Pro-Palestinian protestors approached Virginia Foxx, a representative from North Carolina regarding her opposition to college encampments, as displayed in a video recorded in May.
Without allowing the protestors to finish their sentence, Foxx raised her hand and responded “Don’t even think about it. I’ve got things to do,” completely invalidating their concerns.
If we remove the context surrounding Foxx and the protestors, this is simply a scene of a public servant ignoring the voices of her constituents who share valid concerns about U.S. participation in worldly affairs. Especially with the U.S. involvement in the current genocide, the failure of public servants’ failure to take those they work for seriously and hear their valid concerns is becoming far too common and needs to be addressed.
A public servant is a government official responsible for being attentive to public needs and serving citizens. Yet, public servants are neglecting the public.
A more recent example of a public servant failing to consider the voices of all occurred at a Kamala Harris rally in Michigan, where the vice president was interrupted during her speech by pro-Palestinian protesters. Instead of listening to their grievances, Harris silenced them, stating, “I am speaking now,” and continued her speech without acknowledging the important issues being raised. This instance is one of many where our government officials are no longer becoming responsive to the needs of the people but to their own agenda.
One of the core principles of our democracy is the duty of public servants to serve the interests and demands of the public. Thomas Jefferson defined the responsibility of a public servant by equating them to “public property,” as they are to be held accountable and be responsive to the masses.
This principle is observed in practice with taxpayers paying lawmakers’ salaries which currently stands at $174,000 per year for members of both the United States Senate and House of Representatives. The general public pays lawmakers to work for them. Given the numerous examples of legislators casually disregarding their constituents, it seems we are essentially paying our legislators to ignore us.
An example of the kind of public servant rarely seen today is Dr. Anthony Fauci, who held himself accountable to the people in the late 1980s while leading AIDS research for the U.S. government. Fauci was targeted by AIDS activists, facing threats such as being told he should be “put before a firing squad,” and witnessing protestors holding a fake head resembling him impaled on a spike. Despite the severity of these threats, Fauci upheld his duties as a public servant and chose to reach out to activists to come up with a compromise and hear out their grievances.
We are also normalizing the practice of our legislators doing the bare minimum. Our public servants no longer work for the people. As the old aphorism goes, “money talks”, and with interest groups spending $4.2 billion lobbying on the congressional floor last year, it’s clear who our lawmakers are listening to. With an organization such as the National Rifle Association (NRA) spending millions of dollars to lobby lawmakers against gun control, it’s no surprise that legislators often respond to school shootings with a message of thoughts and prayers so as to not offend the big boss.
To illustrate the severity of the issue, taxpayers fund lawmakers to address our concerns and meet our needs. When they ignore us, it’s as if an employee is ignoring their boss. In this picture, the people are the “bosses” of the government and lawmakers.
Some may regard the instances mentioned above as lawmakers expressing their free will and choosing to remain silent, but this can be argued as a growing divide between Congress and the American people.
However, we cannot put the entire blame on legislators alone, but we must also consider the political climate in which they work. With figures like Donald Trump contributing to polarization, civil discourse also appears to be disappearing — many are now adopting a “my way or the highway” approach.
Existing partisan polarization demonstrates that Americans are no longer listening to one another. Regardless, as leaders of the country, legislators must take the initiative to listen to and connect with those who hold opposing views to their own, rather than giving them the cold shoulder.
While it is important to acknowledge that everyone, regardless of their position, has the right to choose whether or not to engage with someone politically, the ignorance of current lawmakers toward the demands of the general public indicates a disconnect that should concern us all.
With politicians consistently showing that they do not care about the American people, the public servant role has fallen. We, as the people, need to confront those that we have elected and hold our government officials accountable for failing to respond to their duties.
Zahira Vasquez is the 2024-25 Assistant Opinion Editor. She can be reached at zivasque@uci.edu.
Edited by Trista Lara, Annabelle Aguirre and Jacob Ramos.
