WASHINGTON—Paul Osadebe still holds his job as a lawyer at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Still, with so many of his coworkers having lost their jobs, he says it is endangering the mission of providing housing and revitalizing communities.
“They’ve tried to force so many people out that we might not be able to make sure that housing is safe. The process for people applying to housing and actually getting it so they can have a roof over their head, it takes people to make that happen, and we’re under such assault that it's very hard for us to do our jobs,” said Osadebe, who was speaking as an organizer for the Federal Unionist Network, a union.
Osadebe spoke at the Emancipation Day Speak Out on Wednesday evening to commemorate the day when slaves were freed in Washington. D.C. and voice concerns about the Trump administration’s mass firings and budget cuts in Washington at the Metropolitan AME Church in downtown Washington, D.C.
The Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, has shrunk the 2.4 million federal workforce by what is estimated to have been hundreds of thousands of people by firing, laying off, and pushing federal employees into buyouts to “maximize governmental efficiency and productivity,” according to the White House. No official tally of the federal workforce cuts exists.
“We were told to go into [federal jobs] for security that now is subject to the whims of a billionaire who has no attachment to their realities,” said Ty-Hobson Powell, 29, a local activist.
Sam Epps, President of the Metropolitan Washington Council at the AFL-CIO, a federation of labor unions in the United States, emphasized the importance of federal workers’ job security and access to healthcare.
“This is about working people, organized or unorganized,” Epps said. “This is a huge transfer of power where you [federal workers] are.”
In addition to cutting many federal jobs in the first three months of his presidency, President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order, “Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful,” in March.
“Washington, D.C., is the only city that belongs to all Americans and that all Americans can claim as theirs. As the capital city of the greatest Nation in the history of the world, it should showcase beautiful, clean, and safe public spaces,” Trump said in the executive order.
The executive order sets up a D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force to work closely with local officials, create joint priorities and work together to keep D.C. safe. But city officials and activists see the administration’s actions as an overstep.
“You can’t make D.C. safe and beautiful by cutting over a billion dollars from its budget,” Osadebe said.
Congress adopted a bill that would freeze funding at 2024 levels, resulting in a billion-dollar budget cut. The DC government also expected funding shortfalls because of all the federal workers who have lost jobs and will not pay the same level of taxes.
Osadebe said he sees the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal government and exertion of authority over D.C. as a testing ground for the whole country and urges workers to fight back.
“The way forward is to get organized,” Osadebe said. “If it’s you versus the administration, that’s not going to work but, if everyone who is feeling demoralized and scared or just kind of beaten down find other like minded people and take concrete steps towards defending the thing that they care about, we'll see a big enough coalition to stop all this in its tracks.”
Erin Drumm is a reporter for the Medill News Service covering politics. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2024 with a BA in American Studies and is now a graduate student at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism specializing in politics, policy and foreign affairs.
Old engraved illustration of Ulysses defying the Cyclops.
Odysseus Reimagined: Nolan’s Epic Explores What Makes a True Hero
Who is a hero? More importantly: what is a hero? What attributes are universally admired, inspiring glorious stories, ballads and songs, memorials and movies, all chronicling the hero’s bold adventures?
The Odyssey, a new release written and directed by Christopher Nolan, attempts to answer that question. Based on the ancient tales The Iliad and The Odyssey, written by Homer around 800 BC, the film stars Matt Damon as Odysseus and Anne Hathaway as Penelope, his loyal wife.
Historians have puzzled over the “Homeric question,” that is, who was Homer? We know very little about him, not even when or where he was born; seven Greek cities lay claim to him as their native son. Yet, he is considered the “godfather” of national Greek culture, and his stories are among the earliest masterpieces of literature.
Homer is sometimes romanticized as a blind poet who wandered from town to town reciting his stories. But he, who could express so poignantly the tribulations of Odysseus, was not blind to human nature. He keenly wrote of the attributes as well as the paltriness in his characters and the flaws of his great hero, Odysseus.
The Iliad is the story of the final years of the Trojan War, sparked when Helen, the beautiful wife of Sparta’s King Menelaus, was kidnapped by Paris of Troy. Because the kings had initiated a pact to defend one another, Odysseus was drawn into the fray.
After spending ten years fighting the Trojan War and finally achieving victory, The Odyssey tells of Odysseus’s struggle to return to his kingdom, Ithaca. On his way home, he encounters many dangers and delays. He is pursued by the sea-god Poseidon, must surmount Circe’s spell, and overcome the seductive charms of the enchantress Calypso, and his journey takes him another ten years.
Odysseus’s desires and struggles are universal: his longing for home, yearning for an end to his troubles, for rest after a long and difficult journey. His difficulties reflect the immemorial questions of what it means to be loyal, to belong, what it means “to be” at all. Despite his hubris, which manifests in his propensity to court catastrophe without regard for consequences, Odysseus is an authentic hero, noble and admirable, brave and dedicated.
According to the Greek ideal, a true hero must possess physical excellence and moral virtue. He must, as well, embrace his civic duty. Achieving such status requires “paideia,” a good education; “sophrosyne,” moderation in maintaining physical and emotional balance; and “arete,” an allegiance to the state.
Fictional or real, heroes’ deeds resonate through the centuries and shine a light on what is best in humanity, what matters, what will live on despite our mortality.
Is our digital age really so different from Homer’s Bronze Age? Physical beauty is still adulated, as it was then with Helen of Troy, “the face that launched a thousand ships.” (Marlowe) Power is still king, and wealth is still power.
The years of the Trojan War were harsh and violent. But were they more brutal than the times we live in? Although millenniums have passed and we now have different battlefields, Palestine, Ukraine, Iran, etc., the ravages and the wages of war remain the same: death and suffering. Humanity’s currency is the same, and so, too, is our quest for heroes.
Social scientists claim that after three generations most people are forgotten by even their direct progeny, and after four, remembered only by historical records. So, what then does last? What makes a difference? What is truly beautiful and worthwhile in life?
The universal themes embodied and emboldened by our heroes throughout the ages, the faithfulness of their hearts and the courage of their deeds, these last.
The essential qualities of a hero are manifested in Homer’s Odysseus. Steadfast integrity: “Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.” His deep compassion: “Yet, taught by time, my heart has learned to glow for others’ good, and to melt at others’ woes.” (Both quotes from The Odyssey.)
Nolan’s movie may have created a more virtuous hero than Homer’s works, but the core of the nearly 3,000-year-old-story is intact and as crucially relevant today as it was then. It is the stuff of life: trauma, survival, relationships with others, finding oneself, deciding what is right, choosing a path forward, sometimes, ultimately leading to the honing of a hero.
Just as Odysseus braved storms, temptations, and trials in search of home, we too face a modern sea of civic turbulence, polarization, mistrust, and the fraying of our shared story.
As we live, we too will write our defining stories. How then might we become modern heroes?
By instigating the third Greek ideal of “arete”; embracing our civic duty. By becoming citizens who are open to reflection and debate, who are willing to act with purpose for the betterment of our nation.
In this journey, the work of renewing our democracy can be its own Odyssey, a voyage calling for integrity, courage, and steadfast commitment. Not to return home as Odysseus so desired, but to preserve our home, for the grand and worthwhile purpose of working toward an ever-better future for our country.
With others, we can shape the next chapter of our nation’s collective story.
Amy Lockard is an Iowa resident who regularly contributes to regional newspapers and periodicals. She is working on the second of a four-book fictional series based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice."