Joshua Heuertz has helped distribute 2,000 postcards with his design that reads “Support the USPS!” Anyone can send any postcard to generate revenue for the postal service — each card requires at least 35 cents in stamps — but he says this design specifically makes a statement: that the postal service is an essential one.
Heuertz says he and his friend Janny Hernandez took on the project after the Trump Administration began taking steps to undercut the agency.
“It just felt like a continuation of a removal of all the public resources and any collective living in America.”
Heuertz is currently unemployed as he waits for theaters to reopen; he’s usually a stagehand for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. In his free time, he says he’s an organizer and activist for things he believes in. This cause is a new one for him and it took him by surprise.
“If you had asked me four years ago if I would be acting as an activist for a federal government agency, I probably would have found it absurd,” Hertz says. “But that’s part of the absurdity of our time: that these agencies are so eroded.”
Many states including Oregon are relying on mail-in ballots for the upcoming presidential election. Many Democratic lawmakers have accused the Trump Administration of intentionally sabotaging the mail service in order to impact election results.