Activism resources for federal employees

Activism Resources for Federal Employees

This document was created by a grassroots group, Takoma Park Mobilization, for U.S. government employees who want to better know their rights inside and outside the workplace and to think about strategies for balancing their obligations as federal employees and their professional or personal values. Feel free to circulate this widely. If you would like to organize an event, here is a facilitators’ guide  that can help guide you.

The document is organized into several sections and you can click through to the parts you are most interested in when viewing this document online. For agency-specific advice, please consult your own agency’s Inspector General or ethics office and for legal advice, please consult a lawyer.

This document will be updated, so if you find information that is incorrect or want to suggest something to add, please contact: education@tpmobilization.org. The electronic version of this document can be found at https://goo.gl/bKTzRq

Educate      --      Organize      --      Take action

Table of contents

If you are viewing this online, just click on the bold links in the table of contents to navigate the document.

What You Should Know Now        2

Information on the Rights and Obligations of Federal Employees        4

U.S. government internal resources        4

Non-government legal resources        4

Union resources        5

Other resources        5

Actions and strategies        6

Action Planning Support        7

Further Reading        9

A Yale historian explains to Maher how Trump resembles 1930s fascists — and makes the Russia connection: Video HERE        10

Digital Security: Protecting Your Data and Communications        12

5 Steps to Better Self-Care for Activists        14

As Federal civil servants, we take an oath of office by which we swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. The Constitution not only establishes our system of government, it actually defines the work role for Federal employees - "to establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty." https://archive.opm.gov/constitution_initiative/oath.asp

What You Should Know Now

  • Freedom of Speech. Federal employees have the same constitutional rights as other U.S. citizens. Federal employee rights are limited by the Hatch Act, but this pertains only to partisan political speech. Other kinds of political speech (such as signing petitions and attending rallies) are protected as long they are on your own time, for example on your lunch break on your own phone or on your home computer outside of work hours. The Office of Special Counsel has a pamphlet explaining these rights, but keep in mind that foreign service employees, among others, are subject to additional restrictions. If you are concerned about retaliation against you for a speech act, learn what recourse is available to you. The Merit Systems Protection Board has more information on your rights as a federal government employee.

  • Solidarity. Networking outside of the workplace with co-workers and friends from other divisions or agencies is one of the best tactics for sharing information and strategizing about collective responses to troubling situations at work. Start a weekly lunch or happy hour away from work where you can game out your options given various scenarios - and start a support network before you need it. You can also build solidarity with your agency’s partners and constituents, helping them to help you advocate for good policy.

“Federal workers can seek out like-minded colleagues in other agencies (particularly important when internal efforts have been unsuccessful) to coordinate responses. They can bring a legal matter to the national security interagency lawyers’ group to receive joint opinions on the legality or illegality of a particular action or policy. Particularly when two or more agencies are in dispute, high-level officials have the option of requesting an opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. Even without a formal complaint, self-organizing with colleagues from within the same bureau and across government agencies can help build trust and confidence as federal workers navigate difficult terrain together.”

-"Staying true to yourself in the age of Trump: A how-to guide for federal employees"

By Maria Stephan, The Washington Post, Feb. 10, 2017

  • Information security. Keep in mind that any communications over government equipment, including email, are not private. Forwarding email from your government account to your private account makes your home computer subject to scrutiny, as well. Try to keep a bright line between your work devices and your personal devices. On the other hand, FOIA and Inspectors General can be your friend when the legal or ethical climate is getting murky, so creating a paper trail (electronic AND printed) using government email can be helpful when orders on shaky ethical ground or are coming to you verbally.

  • Leaking information. Leaking to the press seems to be a feature of the early Trump administration, but keep in mind that leaking can shut down communication within your office, making it harder to document future actions. Leaking can also result in negative consequences for entire groups of people who have access to the information, so someone who is considering leaking information should be very strategic and make sure that the issue is high-stakes enough to take these risks.

