Army Corps of Engineers.

I live in New Orleans, again.

I would like the Army Corps of Engineers to still be well-staffed, please, because they keep us above water.

These are jobs that people do.

You know, you take a pay cut when you work in the public sector, right?

You don't make as much money if you are an engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers as you could out in the private sector somewhere.

But you do it because you believe in the idea of the public sector.

You believe in the idea that like these are things we should do for the public good.

Again, to go back to those nurses in New Orleans at University Medical Center, you know, they are saying like we want to work in this kind of public hospital, this kind of open access hospital, because we believe everybody should be able to get care.

And I'm in Barcelona right now.

I'm at a writer's residency in this beautiful museum building.

We're on like the second floor of this museum building.

And they gave us a tour of it earlier in the history of it.

And there were pictures of snow.

And they were like, oh, yeah, it doesn't snow here anymore.

In the last 80 years, it has stopped snowing in the mountains in Barcelona.