On Tuesday, AFSCME members across the country fought back against the new administration’s cuts to life-saving research, health care and education. At nationwide “Kill the Cuts” rallies, AFSCME members who work in these fields described the damage that the new administration’s cuts have caused.
Research into diseases like cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, HIV and more have all been affected by these cuts. The same goes for other health care and public health-related initiatives. At the same time, communities that are home to research centers are being harmed, as well as the researchers who do this critical work.
At a rally in Washington, DC, Amanda Dykema shared her story. Dykema works for the University of Maryland as a proposal development manager, a role in which she helps secure federal grants that fund scientific and educational research.
A member of AFSCME Local 1072 (AFSCME Maryland), Dykema said research in academia “must often overcome funding challenges,” but ever since the new administration began making dramatic, often indiscriminate cuts to life-saving research, education and health care, “we are facing an existential crisis that I have never seen in my career.”
Entire funding programs that the university has relied on to make critical advances in research no longer exist, Dykema also said, and current grants have uncertain status.
“The administration cancelled an NIH program called Maximizing Access to Research Careers, which expands research opportunities to students that have been historically excluded from the scientific community,” she said. “Every day, this program helps to build the workforce talent our country needs in the STEM pipeline. Now, it’s gone.”
Dykema also said that massive layoffs at the U.S. Department of Education mean future awards and open programs are at risk. The department’s Institute for Education Sciences, which funds research on improving learning and school environments, is no longer convening review panels.
“We have heard there are no plans for future grant proposal reviews,” she said. “This is a tragic loss.”
As of the end of March, the new administration had terminated more than 2,000 active NIH awards around the country, Dykema said.
“The terminations we are seeing are arbitrary and capricious,” she said. “It’s hard to fathom the loss of scientific knowledge and medical breakthroughs so casually ended.”
Behind these attacks are billionaires and anti-union extremists who want to rob public services to enrich themselves. That’s why AFSCME has launched the Get Organized campaign to defend our jobs and the public services we provide.
It’s time to stand up for our communities. It’s time to GO.