“In the riskier category of dissent options, federal workers can leak information about pending or actual policies with journalists, activists and influential people on the outside. A senior official at the Bureau of Land Management in the Clinton administration described the leaking of internal documents to interest groups as a particularly effective strategy.

Leaking should be used judiciously, and only on truly significant matters. Most disclosures outside of formal, internal whistleblowing frameworks are, at minimum, a violation of contractual duty and may put leakers at significant legal risk. If the information is classified, then the employee can be fired or criminally prosecuted...

Leaks are among the riskiest of strategies. Once they happen, they can shut down the internal sharing of government documents. Colleagues will face heavy scrutiny, and individuals (besides the leaker) can be penalized. This happened recently when an unknown official leaked the transcript of Trump’s telephone call with the Australian prime minister, resulting in a near-total ban on sharing presidential call transcripts.”

-“An inside-outside strategy for defending the US Republic,” Maria Stephan, 27 January 2017 https://www.opendemocracy.net/maria-stephan/inside-outside-strategy-for-defending-us-republic

  • Sharing knowledge with and supporting others - Share this document! If you would like to organize a workshop for federal government employees to learn more about their rights and strategies to build solidarity in the workplace, please feel free to use and adapt this facilitators’ guide developed by Takoma Park Mobilization.

Information on the Rights and Obligations of Federal Employees

“The new administration is entitled to use the official channels of government – whether they be press briefings or websites or social media accounts – to put out its own messages, and it can decide what federal employees are allowed to communicate when they are on the job. But the First Amendment still protects those employees’ ability to speak in their private capacities, on their own time, about matters that concern the public.” https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/government-employees-get-have-opinions-too

U.S. government internal resources

  • The Office of Special Counsel is a federal watchdog that has published a pamphlet describing the rights of federal employees.

“Although the president can fire Cabinet officials, such as the attorney general, for almost any reason, most government employees aren’t so easy to get rid of. Civil servants—that is, the rank-and-file members who make up the vast majority of the federal government—also take an oath to uphold the Constitution, some version of which has been used since the first Congress. Moreover, federal law (5 U.S.C. §2302(b)(9)(D), if you’re curious) makes it illegal to remove a civil servant “for refusing to obey an order that would require the individual to violate a law.””

Non-government legal resources

  • Whistleblower resources from Program on Government Oversight (POGO); lists of law firms  HERE

  • The Art of Anonymous Activism is a guide published by three national nonprofits (The Government Accountability Project, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, and the Project On Government Oversight) as a how-to manual for public employees considering blowing the whistle on waste, fraud, or abuse.

  • https://www.facebook.com/kmblegal/

Union resources

  • The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is the largest federal employee union representing 700,000 federal and D.C. government workers nationwide and overseas. https://www.afge.org/
  • The National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) is a national union representing approximately 110,000 blue and white collar government workers across the United States. http://nffe.org/
  •  American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 20 http://www.districtcouncil20.org is a coalition of local unions in a number of federal and DC agencies, including local unions at the Library of Congress, the Department of Justice, the Department of Agriculture, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Peace Corps, the Corporation for National and Community Service, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the Voice of America and the Architect of the Capitol. It is affiliated with the 1.4 million-member AFSCME International Union, http://www.afscme.org/ and the AFL-CIO http://www.aflcio.org/.
  • The Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC)is building a distributed grassroots organizing program, informed by guiding principles, to support workers organizing at the workplace. Check out their resources here: https://workerorganizing.org/resources/
  • Jane McAlevey's Organizing 4 Power training series on core fundamental organizing skills. About O4P's Core Fundamentals

Other resources

  • Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) is an organization that works nation-wide with government scientists, land managers, environmental law enforcement agents, field specialists and other resource professionals committed to responsible management of America’s public resources. PEER supports those who are courageous and idealistic enough to seek a higher standard of environmental ethics and scientific integrity within their agency.

  • Norms Watch by Just Security: a weekly email from Just Security tracking how and when the Trump administration’s policies and actions break from custom, practice, and precedent in politics and law. We’ll also be on the lookout for when norms are violated as a response to Trump. 

