Project Scholar Gray Brechin is featured in a recent article on the fight to save Berkeley’s historic post office building. Read the full article in Berkeleyside here.
Gary Brechin, a historian who has written extensively about historic post offices, rallied the crowd by describing the importance of the post offices around the country that were built in an era of government expansion. Now dozens of those buildings, from the New Deal era and earlier, have been put up for sale, part of a Congressional plan to privatize the post office and an “old fashioned 19th century land grab of the 21st century,” he said. Brechin encouraged the crowd to fight back.
“What we are going to do here is build a national coalition to take our property and our post office back,” said Brechin, who is hoping to set up meetings with other communities whose post offices have been put up for sale. These include Palo Alto, Burlingame, San Rafael, Modesto, Ukiah, La Jolla, and Venice.
For a longer discussion of the sell-off of Post Offices in California, which cites Gray Brechin and the Living New Deal, see
https://www.savethepostoffice.com/eureka-postal-service-finds-gold-california
Glad to see that people are rallying to protect the post offices that have been the cornerstone of our communities for as long as I can remember.