Out of the wilderness

An extreme concentration of power and corruption is taking over our country like never before . . . and our political system is ill equipped to face this abuse of power.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, speaking in front of a crowd in Greeley, Colorado.

In a time when the Trump Administration is kidnapping and attempting to deport lawful permanent residents for political stances; advocating for the takeover of other countries; unconstitutionally closing congressionally created agencies;  calling for the disbarment of a judge who blocked deportations; attempting to strip protections for federal workers; cancelling billions in already federally approved health grants; and disregarding a judicial order, the Democratic party needs to be clear about the vision of America that they can offer. 

The party's response has been underwhelming. In a town hall in Oregon City, Oregonians from rural and urban areas, were told by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Representative Janelle Bynum next to nothing of notable democratic resistance, instead being only “offered . . .  paltry suggestions to call [] representatives and vote blue next election cycle.” Chuck Schumer, after stating he would not vote for the Republican funding bill, voted for the Republican funding bill. 

It feels as if the mainline Democrats are operating as if it is business as usual, asking for voters to turn out in 2026 and 2028 in order to regain the House, Senate and White House. The party seem unable to face the facing the truth: that we are facing an ongoing existential threat to American Democracy. 

On the party's progressive flank however, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders are fighting back.

On March 21, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) stood in front of a crowd in Greeley, Colorado (population 108,795, in the conservative county of Weld). As a stop on their “Fighting Oligarchy Tour” the two progressive politicians, both east coasters, stood in front of a crowd of more than 10,000 Coloradans. 

The choice of Greeley for a progressive rally is strange. The next day, Bernie and AOC drew in record numbers in Denver, a city far more hospitable to progressives. With the larger city of Boulder nearby that is home to more Bernie/AOC supporters, why stop in Greeley? 

AOC and Bernie are making an argument: their leftist economic policies are popular in conservative areas like Weld County. The rally there continued a trend of large crowds showing up for Sanders and AOC in districts that voted Republican in 2024. As one Greeley resident stated “I didn’t think things like this happened in Greeley. People would always go to Fort Collins. So it’s just like a little bit of hope.”

One member of the crowd from the small town of Lyons remarked to Colorado Public Radio, "I'm really concerned about poor people in the United States, [the] working class. I'm really disappointed that the Democrats in some sense seem to have abandoned working-class people. And this is something I really admire about Bernie and AOC."

In a time where political commentators are decrying that Democrats are lost in the wilderness, AOC and Bernie Sanders have chosen a clear path out; leftist economic policy that will help the working class. In addition, they are asking for voters to engage in class solidarity.AOC said at the Greeley rally

Our task here is to build community. That's the deeper, deeper, deeper mission that we have . . . Because community is the most powerful building block we have against fascism, to defeat authoritarianism and to root out corruption.

In arguing for building community and engaging in solidarity, AOC has directly advocated for Trump voters and families of trans kids to organize together, admonishing that “this movement is not about partisan labels or purity tests . . . It’s about class solidarity. The thousands of people who came out here today to stand here together and say, ‘Our lives deserve dignity, and our work deserves respect.’”

Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez to the Greeley crowd pointed out that Representatives Gabe Evans (recently elected Republican, whose district includes Greeley) and Representative Lauren Boebert (representing the adjacent district), voted to cut Medicaid.

In Colorado, Medicaid covers 1.2 million people. It is believed that cutting Medicaid coverage and funding for Colorado will “lead to clinics closing and more expensive care, particularly in rural areas of the state.”

The path of the current Administration will hurt all of us, not just Democrats or Republicans. Plans to privatize USPS will lead to “Approximately 51.3 million rural addresses . . . impacted” by the need to add surcharges to deliveries to rural people in order to be profitable. The closure of the Department of Education will harm rural areas by cutting necessary funding, or hampering the ability for funding to reach those areas. 

It might be tempting for urban Democrats to feel that voters deserve this in rural areas, since rural areas are more likely to vote Republican than urban ones. I diagree. Coalition building will take time, and it inherently means that Democrats and liberals and leftists will need to attract conservative voters and those who have supported Trump.

Multiple GOP lawmakers have been booed or jeered at in town halls with their constituents. With this, it seems there is an opening for a new coalition to be made. Rural and urban voters, Trump voters and Harris voters, will all need to come together in order to protect the working class, and save American democracy.

For a recent blog post about Sanders and AOC's "Fighting Oligarchy" tour, look here. For more blog posts about rural politics, rural areas being ignored by democrats, and democrats attempts to appeal in rural areas, look here, here, and here.

When will women in rural Missouri have true abortion access?