Actions and strategies

  • Uphold the most exacting standards of personal and professional integrity.
  • Showcase the loyal bipartisan service of your colleagues and call out attempts to impose partisan litmus tests.
  • Extensively document decisions and their ramifications that are the result of word-of-mouth directives.
  • Don’t leak, but do blow the whistle.
  • Push back against loyalty tests, fostering frank internal debate and transparency with outside stakeholders whenever possible.
  • Draw bright red lines of principle and policy that can guide decision-making in future times of chaos and crisis.

Adapted from “How to work for a president who loathes the civil service” By Nancy McEldowney, The Washington Post, January 28, 2018.

Federal employees have choices about how to do their work, and making that choice strategically is always better than making it impulsively! But everyone has a different relationship to their managers, different energy levels, and different tolerance for risk, so make the strategic choices that are right for you.

Low risk

Higher risk

  • Educate yourself about laws and policies affecting federal employees (e.g. from phone calls to whistleblowing)
  • Write up your own “red line” statement about what you would do if you were asked to cross that line before you need it
  • Get to know others you work with - outside the workplace. Maybe set up a weekly lunch or happy hour.
  • Educate/share info with other federal employees
  • Get to know your agency resources: ethics office, inspector general, union representatives
  • Document all requests in writing. Create a paper trail for any order or interaction that makes you uncomfortable
  • Join or form a union
  • Build connections in and across divisions/departments/agencies
  • Get to know your stakeholders, partner or constituent NGOs, share what information you legally can so you can strategize with them about common issues
  • Get your colleagues together to make the case for why a course of action is illegal or unethical; elevate the issue, if necessary
  • Stand up for other employees if needed; managers can build “firewalls” around their employees
  • Engage in resistance tactics:
  • slow walking/work slowdown
  • overworking (exploring every angle, regulation or possible ruling, doing exhaustive research)
  • Intentional incompetence
  • Continue to do your job responsibilities even if directed not to them; re-install tools if taken
  • Leaking information to the media
  • Sue your agency if you have been advised by legal counsel that a policy or directive is illegal
  • Privately refuse or do not follow illegal orders
  • Publicly refuse illegal orders-- organize to do this with others
  • Publicly resign
  • Organize a group resignation
  • Note: striking is illegal for most federal employees

Action Planning Support

July 2017:  AGENCY SPECIFIC, but with cross-over application:  Save EPA and their Practical Guide For Resisting The Trump De-Regulatory Agenda. Written by former EPA staff, this is an EPA-specific version of the Indivisible Guide.

“Civil servants can sue the agency when more subtle approaches fail. This can generate outside support and pressure, particularly when the individual(s) have strong connections to advocacy groups and grassroots organizations on the outside. Border agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who objected to President Obama’s directives regarding undocumented immigrants, saying they required them to violate federal law, took this route.”

-"Staying true to yourself in the age of Trump: A how-to guide for federal employees"

By Maria Stephan, The Washington Post, Feb. 10, 2017

Nonviolent Action: History, Strategy and Resources

  • BeautifulTrouble.org   is a book, web toolbox and international network of artist-activist trainers whose mission is to make grassroots movements more creative and more effective.

Further Reading

“The 2.7 million nonpartisan civil servants who run the US government from day to day have tremendous power and constitute a key pillar of support for any administration. Civil servants have unparalleled familiarity with the bureaucratic process. They know how to speed things up, and they know how to slow them down. They have access to critical information about policies being considered and implemented. They can participate in internal decision-making. They can provide (or deny) knowledge and expertise to those at the top of the bureaucratic totem pole.”

-“An inside-outside strategy for defending the US Republic,” Maria Stephan, 27 January 2017 https://www.opendemocracy.net/maria-stephan/inside-outside-strategy-for-defending-us-republic

“Dear Bureaucrat, My Job Wants Me to Lie” By David S. Reed, Federal Times, March 7, 2019.

