Demonstrators in the Bay Area town of Albany rallied in support of agency workers and against the Trump administration’s slashing of funding and jobs.
X
Demonstrators in the Bay Area town of Albany rallied in support of agency workers and against the Trump administration’s slashing of funding and jobs.
April 4, 2025
Members of Together We Will gather outside a USDA research facility in Albany, California, to demonstrate support for federal workers and to protest the Trump Administration’s cuts to the USDA. (Photo credit: Brian Calvert)
Throughout her career at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Diane Delaney had a good job that allowed her a comfortable place among the middle class in the San Francisco Bay Area. Perhaps more important, the role made her feel like she was contributing to a better future. As a lab technician, she carefully prepared tree core samples that helped scientists understand past and future climates as well as wildfires, cleaning and polishing samples while enjoying the aroma of fresh pine.
Expand your understanding of food systems as a Civil Eats member. Enjoy unlimited access to our groundbreaking reporting, engage with experts, and connect with a community of changemakers.
Already a member?
Login
“We decided that we should be supporting government programs, government workers, things that we think are important to have for our society.”
Lately, though, this feeling of pride has been replaced with something else, as the administration of President Trump cuts federal funding, fires government workers, and, as of Wednesday, takes steps toward a global trade war.
“I’m pissed,” Delaney said. Pissed that science is taking a back seat, pissed that public servants are losing good, middle-class jobs, and pissed that the world will now have less information about a changing climate at a critical moment in history, she said.
So, on Wednesday afternoon, Delaney, 71, joined about 50 demonstrators outside the building where she once worked, the USDA’s Western Regional Research Center in Albany, California, to let her feelings be known. “Federal workforce,” her sign proclaimed, “I stand with you.”
She stood alongside other demonstrators, many of them retirees, whose placards similarly supported the agency: “USDA feeds hungry children,” “Protect our food; protect USDA,” and “Got milk? Thank the USDA.” Demonstrators waved placards and American flags at the rush-hour traffic as commuters honked their horns in support. One driver rang a cowbell as he passed. “Give ‘em hell,” a bicyclist growled as he pedaled by.
Carl Wilmsen (left) and Patty Fujiwara joined some 50 demonstrators to protest the Trump Administration’s cuts to federal agencies. “What is happening now is not normal, and it’s not OK,” Fujiwara says. (Photo credit: Brian Calvert)
The rally was organized by the Albany-Berkeley chapter of a political action organization, Together We Will (TWW), as part of a broader strategy to put “sand in the gears [and] slow down the hostile government takeover,” according to TWW’s newsletter.
It came amid a series of ongoing protests nationwide, including March’s protests of USDA cuts in Maine and last weekend’s mass demonstrations against Tesla and its owner, the billionaire Elon Musk, who provided more than $270 million to the Trump campaign and is now a key advisor to the president. Mass anti-Trump demonstrations are scheduled for Saturday as part of the “Hands Off” movement.
“We decided that we should be supporting government programs, government workers, things that we think are important to have for our society,” said Pam Tellew, an organizer for TWW. “My late father-in-law was actually a chemist for the USDA for many years, and so it was really near to my heart. The research and the work that’s done here helps farmers grow things more efficiently and better.”
The Albany regional center is part of the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, which, among other things, develops new methods to track the COVID-19 virus in domestic and wild animals, traces E. coli outbreaks in bagged romaine lettuce, and studies how black beans can help repair insulin and gut bacteria problems. These are the kinds of programs demonstrators say they want to prevent being cut, as the Trump administration continues its unprecedented revamping of the federal government.
Under Trump, workers at the USDA, and farmers who depend on them, have faced wave after wave of uncertainty.
Some 6,000 USDA workers have been laid off under Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, according to The New York Times. Typically, the USDA employs nearly 100,000 people across 29 agencies and offices. Some workers have returned to their jobs as a result of court orders but have told Civil Eats the process has been confusing and chaotic. Thousands more may be vulnerable to cuts, and morale within the department is low.
Farmers—especially those operating small farms that sell into local and regional markets—and the organizations that support them are also reeling. Staff cuts have hit local offices that provide loan, crop, and conservation assistance, and more than a dozen grant programs have been disrupted.
Funding freezes within some grant programs have been implemented and reversed, exacerbating uncertainty. Farmers worry contracts they signed under the Biden administration will not be honored, even when they’re waiting for reimbursements for money already spent. Some contracts have already been canceled.
More than $1 billion in funding has also already been cut, in work overseen by Trump’s Agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, from programs that pay farmers to produce healthy foods and send them directly to schools, food banks, and other communities in need.
Farmers working on “climate smart” initiatives created by President Biden have been waiting for contracted payments since January, with no news. (Some of these farmers have now joined a lawsuit against the Trump administration, seeking a reversal to the freezing of federal funding.)
The Albany regional center is part of the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, which studies myriad health and safety issues related to food. (Photo credit: Civil Eats staff)
The federal freeze of USDA funding and its dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development have also impacted a program that helps farms bring in guestworkers. And the agency’s immigration crackdowns have sown confusion in the agricultural labor market.
On Wednesday, Trump announced sweeping tariffs, with major implications for food, farms, and other agricultural businesses. Experts say this will raise food prices at home, while hurting export markets for U.S. farmers. (Rollins has indicated she’s looking to provide relief to farmers in the short term.)
During his record-breaking, 25-hour speech on the Senate floor this week, Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, railed against the administration’s impact on food and agriculture. “Trump is causing an unprecedented amount of chaos, instability and harm for farmers,” Booker said. “I’ve had farmers from New Jersey to Texas coming to my office about this president freezing contracts that we [in Congress] approved in a bipartisan manner, putting them in financial crisis.”
These policies and ensuing chaos were too much for Carl Wilmsen, who joined Wednesday’s demonstration.
“The myth of the Deep State is exactly that,” he said. “It’s a myth. The people in the government agencies are here to provide essential services to all Americans, and it’s important that they continue providing those services there.”
Trump’s policies are unlikely to save money in the long run, he said. “When they start firing people in the USDA, or the Social Security Administration, or Health and Human Services, it’s going to end up costing us more money because there are going to be a lot of mistakes made, because the people who are remaining in those agencies will be overworked. The agencies will be understaffed. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we find that at the end of the day, the government actually ends up spending more money than they’re trying to save.”
Next to him stood Patty Fujiwara, who said she joined the demonstration “to get the word out that what is happening now is not normal and it’s not OK.”
The USDA building, she said, was an appropriate venue to help people understand how many government services are out there that impact people’s lives. She added, “I think it’s really important for people to come out and just show that there are a lot of us—many, many, many people—who are really unhappy and frightened and afraid of what is going on right now in our country.”
July 30, 2025
From Oklahoma to D.C., a food activist works to ensure that communities can protect their food systems and their future.
Like the story?
Join the conversation.