On November 5, 2024, as much of the country watched Donald Trump regain the presidency, abortion advocates in Missouri celebrated. Amendment 3, a ballot proposition to repeal Missouri's total abortion ban, had passed. Missouri was one of seven states that enacted amendments to protect abortion rights on November 5. And in a state that Donald Trump won by over 18 points, voters had somehow simultaneously restored the right to abortion by a narrow margin of 52 to 48 percent. For abortion advocates, passing Amendment 3 was a hard-fought but undeniable victory. 

Then, the question became: "What's next?"

For rural Missourians, the answer is complicated. Over the past few decades, Missouri has severely limited abortion access. Hit hardest were women in rural communities. For years, there were only three abortion clinics in Missouri, which has a population of over 6 million. By 2017, a Planned Parenthood in St. Louis was the only place in the entire state you could get a medical abortion. And in 2022, Missouri passed the "Right to Life of the Unborn Child Act," a trigger ban that months later became the first in the nation to go into effect when Dobbs v. Jackson overturned the constitutional right to an abortion. 

This was the landscape framing desperate efforts to restore medical access to abortion in Missouri. But celebrations fell quiet in weeks after the election as anti-abortion advocates began to respond. Elected officials in Missouri pledged to "vigorously defend" abortion bans in the state. On January 16, 2025, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) introduced federal legislation to defund Planned Parenthood. I felt my own stomach churn when my little sister, a veterinary student at the University of Missouri, texted me: "I'm getting anxious. About living [here]." 

One-third of Missourians live in rural areas. But even those in urban counties have felt the effects of the decades-long effort to restrict access to abortion. Columbia, Missouri, where my sister lives, has a population of 130,000. But it's over a two hour drive to St. Louis, where the sole abortion provider in Missouri is located. Rural Ozark County ⁠— which has a 29.6 percent poverty rate, the highest in the state — is a four hour drive from St. Louis. Not to mention travel costs, medical expenses, and scraping together time off work — all challenges exacerbated by rurality.

While Amendment 3 granted abortion access until the point of fetal viability, the St. Louis Planned Parenthood cannot legally resume providing abortions. This is, in part, due to a December ruling by Jackson County Judge Jerri Zhang which upheld licensure requirements for abortion clinics — meaning that though Missourians have a renewed right to abortion, there is no place for them to obtain one. This leaves rural women in Missouri vulnerable, particularly those in the southern half, where the nearest abortion clinic might be several states away. 

However, progress was made: In the same opinion, Judge Zhang struck down other restrictive laws, including a 72-hour waiting period and a requirement that physicians who perform abortions have admitting privileges in all hospitals that provide obstetric or gynaecological care within "30 minutes or a 15-minute drive." Judge Zhang considered rural Missourians in the decision, writing that: 

[A] person who travels three hours to get a medication abortion and then returns home, would not benefit from [these restrictions]. If complications arise after taking the medication, the individual would need to seek emergency care at the nearest hospital emergency room, as with any other medical emergency.

Aside from the judiciary, what else can be done? In a state like Missouri, where only 28.9 percent of statewide legislators are women, many will turn to grassroots organizing. "What's Next?," an organization dedicated to improving abortion access in Missouri, has advocated for Know-Your-Rights Trainings and other local initiatives. In a 2024 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, over 35 percent of rural women reported they wouldn't know where to go or where to find abortion information. This post by Rooney Debutts details other statewide legislative efforts to improve abortion access. 

One thing is clear: The fight for abortion access in rural Missouri is far from over. 

Selma deserves our attention more than one day a year

 On March 7, 1965, 600 activists began peacefully marching in Alabama from Selma to Montgomery to protest the rampant voter suppression of Black Americans. 

Activists chose Selma as the starting point for their march due to its infamous voter suppression, with the Alabama Governor George Wallace opposing desegregation and the local county sheriff opposing Black voter registration drives. As such, only one percent of voting-age Black citizens were registered to vote, and those who tried to vote often faced violence, like police brutality. 

As marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma in 1965, 150 Alabama state troopers descended with little to no warning, violently and maliciously attacking and injuring the peaceful marchers with tear gas and clubs. 

The event became known as Bloody Sunday. The attack sparked national outrage that led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act later that year. The city of Selma, and the Edmund Pettus Bridge in particular, became an enduring symbol for the Civil Rights movement. In the 2020 Democratic primaries, for example, nearly every presidential candidate on the ticket visited Selma to commemorate the anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

As we approach the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday this year, politicians will surely flock to the city to walk across the bridge, take photos, and declare the importance of voting rights. However, Selma’s voter suppression and lack of resources, the very reason activists chose it as the location for the march nearly 60 years ago, has not been magically resolved.

Instead, Selma remains a deeply rural area with residents who feel abandoned by their government. Selma is located in the Black Belt region of south central Alabama and has a population of around 17,971 people. About 80 percent of that population is Black.

Ryan Zickgraf describes in his article “Politicians Come to Selma Every Year to Commemorate the Civil Rights Struggle, But Nothing Changes” how the downtown is largely made up of empty and crumbling stores and homes. He talks to Selma native, Owen Peak, who warns:

This is a do-or-die time here – we really need help.

Yet, residents feel they are not receiving help when they need it most. In Chris Arnade’s article “‘Still a city of slaves’- Selma, in the words of those who live there,” Council McReynolds, a lifetime resident of Selma, states that all the factories have closed and that:

Selma has been left behind, and folks are certainly not working together.

In 2020, Selma and the surrounding Dallas County had voter turnout of under 57 percent, among the worst in the state. In Jay Reeves’ article “Despite its civil rights history, Selma, Alabama sees steady voter turnout decline,” Resident Tyrone Clarke explains why, despite the extreme effort and bodily harm endured to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, residents remain hesitant to visit the polls:

You have a whole lot of people who look at the conditions and don’t see what good it’s going to do for them. You know, ‘How is this guy or that guy being in office going to affect me in this little, rotten town here?’

The numbers tell a similar somber, distressing tale as Selma’s residents. As discussed in a previous blog post, Selma is Alabama’s poorest town. In 2022, the poverty rate in Selma was 29.5 percent. That same year, the median household income was $31,084, less than half the 2022 national average of $74,580. With a high poverty rate and without any prospect of a job, many people turn to using or dealing drugs.

Yet Selma, like the rest of Alabama, has some of the strictest policies concerning drugs, coupled with the second highest incarceration rate in the country; policies that disproportionately affect Black residents. One man from Selma, recently released from prison, commented:

Once I got my felony, I became the walking dead. I couldn’t do nothing. I couldn’t vote, I couldn’t drive, and I sure as hell couldn’t work, so I sat around doing nothing, until I started selling again.

A terrible cycle exists in Selma in which people cannot find a job, turn to drugs, get arrested, and then receive a felony on their record that disqualifies them from more work and the right to vote for politicians who will make the town better.

The yearly pilgrimage to Selma highlights the irony of celebrating a pivotal moment in civil rights history in a town that fails to reap any concrete benefits of that progress, and feels the lasting impact of centuries of discriminatory policies.

As politicians flock to Selma for their annual visit and photo-ops, they should prioritize Selma the other 364 days of the year. While the Voting Rights Act of 1965 should be celebrated, the work to push forward civil rights is far from over in Selma.

Orick: the gatekeeper and poacher of the redwoods

Every year, expensive cuts of redwood are used to make trinkets, furniture, luxury car consoles, and other goods. A significant portion of this costly timber used to make these items is poached from the Redwood National and State Parks in California. Much of it comes from in and around a town named Orick. 

Orick sits at the base of the Redwood National Park in Humboldt County, California. Once a place with a booming timber industry, it now has a high poverty rate, widespread drug use, and a dwindling population. Once home to 3,000 people, its population is now estimated to be just 300. 

Orick's undiversified economy is surprisingly supported by a lucrative underground tree poaching economy. Many Orick residents have turned to illegally harvesting redwood burls from their neighboring protected lands. Burls are the bumpy growths on redwood trees that form following trauma such as lightning, fire, and fungal infections. When injured, redwoods direct their nutrients and energy into healing this trauma, which results in the burls. The burls thus contain a lot of genetic material, making it likely for a tree to sprout from the rough bump. Cutting a burl does irreparable harm, weakening the foundation of the tree and making it susceptible to disease. More consequentially, it lessens the chance for the tree to reproduce. 

Tree poaching in Orick used to involve only dead redwood logs. The regular theft of redwoods began only about fifteen years ago. In 2006, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on authorities' concerns that poachers would begin chopping down live trees as the number of dead logs decreased, and this is exactly what happened. The U.S. Forest Service estimates that one in ten trees cut in national forests is poached, and the Redwood Park rangers are calling the poaching a "crisis." Investigators have discovered chunks of illegal burlwood along the 101 Highway from Eureka to Crescent City. 

Poachers are primarily motivated by money. These chunks of wavy burl hold significant financial value and a single slab of redwood can fetch a couple thousands of dollars. Poachers can easily drop their fresh loots off to local buyers in the area who then use the wood to make an array of luxury items. Burls are smoother and easier to carve making them ideal for sculptures and furniture. 

Poachers often work in teams and sneak into the park during the middle of the night. To lessen their chances of being caught, rainier weather is preferred during these operations. Poachers use chainsaws to cut into the trees and then haul away large chunks of redwood. From time to time, poachers are caught and charged. They are often fined, banned from the park, and ordered to complete community service (Read about one Orick poacher's sentence here.) These sentences, however, are sometimes not enough to stop poachers from coming back. 

With few economic prospects left in Orick, burl poaching has been a quick way for residents to make money. Orick had reached its peak as a logging town after World War II. During that time Orick had four sawmills, unionized timber jobs, and was a bustling town with bars, restaurants, and shops. This was also the period when many redwoods were logged––two million acres of coastal redwood were diminished to 300,000 acres. By the 1960s, the environmental impact of the logging industry was clear. In an effort to protect the remaining redwoods, environmentalists pushed for action, and in 1968, President Lyndon Johnson signed a bill creating the Redwood National Park. 

Timber companies blamed environmentalists for their downfall and the effects of deindustrialization that ensued. Officials told the town that while the timber industry was collapsing, tourism to the area would boom. But this did not happen. Lyndsie Bourgon, author of Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods, told NPR:

Orick finds itself ensnared in a vicious circle: its reputation for drugs and unsightly poverty deters anyone who might want to invest in making it a permanent home or a place where tourists might want to stay.

In her book, Bourgon argues that tree poaching is the product of desperation: people with a deep-rooted attachment to Orick are left with limited options. One poacher likened himself to Robin Hood, telling Bourgon, "Robin Hood was just taking care of his and his own." 

Read more about Orick here and timber poaching in California's national parks here. 

Despite renaming efforts, Indigenous slurs persist in rural jurisdictions

 In January 2023, the federal government removed a common slur that is both racist and sexist towards Indigenous women in nearly 650 locations nationwide. A few months earlier, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill removing the word sq**w  from public spaces in California. 

One of these uses was in Yokuts Valley in Fresno County, California. Yokuts Valley, population 3,511, is a small community located at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains on State Route 180, just south of Kings Canyon National Park. According to the USDA's definition, the Yokuts Valley is rural. 

The federal name-change movement was led by Roman Rain Tree. Rain Tree is a member of the Dunlap Band of Mono Indians and Choinumni People and is the founder of the Rename Squ**w Valley Coalition. 

In January of 2022, Rain Tree filed a petition with the U.S. Board of Geographic Names, saying that the region "deserved a respectable name, one that, at the very least, does not degrade the people indigenous to the Sierra Nevada foothills." This petition ultimately resulted in the January 2023 federal name change. 

Before we look at this rural place's decision in refusing to comply with these changes, we should dive into the history of the term first. 

History of the S-Word

The term sq**w (now referred to as the "S-Word") has been historically problematic. It is understood by Indigenous peoples (like the Nimíipuu community) as "an alien non-Indian term." The term does not have an indigenous linguistic equivalence, and was never translated into the Nez Perce language.

Moreover, the phase was created by Lewis and Clark in 1805 and was later used by early fur traders and trappers who came to Idaho. The University of Idaho's Lewis & Clark rediscovery project studied the word's significance and found that while Lewis and Clark attached a neutral meaning to the term, it is still derogatory: 

Lewis and Clark perhaps attached a more neutral meaning to the term's use in their day, not deliberately intending it to be offensive. In daily verbal discourse today Indians generally understand the term in a highly negative fashion, referring to a range of derogatory and demeaning significances.

Scholars have historically debated the origins of the term. In 2000, linguist William Bright at the University of Colorado published a research paper in A Journal of Onomastics called "The Sociolinguistics of the “S–Word”: Squaw in American Placenames" where he defines the S-Word and its origins in the paper's abstract (NOTE: quote has been edited for political correctness): 

Placenames containing the word [“sq**w”] are numerous throughout the United States, but have recently become controversial. American Indian groups and individuals have presented three kinds of argument against the use of the term. The first argument is that it is derived from an Mohawk word for the female genitalia. Linguistic data show, however, that it is actually a New England Massachusett word for ‘woman'. [sic] A second argument presented is that “sq**w” has been, and is still, used derogatorily by whites toward Indian women. This argument is supported only weakly by literary documents, but more strongly by frontier memoirs and journalistic writing. The third argument is that [“sq***w”] is offensive to Indians, in the same way that [“n****r”] is offensive to African Americans.

Regardless of its origins, the term is considered universally offensive by Indigenous peoples in America and Canada. It is considered to be so offensive that even prior to 2023, businesses have been renaming things that mention S-Word an effort to condemn America's colonial and oppressive history. In June of 2020, Palisades Tahoe (a ski resort formerly known as S-Word Valley) committed to changing its name and stopped using the derogatory term in September of 2021.

Rural Places Hesitancy to Correct Our Problematic Past via Renaming

This month, Fresnoland published an article detailing how Fresno County is refusing to acknowledge both the S-Word's offensive history and even the existence of the name change in general. 

While the majority of these places honor the name change, Fresno County has refused to accept and comply with this name change. In an interview with Fresnoland, County Supervisor Nathan Magsig said that: "“Fresno County recognizes [Sq**w] Valley as [Sq**w] Valley.” In a Facebook video, Magsig can be seen using the derogatory term. 

Unfortunately, Magsig and Fresno County do not have to comply with the federal name change mandate regarding the S-Word because the federal 2023 removal of the S-Word applies only to federal jurisdictions, even though the petition was started by a member living in the Yokuts Valley. 

Magsig and Fresno County continue to fight to keep the S-Word around. The Fresno County Board of Supervisors’ rebuked the federal name-change mandate, and refuse to acknowledge the change ever existed. 

The Fresno County Board of Supervisors also voted in March to sue the state of California based on the bill Newsom signed. The lawsuit claims that the County "never intended [the term]. . . to be derogatory or racist in its intent or cultural meaning in that Community" and should remain because of the First Amendment. 

My question is: why are local governments so committed to opposing name changes that correct offensive nomenclature? More broadly, why are rural places more hesitant to embrace social change?

One reason could be political orientations. A 2018 Pew Research Center poll found that rural voters are increasingly tilting Republican, with 54 percent of survey rural respondents surveyed identifying as "Republican or Republican-leaning" and 36 percent identifying as "Democrat or Democrat-leaning." 

Among the Republican respondents, the study found that rural Republicans had more favorable views of former President Donald Trump than urban or suburban Republicans. 

Former president Donald Trump certaintly does not stand for political correctness. In a 2016 article, NPR quoted Trump who denounced political correctness:

I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct," Trump tells the moderator, Fox News' Megyn Kelly. "I've been challenged by so many people and I don't, frankly, have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn't have time, either. 

Trump has also been known to be an offensive name-caller. He has called Senator Elizabeth Warren "Pocahontas," U.S. representative Adam Schiff "Pencil Neck," and even made fun of the appearance of Senator Ted Cruz's wife, comparing her to his wife Melania.

Polls also show that Republicans are more likely to oppose changes that make place names politically correct.  Last year, the Washington R*dsk*ns changed their name to the Washington Commanders because the team name was "offensive to many Indigenous people who viewed the name and branding as both a slur and a disparaging stereotype grounded in America's history of violence against Native peoples," according to NPR. 

While many people praised the Commander's name change, 90 percent of Republicans surveyed in a 2014 study said a name change was unnecessary. While that survey was almost ten years old, not much had changed by the time the switch to Commanders was made. In 2021, Native groups demanded that the Atlanta Braves eliminate the "Tomahawk chop" symbol on the team's logo, saying that it perpetuates racist stereotypes. As of today, the MLB team logo remains. 

One reason besides political affiliations as to why rural communities could be adverse to name changes is because they are more focused on what they see as greater, more significant problems. To use a rural colloquialism, they have "bigger fish to fry." 

A 2022 Pew Research Study found that rural Americans are more worried about drug addiction compared to their urban and suburban counterparts. The poll found that 44 percent of rural Americans believe drug overdose is a major problem in their communities compared to 33 percent of suburban folks and 34 percent of urban folks surveyed. 

Further, rural Americans are less likely to have reliable health care services compared to their counterparts. They also have higher rates of poverty than those in metropolitan areas. The incidence of disability is also greater in rural areas than metropolitan areas.

Regardless, both rural and urban governments should prioritize the renaming of landmarks, sports teams, and rivers. This is a great first step toward denouncing America's racist and oppressive past. 

As a society, we have a large responsibility to do better to honor Indigenous peoples and denounce the injustice associated with the founding of this country. A recent Australian ballot initiative that would have given Indigenous People greater political rights failed. While this is disappointing, it is hard to imagine a comparable initiative even appearing on a ballot in the United States. Unfortunately, some local governments won't even rename things that are offensive, let alone give Indigenous People more political rights. 

You can read more about Indigenous issues in rural places here, here and here. 

Tyler Childers' "In Your Love" video breaks stereotypes and captures the complexities of LGBTQ relationships in Appalachia

Tyler Childers is an American country singer-songwriter. On September 8th, he released his sixth studio album, Rustin' In the Rain. The album's hit song, co-written with Geno Seale, is called "In Your Love." 

When I first saw the "In Your Love" music video, written by Silas House, the only word that came to mind was "powerful." The video portrays the first-ever gay romance and gay kiss in a country music video released by a major label. 

Beyond telling a love story of two Appalachian coal miners, the video depicts the struggles coal miners have faced for centuries and how rural communities are often not accepting of LGBTQ relationships. 

In the video, the gay miner's coworkers beat him up after seeing him engage in a same-sex kiss; at the end, the miner dies from the black lung disease in his partner's arms. 

While most critics have praised the video, some of Childers's fans have complained that the artist has “gone woke.” In response to the video, fans burned him T-shirts and concert tickets, posted comments full of bigotry, and accused Childers of being gay himself (even though he is married and often sings about his wife). 

While these reactions were disheartening, they are unfortunately not surprising. According to the Trevor project, LGBTQ youth from small towns or rural areas are more likely to hear anti-LGBTQ remarks and experience discrimination than those from urban and suburban areas. You can read more about LGBTQ hatred and intolerance in rural communities here, here, and here. 

Regardless, Childers said the majority of the video's response has been “overwhelmingly more positive than negative.” Some fans thanked him for telling more than one type of love story in the region. Others felt emboldened to come out after watching it. 

Writer, Kentucky-native, and poet laureate Silas House explained why LGBT representation in rural places is so important in a Rolling Stones article: 

It’s very rare to see LGBT people portrayed in a rural place. The idea is that most LGBT people escape or have to go to the city. And that is true for a lot of people: We have historically sought the safety of cities. There’s strength in numbers. But there are also lots and lots of LGBTQ people who live in rural places.

In a recent NPR article, House elaborated on why the mining aspect of the video was essential: 

Both of us [him and Childers] come from families who have worked in the mining industry. [...] To see yourself in art is a really important thing, especially when you're from an "other" place. You rarely see LGBT people in rural settings in a positive way. You often see them getting murdered there, or escaping from there, but that's it. That's why this [video] matters, especially for country music.

Childers is from Lawrence County, Kentucky, an Appalachian county which shares a border with West Virginia. Lawrence County is a metropolitan county, with a population of 16,293. Demographically,  98.93% of the county is white and 30.70% of residents live below the poverty line. 

Childers, to me, is one of Appalachia's best storytellers. The bulk of his songwriting and lyrics detail the struggles and daily life of Appalachia. In another song, "Coal," Childers sings about the struggles of poverty, gender roles, and the lack of economic opportunity present in Appalachia:

God made coal for the men who sold their lives to West Van Lear
And you keep on digging 'til you get down there
Where it's darker than your darkest fears
And that woman in the kitchen
She keeps on cookin', but she ain't had meat in years
Just live off bread, live off hope, and a pool of a million tears

Childers's lyrics reference Van Lear, a small mining town in Johnson County, Kentucky.  The town's existence was owed to Consolidated Coal Company.  In 1935, there was an explosion in a mine that killed nine people. Since the end of local mining, only a handful of businesses continue to operate in the Van Lear area. Today, the town is home to only 1600 people. 

In another song, "Nose on the Grindstone" Childers sings about his father's job as a coal miner, the opioid crisis, and how his father told him to get out of Appalachia to seek better employment opportunities: 

Daddy worked like a mule minin' Pike County coal
'Til he f*cked up his back and couldn't work anymore
He said one of these days, you'll get out of these hills
Keep your nose on the grindstone and out of the pills

We need more voices from rural America who support beliefs and social movements that some rural Americans do not support. In 2020, Childers publicly expressed his support for the Black Lives Matter Movement. 

Childers' storytelling through lyricism could be the solution in bridging ideas and negating biases that are distinctly held by rural and urban audiences. While he introduces the idea of LGBTQ acceptance and support for social justice movements to his rural listeners, Childers also teaches his urban listeners about the hardships Appalachians have faced.

House wrote an article for The Bitter Southerner detailing the complexities of Appalachia: 

Appalachia [...] may not have as much diversity as the rest of the country, but we are not all alike, either, and we’re certainly not all white, straight, cis, or Christian, as many people around the world might think. The same could be said for rural America, no matter where it is in the nation.

If there's one take away from the "In Your Love" video, it should be never to underestimate the storytelling power of music. 

Young chair of North Carolina Democrats, in New York Times feature, calls for outreach to rural

The feature on Anderson Clayton, recently elected chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, appeared in the New York Times Sunday print edition under the headline, "The Youngest State Party Leader in the U.S. Has a Blue-Collar Blueprint."  Andrew Trunsky writes: 

Ms. Clayton ... is aiming to motivate younger voters, but she also campaigned with broader goals, arguing that Democrats need to invest in rural communities if they hope to erode Republicans’ grip on state and local power.

She thinks a key is being candid about her party’s flaws and missteps. “People with me all the time are like, ‘I wish you’d stop saying we’ve left Democrats behind,’” she said. “I’m like: ‘We have. We’ve left people behind.’”

In North Carolina’s elections last year, Democrats ceded 44 state legislative seats, uncontested, to Republicans. Many encompassed blue-collar, rural towns that had voted reliably Democratic decades ago but by then had no official footprint from the party, much less a candidate to support.