“How to work for a president who loathes the civil service” By Nancy McEldowney, The Washington Post, January 28, 2018.

"Staying true to yourself in the age of Trump: A how-to guide for federal employees"

By Maria Stephan, The Washington Post, Feb. 10, 2017

“To Dissent or Not to Dissent? Principles of Ethical Resistance for US Federal Servants”
By Maciej Bartkowski, February 24, 2017

“Government Employees Get to Have Opinions, Too,” By Esha Bhandari, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. January 25, 2017

https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/government-employees-get-have-opinions-too

“The Nervous Civil Servant’s Guide to Defying an Illegal Order,” Slate, 2/2/17 http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/02/legal_protections_for_civil_servants_who_refuse_to_carry_out_illegal_orders.html

Bobbleheads, yes. Official tweets, no. Federal workers wonder where the lines are in the Trump era.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/trump-bobbleheads-maga-hats-federal-workers-grapple-with-the-era-of-trump/2017/02/20/da55063a-f39f-11e6-8d72-263470bf0401_story.html?hpid=hp_local-news_hatchact-625pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.706856255155

Parks and Recreation: The sudden, widespread resistance of Alternative National Parks Twitter
What happens when every government agency joins the #resistance? https://thinkprogress.org/parks-and-recreation-the-sudden-widespread-resistance-of-alternative-national-parks-twitter-f76b35aa67ea#.pgeq9bdvj

  Dear Civil Servant - Valentine's Day 2017  FB effort to show civil servants some love!

A Yale historian explains to Maher how Trump resembles 1930s fascists — and makes the Russia connection: Video HERE

10 ways movements can encourage and support whistleblowers, from WagingNonviolence.org  HERE

Save EPA and their Practical Guide For Resisting The Trump De-Regulatory Agenda. Written by former EPA staff, this is an EPA-specific version of the Indivisible Guide.

Selected media reports on federal government employee resistance in 2017

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2017/01/26/the-state-departments-entire-senior-management-team-just-resigned/?utm_term=.ea761600e6f4

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/us/politics/trump-immigration-ban-memo.html

https://thinkprogress.org/parks-and-recreation-the-sudden-widespread-resistance-of-alternative-national-parks-twitter-f76b35aa67ea#.5kwrsdp7x

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/01/27/512007632/its-not-just-the-park-service-rogue-federal-twitter-accounts-multiply

http://wonkette.com/610928/the-resistance-begins-with-all-these-national-park-service-social-media-managers-gone-rogue

Digital Security: Protecting Your Data and Communications

Content provided by Blue Pine Strategies, LLC

Contact: info@bluepinestrategies.com

These recommendations and resources are forward looking and anticipatory of challenges federal employees may face.

  • Privacy and secrecy are not the same--these tools and tips are to give you the choice for privacy related to your activism. You may not be made vulnerable by your activism, but others in your networks may be.  Privacy is a powerful tool that benefits you and everyone standing with you.
  • Strongly consider keeping your communications related to your activism on personal accounts you do not access at work.  This applies to cell phones that you use for communication and may connect to workplace wifi.
  • Encryption is a tool that can enhance the privacy of your email, data storage, text based messaging, and phone calls related to your.activism. Consider using encryption wherever possible.
  • There are no absolutes in digital or cyber security, we can only make it harder for someone to access our data and communications.

You can find guidance and suggestions for tools to use based on your personal threat/risk assessment here:

5 Steps to a Safer Digital Life

Step 1

Change your passwords.  Start with your email, social media, and any other accounts you are using to organize. Choose 16 character passwords using upper/lower case letters, numbers, symbols. Use a different password for each account.  Write them down, keep them safe, and/or use a password manager. Do not store on your computer or phone. As a first step do this for Facebook and email this weekend--come back to the others when you can.

Make sure you have a passcode or password on your phone and computer.

Step 2

Turn on 2-factor authentication for your Gmail and Facebook accounts.

