Coronavirus in rural America (Part XXXVI): impacts on the U.S. Post Office

I have written so much over the years about the U.S. Post Office--specifically on threatened closures and how they will impact rural communities--that I am reluctant to add much more now beyond acknowledging the latest threat.  That threat arises, at least indirectly, from the coronavirus because the pandemic's threat to businesses has those businesses pulling back from direct mail advertising (this dynamic is also having a big impact on local media, the subject of posts here and here).   So this post, I'm just going to link to a couple of recent pieces advocating that the government keep the U.S. Postal Service afloat and acknowledging the particular importance of the postal service in rural America. 

This piece is by Catherine Kim for Vox, published in mid-April.  The headline is, "If the U.S. Postal Service Fails, Rural America will Suffer the Most."  The subhead is "USPS is a 'lifeline' for many remote and Native communities."  Here's an excerpt focusing on the rural impact of any disruption of service or the proposed privatization of the postal service: 

The absence of the USPS would particularly affect indigenous people living in tribal lands, as there are already few resources dedicated to keeping them connected with the world, said Twyla Baker, of the Mandan-Hidatsa tribe in North Dakota. 

“It would just be kind of a continuation of these structures in the US that already dispossessed people of color, black and indigenous people of color, and people below the poverty line,” Baker said. 

The USPS is legally required to deliver all mail, to all postal addresses in all regions, at a flat rate, no matter how far it may have to travel. The service’s accessibility and affordability are especially important to rural communities that live in poverty and to people with disabilities, who can’t afford the cost of a private business to deliver their daily necessities. (In 2017, the rural poverty rate was 16.4 percent, compared with 12.9 percent for urban areas.)

And here's a New York Times op-ed published last Sunday by U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, in which she argues that every post office should be a bank and a voting booth.  The headline is "Trump Called the Postal Service a ‘Joke.’ I’m Trying to Save It."  I'm happy to report that the subhead invokes the "rural":  "The Postal Service should be allowed to deliver low-cost financial services to poor and rural communities. And vote-by-mail should be universal."  The only paragraph that mentions rural, however, is this one, which advocates that the post office return to its banking roots: 

During the Great Depression, postal banking flourished, serving many of the poorest families. My proposal, the Postal Banking Act, would serve a similar population by leveraging the Postal Service’s 30,000-plus locations to create access to a nonprofit bank in every community in the country, from low-income urban neighborhoods to rural areas.

One interesting thing about this op-ed is that when it does mention "rural," in both sub-head and in this paragraph, it links rurality to poverty or socioeconomic disadvantage.  That's pretty accurate for the most part in that rural poverty rates have long been higher than urban ones, as mentioned in the Vox article quoted above.  Yet it's important to bear in mind that not all rural areas are high-poverty.

Some of my earlier posts about post offices are here (collecting many others), here, here, here, here, here, and here.  These are all from 2011, when closure and consolidation last threatened.  Here is a post from 2012 ... and here's another and another from that year.  And here's one from 2019 that isn't dedicated to post offices, but which features some photos of California's rural post offices.  And here's a 2019 post about voting by mail, related to an important but (in my opinion) wrongly decided case by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals re voting practices in North Dakota.