* * * 

[Clayton] said that many Democratic officials viewed rural voters as out of reach. When Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2016, her senior staff scoffed when Bill Clinton fretted that Democrats were losing touch with rural voters. Why view them as valuable when they had the Obama coalition? But as it turned out, only Barack Obama could summon the Obama coalition.

Trunsky quotes David Axelrod, a top adviser to Obama:

The Democratic Party has become too much of a metropolitan, cosmopolitan party. There is a sense in the party that we’re the party of working people, but if you don’t communicate respect, and only say, "Let me tell you what we’re doing for you," then you’re not very persuasive. And there were a lot of working people who felt betrayed.

Clayton acknowledges that the Democrats "don't have a good brand" and says she is eager to "address Democrats' rural struggles."   Her pitch to become chair of the state Democratic Party was "personal."

She grew up in Roxboro surrounded by the farms, forests and rolling hills blanketing rural Person County. It was counties like Person that had raced to the right in the years prior, and whose residents, Ms. Clayton said, had been robbed of a seat at the table. Her father, she said, disavowed the Democratic Party after he lost his manufacturing job in the onset of the Great Recession.

Don't miss the entire profile of the exuberant Clayton.  I've previously written about her on Legal Ruralism here and here.   She's been a refreshing pop of energy on Twitter for several years, sharing photos of her Person County organizing exploits, as well as those of her cats.  

And here's a profile the Washington Post did on Clayton in late March, featuring photos in her father's work/utility truck.  

Postscript:  Here's a late May story about Clayton in Teen Vogue.  A key quote:  "I want to show people that young people are so capable."  

And here is a June, 2023 story in Britain's The Independent newspaper. 

Reconciling rural aversion to environmental policy with reverence for the environment

American political polarization on the issue of climate change, specifically the predominant notion that environmental protection is a left-wing cause, has never felt intuitive to me. The people in my life who were most integrated with, knowledgable about, and invested in caring for the natural world – hunters, fishers, and farmers – were all also life-long conservatives. Knowing first-hand the extent to which these individuals revered the natural landscape that surrounded us in rural Virginia, I reconciled this perceived disconnect by presuming their commitment to the environment, which I witnessed as implicit in their rural ways of life, took a back seat to other political preferences and agendas. I had never considered, however, that rural existence and identity could, in-and-of-itself, be constructive of an ideology opposed to climate change policy.

A December 2022 Associated Press news report, "Rural voters 'in the trenches on climate, leery of Biden," complicated my understanding of rural Americans' relationship to climate policy. The story focuses on Raquel Krach, a rice farmer in a rural area of the Sacramento Valley, who has been unable to grow full crop yields due to ongoing drought. Despite confidently attributing the increasing prevalence of such adverse natural phenomena to the effects of climate change, Krach feels she cannot even discuss the issue of climate change policy with her rural neighbors given its deeply divisive nature within her community. The report contextualizes Krach's rural neighbors' antagonistic relationship to climate policy within a broader trend by which rural communities are less supportive of federal climate change mitigation action relative to their urban counterparts, even when analyzed internally within political parties. 

The existence of an urban-rural divide with regards to attitudes towards climate policy is particularly surprising given the ways in which rural communities are on the forefront of many climate issues. As the U.S. Global Change Research Program's Third National Climate Assessment highlights: 

Warming, climate volatility, extreme weather events, and environmental change are already affecting the economies and cultures of rural areas.

More specifically, because rural socioeconomic ways of life are heavily dependent on natural resources that are being impacted by climate change and less diversified in terms of sources of socioeconomic stability, the livelihoods, infrastructure, and quality of life of many rural communities across the country are being jeopardized by climate shifts we are already seeing.  

Drought and lack of available water, such as that posing challenges to Krach's farm, provide just one illustration of climate change's many iterations and corresponding implications for rural communities. Other ways in which climate change-influenced disasters continue to have an outsized impact on Rural America include increasingly frequent wildfires (previously discussed on this blog here, here, here, and here), flooding (here and here), and coastal erosion. 

A 2020 study, "Understanding Rural Attitudes Towards the Environment and Conservation in America," produced by the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, confirmed both the existence of an urban-rural divide with regards to attitudes towards climate policy, as well as what I knew from personal interactions: this divide was not the product of rural Americans caring less for the environment. To the contrary, the study found that rural Americans definitively do value environmental protection and have strong place-oriented values embodied by environmental stewardship and an ongoing connection to nature. 

Instead, the Nicholas Institute study posits the divide is largely the result of rural Americans' negative attitudes towards the government and, particularly, their distrust of federal environmental policy and regulation they feel has not taken into account the needs of rural constituencies and, consequently, led to bad outcomes for their communities. Similarly, the study identifies rural Americans' anti-climate policy disposition as emerging from skepticism of large environmental advocacy groups they see as pushing top-down regulation that serves the agenda of global climate activists, but not necessarily their small towns. Thus, the study demonstrates the ways in which for rural Americans being pro-environment, but anti-environmental policy is not inherently contradictory.  

