AFSCME Member Puts Positive Light on Public Service

January 13, 2011

Chad Jeremy, member of Local 2027 (AFSCME Council 26) and The Washington Post’s “Federal Player of the Week” (Photo Credit: Jennifer Veazey)

Chad Jeremy, a member of Local 2027 (AFSCME Council 26) in Washington, D.C., is the latest entry into The Washington Post’s “Federal Player of the Week,” a column that profiles “little known federal workers who have left a big impact.”

The profile details Chad’s public service career, beginning years ago as an AmeriCorps volunteer, helping to restore a YMCA camp and building Habitat for Humanity houses. “I was bitten by the service bug,” he told The Post, “and from this experience, I knew that I wanted to come back and work in the service field and work with AmeriCorps.”

Last February, Chad became an AmeriCorps program officer, managing a $40 million AmeriCorps grant portfolio and laying the “groundwork” for the agency’s volunteers.

At a time when anti-government rhetoric floods the airwaves of right-wing talk radio and television, it’s nice to see a major publication like The Washington Post put a spotlight on public employees who work without fanfare to make their communities better places to live.

Although many arch-conservative pundits unjustly blame local, state and federal public employees for causing the budget crises now facing governments, Chad Jeremy reminds us, through his unbending pride and enthusiasm, that public service is an honorable and worthwhile profession.

His job, he tells The Post, makes him feel like “one of the luckiest guys in the world.”