Kelly Daly is the president of AFSCME Local 2027 (District Council 20). For 34 years, she has worked at AmeriCorps, serving most recently as lead program specialist for the VISTA program.

Daly says the attacks from the new administration mean that, for months, only about one out of six staff were still working, burdened with the impossible task of “trying to do everything that the agency is supposed to be doing.” Now staff are starting to go back to work thanks to an injunction won by Local 2027 in court, but the harm that occurred while these public employees were sidelined cannot be undone.

AmeriCorps partners with local organizations and nonprofits in communities across the country to address critical needs and improve lives while offering young volunteers the opportunity to serve others. Every year it enrolls more than 200,000 people who want to make a difference.

Over the past several months, however, AmeriCorps employees, and the local organizations and volunteers the agency supports and coordinates, have been immobilized. When the Guadalupe River overflowed in Kerr County, Texas, earlier this month — killing at least 121 people, including at least 36 children — Daly knew that under normal conditions, AmeriCorps and its network of volunteers would have been in place and ready to aid in the rescue, rebuilding and recovery efforts.

“Normally we would already be there,” she says. “Just knowing that there’s nobody to send and that many of the organizations that we normally fund to support urgent community needs have not been funded yet … it’s really disheartening.”

Daly says she wonders if anybody else can do the work of AmeriCorps.

“The federal government, through AmeriCorps, plays an important role,” she says. “My biggest concern is this false narrative that without us, other organizations are going to step in. The fact is, those organizations rely on a lot of federal funding to do their important work. AmeriCorps is a quiet element in our nonprofit infrastructure that supports the critical missions of local organizations. Without this investment, these local organizations are left high and dry, and the help that Americans need isn’t there for them.”