Step 3

Call your phone provider, ask them to add an additional security code to your account.

This ensures your 2-factor authentication can’t be hacked.

Step 4

Lock-down privacy settings on your digital life.  Enable the privacy settings on Facebook and/or remove any content that could be used to target you or find you (birthday, address, phone number, workplace, etc.).  Think about family members you may want to ask to do the same.  

Pictures of kids?  Think about making them visible only to you or taking them down.

Step 5

Google yourself---make a list of every website with pieces of information you want to take down.  See the guide to personal information removal attached.  

5 Steps to Better Self-Care for Activists 

Content provided by Blue Pine Strategies, LLC

Contact: info@bluepinestrategies.com

When you take care of yourself, you make better, sounder decisions--put your own oxygen mask on first.

 

Your digital self, your work self, and your personal self are not mutually exclusive. They are closely intertwined, especially when it comes to work that is so near to your core values. Our personal needs, our mental health, and how we navigate the world during high-stress situations is often a back-burner topic. During these next few months, as you navigate through the stress of this work, I encourage each of you to place self-care on your task list DAILY. The following 5 steps will assist you in making your mental health a priority.

Step 1

Take 5 minutes to write down your WHY. Why are you doing this work? What makes it so important for you and for our nation? What is your motivation? Why does this matter? Keep that paper in an easily accessible place. When you are in a high-stress moment (i.e. receiving negative feedback, setbacks that seem insurmountable, etc...) re-read your why. Those 3 minutes of negativity do not defeat your higher purpose. Your work matters. It is important.

Step 2

Take one actionable step each day to take care of your mental health needs. Examples include but are not limited to: decompressing by venting to a friend, enjoying a glass of wine and a holiday movie, taking a bath with lavender and candles, watching pointless but hilarious YouTube videos, treating yourself to a favorite food, etc…

Step 3

Determine your ‘absolutely nots’ and your ‘triggers’? What words/threats/messages/actions cause you to be less productive or not productive at all as it pertains to this project and this work? Determining your line in the sand is an ongoing process and may become more apparent as you continue with your work.

Communicate these with those that you are working with. Allow yourself to take a step back when your line is crossed and give that task to someone else. No guilt here. They have their lines drawn and will need you too. For example: A troll is continuously threatening your well-being through sexual violence. As a sexual assault warrior you are triggered by these threats. Communicate that to other staff and allow them to handle the trolling situation.

Step 4

Determine what tasks are URGENT versus what tasks are IMPORTANT.

URGENT: Your life or someone’s else’s life is in IMMEDIATE danger. There is an immediate deadline (i.e. due in two hours).

IMPORTANT: This is for you to determine. I find it helpful when work loads begin to pile up, as they will these next few months, to look at each email, each item on my to-do list and rank them in terms of importance. What can wait and what absolutely cannot.

During times of high-stress everything feels urgent. IT ISN’T. Don’t let your brain lie to you. If everything is feeling urgent, I recommend the following:

Take a few deep breaths. Place your hand on your stomach and feel your stomach as it rises and falls.  Look around the room and start to call out items in your space (my feet are on the carpeted floor, I see a clock in front of me, there is a table and a laptop), start noticing the sounds, the smells, and what your hands are touching. This process allows you to become grounded in your space and begin to gain a true sense of reality and present time. Now, take another look at that email, those tasks that are yet to be done, and make an honest assessment of what can wait. Just because you wait until tomorrow to complete the task doesn’t mean it’s not important, it is, but it’s not urgent.

Step 5

Give yourself grace and allow others to do the same.

It’s okay to take a break. It’s okay to sleep. It’s okay to eat. It’s okay to go to the bathroom. It’s okay to refill your water bottle. It’s okay to take a step out into the world and away from your laptop. In fact, it’s recommended. Our brains do not function in a timely, accurate, or appropriate manner when we are under stress. Doing this work right is important, so allow yourself the ability to delight in self-care, your body, your co-workers, and your cause will thank you for it.