Across the country this weekend, protestors gathered at national forests and parks to call out the recent terminations of federal employees by the Trump Administration.
On Saturday, thousands of people gathered at national parks from California to Maine to protest the Trump administration’s firing of at least 1,000 National Park Service employees in February, according to the New York Times.
Near Brevard, about 200 people gathered in the Pisgah National Forest to raise their voices against the recent terminations by lining the entrance to the forest at the Forest Gate Highway 276. Protesters held signs in support of the park service and national forests and chanted “Save our forest!”
James Carli with Transylvania County Young Progressives said he organized the event with just a few social media posts.
“I think the ease with which so many people came out - after just a few social media posts within three days - speaks to the hunger people have right now to stand up, speak out, and fight back,” Carli wrote to BPR.
Carli said he was inspired by his ancestor Capt. Joseph Black who fought in the Revolutionary War as a leader of the Overmountain Men.
“We are now at a dire moment in American history where the people who know must do anything they can to agitate and activate the very last bastion of American democracy - the people themselves,” Carli wrote. “And protests over our core identity (in our case, the forests, parks), is a mechanism to wake the people up for a longshot effort to claw back the Republic from very dark forces of autocracy, corruption, and nihilism, for the faint but essential hope that this Republic will not go quietly into the night but that the American people can muster a mighty roar so fierce the tyrants give pause.”
Community members, including one person who said they had been fired from the Pisgah National Forest, protested for almost three hours.
In February, tens of thousands of federal workers lost their jobs – with one estimate saying close to 200,000 were at risk, according to the Associated Press.
It is unclear how many federal workers in North Carolina have been fired at this point. BPR previously reported 17 workers in the state’s National Forests were terminated in February, but at least one has been rehired. However, there are more potential terminations looming. Last week in a memo, the Trump administration called on federal departments to submit agency organization plans to significantly downsize by March 13.