Understanding rural Americans' aversion to climate change mitigation policy, despite in many ways bearing the brunt of climate change's most tangible impacts, has import beyond just being of theoretical interest. Rural Americans are essential to the success or failure of much environmental policy implementation. More specifically, as spotlighted in a 2021 paper, "Understanding Rural Identities and Environmental Policy Attitudes in America," by Emily Diamond: 

Conservation of ecosystems, water, and wildlife, the production of energy – renewable and non-renewable – and many other environmental issues depend on the actions taken by rural residents; gaining rural buy-in for environmental regulations can lead to greater success in their implementation.

Given the critical importance of rural communities to climate policy implementation, policy-makers and activists should take seriously the recommendations of the Nicholas Institute study to: (1) collaborate with local constituents, particularly trusted community leaders, such that rural stakeholders are positioned to have an active voice in local resource management and the broader solution, (2) build state and local government partnerships into policy to mitigate federal distrust and bolster overall efficacy, and (3) leverage rural Americans' existing environmental values both by honing in on the importance of environmental stewardship for the purposes of acting on behalf of future generations, and by focusing on specific local issues, such as protecting clean water sources, rather than on climate change and global emission reduction more universally.

Oregon moves to regulate paramilitaries while Vermont moves to regulate places where they're trained

Andrew Selsky reports for the Associated Press, leading with this background and a description of the proposed legislation.

Over the past decade, Oregon experienced the sixth-highest number of extremist incidents in the nation, despite being 27th in population, according to an Oregon Secretary of State report. Now, the state Legislature is considering a bill that, experts say, would create the nation’s most comprehensive law against paramilitary activity.

It would provide citizens and the state attorney general with civil remedies in court if armed members of a private paramilitary group interfere with, or intimidate, another person who is engaging in an activity they have a legal right to do, such as voting. A court could block paramilitary members from pursuing an activity if the state attorney general believed it would be illegal conduct.

All 50 states prohibit private paramilitary organizations and/or paramilitary activity, but no other law creates civil remedies, said Mary McCord, an expert on terrorism and domestic extremism who helped craft the bill. The Oregon bill is also unique because it would allow people injured by private, unauthorized paramilitary activity to sue, she said.

Opponents say the law would infringe on rights to freely associate and to bear arms.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Dacia Grayber, a Democrat from suburban Portland, said the proposed reforms “would make it harder for private paramilitaries to operate with impunity throughout Oregon, regardless of their ideology.”

But dozens of conservative Oregonians, in written testimony, have expressed suspicion that the Democrat-controlled Legislature aims to pass a bill restricting the right to assemble and that the legislation would target right-wing armed groups like the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer, but not black-clad anarchists who have vandalized downtown Portland and battled police.

“This bill would clearly put restrictions on who could gather in a group and for what reasons they chose to,” wrote Matthew Holman, a resident of Coos Bay, a town on Oregon’s southwest coast. 

* * * 

Oregon Department of Justice attorney Carson Whitehead said the proposed law would not sanction a person for openly carrying firearms, which is constitutionally permissible. But if a paramilitary group went to a park knowing their presence would be intimidating, anyone afraid of also going to the park could sue for damages, Whitehead said.

“This particular bill is not directed at individuals open-carrying. This is directed at armed, coordinated paramilitary activity,” added McCord, who is the executive director of Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection.

* * * 

Rep. Rick Lewis, a Republican from Silverton, asked pointedly during the committee hearing whether rocks and frozen water bottles, which Portland police said had been thrown at them during demonstrations in 2021, would fall under the proposed law.

* * * 

McCord, the terrorism expert, said the measure would mark a milestone in the U.S., where the FBI has warned of a rapidly growing threat of homegrown violent extremism.

“This bill as amended would be the most comprehensive statute to address unauthorized paramilitary activity that threatens civil rights,” she said. 

* * * 

On the other side of the country in Vermont, a bill making it a crime to operate a paramilitary training camp got final approval from the state Senate on Friday. The measure, which senators earlier approved by a 29-1 vote, also allows state prosecutors to seek an injunction to close such a facility.

“This bill gives the state the authority it needs to protect Vermonters from fringe actors looking to create civil disorder,” said state Sen. Philip Baruth, a Democrat and Progressive from Burlington.

Baruth introduced the measure in response to a firearms training facility built without permits in the town of Pawlet. Neighbors frequently complained about gunfire coming from the Slate Ridge facility, calling it a menace. Baruth’s bill now goes to the Vermont House.