by On Tuesday evening, an employee of the federal government was shocked to find a watchmist with the names, photos and working history of 57 mainly black employees of a number of health care agencies. Many of the people mentioned have worked in the role of health expenditure. “It’s just very scary,” said the federal employee, who works in a different industry and asked to stay anonymous for fear that she can end up on a similar list. “I think it is a way to keep sewing that fear, that fear, in culture with many of these agencies.”
If someone who was placed on administrative leave for earlier work in a diversity, Equity and Inclusion (dei) role in January, she sees the watchlist as an attempt to purify government employees who wanted the government to work and now that is suddenly demonized ” . The list, which is published online, has the potential to influence people’s career, she said, their safety in danger and demanding a psychological toll.
Dei practices and policy ensure that people who are marginalized, such as women, people of color, people with disabilities and veterans, get equal opportunities. The framework dates from the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned discrimination in the workplaces and segregation in public places. In recent years, Dei has been attacked by conservative activists and Trump has signed various executive orders aimed at unraveling inclusiveness in the federal government.
The American Accountability Foundation (AAF), the conservative watchdog group that published the Healthcare Watchlist on January 28, is on a mission to focus on the senior officials in the federal government who “pernicious influence of dei ideology” in their agencies Pushing, in their agencies, in their agencies, in their agencies, in their agencies, said the president of the organization, Thomas Jones. He added that the government workers noted on the website could not give examples of how their lives were threatened: “What it really is is a cowardly way to change the subject.”
The third -hearted watchist in health care is the third such catalog that the group has published in the past four months, said Jones, after one on employees of the Department of Homeland Security and another on employees of the Department of Education. The Heritage Foundation, the organization behind Project 2025, a right -wing manifesto for overhauling the government, has funded part of AAF’s work. Jones said that his group is planning to continue to add more federal employees to the Health Care Watchlist.
AAF aimed at employees focused on initiatives for health reason, which offer equal health treatment for all populations. James, a federal employee on the watch list who uses a pseudonym because of fear of retribution, said about the list: “What AAF does not understand is that health income is the key to ensuring that cancer patients from all backgrounds all have the best possible chance of beat this terrible disease. ‘
Critics of the watchmist say that it is part of a long -term trend in the US to harass people with ideologies outside the white man, to be bothered by men and to remain silent. In recent years, online intimidation has increased, together with the increase in political violence, said Rachel Carroll Rivas, interim director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, especially now that the lines between regular media and alternative social media platforms have faded faded. Ultimately, the current administration that supports everyone who supports Dei, when their enemies supports, the historically disadvantaged groups of disproportionate harm that the framework is primarily designed to help, said Marcus Board, a associate professor of political sciences at Howard University.
“It closes people and silence them, it makes them discouraged,” said Governance, and adds a warning that complacency can lead to devastating effects on civil rights, the economy and the environment. “We have to find out how we can stand up for ourselves without returning to the same types of fascist group thinking habits that you see on phases and platforms everywhere.”
For the federal employee who fears that the list will be added, Dei is about eradicating bias and evening the playing field so that everyone has the chance to succeed. “There is a huge misconception about dei there is, and to be honest, many of these attacks are very racist,” she said. “Black people in this country, to get somewhere, had to work 10 times harder.”
‘Exclusion as a basic line for politics’
The tactics used by groups that try to expel federal employees are now comparable to those of the McCarthyism era in the late 1940s and 50s, also known as the second red fear, said board. At the time, the US Senator John McCarthy led a fear-based campaign aimed at left-wing people who were supposed to be communists or spies during the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. Federal employees and film stars were examined by the congress and some artists were blacklisted who almost ended their career.
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Racial politics in the US also relate to a dynamic of Insider and outsider who places white people at the top of the racial hierarchy and black people at the bottom, said board. “There is a challenging reality in the United States of exclusion as a basic line for politics and with these exclusion practices, it essentially says that unless you accept the system and the order, you will be expressed, and you will be expressed and not referring, “He said. “They try to strengthen the order as it is, as it benefits them, which is very capitalist, very militaristic and fascist.”
The modern trend of incorporating people on lists that are ‘manipulative propaganda in a way that results in intimidation’ began with the right side of the right -old USA’s professor Watchlist, Carroll Rivas said. In 2016, the group published a list of nearly 200 educators who were attacked for embracing what it considered “left -wing propaganda”. The watch list led to intimidation and death threats against some professors.
She also sees the current attack on dei in the federal government as a outgrowth of anti-influse efforts in education at the local school board level pushed by the conservative group Moms for Liberty in 2021. During this movement, parents parented for the use of school curricula that Named Ras and ethnicity and mobilized forbidden on books about gender or sexuality. “Those things were intimidating and they pushed educators from the school system,” said Carroll Rivas.
As a precautionary step after he learned that he had been admitted to the dei watch list, James said he is frozen his credit reports to prevent fraudulent activity if someone tried to adopt his identity. He said that he and various other targeted government employees are now working with law firms and consider tightening a Class Action right case.
Landing on the watchman did not deter James or others with which he spoke by staying in their role. “If there is something, we are more dug to stay in our job until we are fired, rifled or otherwise,” he said. “But if the goal is to express us, or to find fear, it does the opposite effect.” He added that he had one message for AAF: “You are a bunch of idiots and if it is a fight you want, play.”
