In the hours and days after 9/11, there was a sudden respect and solidarity with the government workers—firefighters, police and other rescue workers—who risked their lives to reduce the devastating losses of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. This respect quickly dissipated once there were no more lives that needed to be saved, and the World Trade Center became a site for clean-up, rather than tragedy. Ten years later, government workers are actively bashed, rather than celebrated.

The Nation‘s Katrina vanden Heuvel explains on Morning Joe that currently, the government is stacked against the people. As Americans, vanden Heuvel argues, we need to not only recapture our government to once again make it of, by and for the people, but also respect government workers’ vital service as separate from the corruption and bureaucracy inside of Washington. Read her column on the topic here.

—Anna Lekas Miller