Massachusetts woman furloughed at USAID says cuts "making America less safe"
SOMERVILLE – A Somerville woman says she, and 70% of her department, were furloughed on Thursday amid cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The Trump administration effectively froze the organization, which provides humanitarian and democratic aid overseas, over concerns many of its grants didn't match President's Trump's agenda.
The woman, who spoke to WBZ on the condition we do not name her to preserve her future career, works in environment and sustainability among several USAID contracts. "I work in environmental and climate support to USAID, and those are words and industries that are under attack at the moment so we are not hopeful that it will come back to the same extent it has," she explained.
"These are some of the insane priorities that that organization has been spending money on," explained White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, in a recent media briefing. "$1.5 million to advance DEI in Serbia's workplaces. 70,000 for a production of a DEI musical in Ireland."
Furloughed worker defends USAID mission
The Somerville woman says the administration's understanding is "poorly researched and you know they are picking and choosing examples that are extremes," she said.
She said USAID provides, "Life-saving support to folks in developing countries, whether that's issuing vaccines or life-saving food… Political stability, things of that nature."
"It's what we in the industry call more soft power rather than military interventions," she continued. "These are the things that help the U.S. government look good in the eyes of other countries, and stopping that work outright, not only is that stopping life-saving aid in a lot of cases, but it's also making America less safe."
Looking for gig work
WBZ found this woman because she posted on local social media pages, asking for work walking and babysitting people's dogs to get her through this time. "I'm glad that we have a gig economy now," she said. "I'm hoping that pet sitting will be help me stay afloat a while."
Still, she's contemplating whether her job will ever come back. "No, not in any way that they have been operating in the past," she said. "I'm lucky that I hold citizenship in a European country so part of me is thinking maybe I'll look overseas where those industries are doing a little bit better so that's an option that I considered as well…it's a matter of having a career or not. At the same time, I don't want to abandon the folks here who are doing good work."
She says she doesn't want sympathy but wants people to see the impact these cuts can have around the world. "I also feel guilty, having any sort of spotlight for this, because there are folks are way more impacted than I am. I have support systems, a community, safety nets. The people who USAID supports often times do not. And they can't speak up for this."
