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.

How Democrats can win Wisconsin, with barely a mention of the rural

Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair, Ben Wikler, was Ezra Klein's guest last week, and the podcast was published under the headline, "This is How Democrats Win in Wisconsin."  The subhead was "Ben Wikler, the chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, discusses whether Kamala Harris can appeal to voters in the swing state."  In short, Wikler is all in on Wisconsinites embracing Harris, though I did not find myself convinced by his comments.  I didn't hear much evidence or analysis, mostly only broad assertions of Harris' appeal in the Forward State.  

Most striking to me in his comments was the inattention to rural voters.  Below are the only two quotes in which Wikler (or Klein) use the word "rural." 

You know, wherever you go in Wisconsin — and Wisconsin is small towns. It is factory towns or water tower towns as they’re called. It has bigger cities, no huge cities. Milwaukee is well under a million people. It has a ton of rural areas.

* * *

And [Kamala Harris] connects with voters in rural areas, in small towns, in suburbs, in cities. She listens to people. They can tell that she likes them. She has this record. And if you listen to her stump speech, there’s a lot about how she stands up to the big drug companies. She stood up to the insurance companies. She wrote the law that allows people to get on their parents’ health insurance until age 26.

The first mention is just descriptive of Wisconsin's geographic demography, stating the obvious, that it has both small towns and cities!!  The second mention is similar but it asserts, with no support, that Harris is connecting with voters in all of these various sizes of population clusters.  I'm not seeing any effort on the part of the Harris campaign to connect with rural voters on rural issues, and Wikler isn't suggesting that she is doing anything rural specific.  So, really?  

Compare this Ezra Klein interview to this post from last month, which takes Wisconsin's rural voters very seriously as key to the state's electoral outcomes this fall.  Other posts about the Democratic Party's efforts (or lack thereof) in Wisconsin are here.  

Indeed, compare this to Kathy Cramer's book on rural resentment.  

Also, I happen to have been in Wisconsin last week, including in rural areas surrounding Madison, but mostly in Madison.  I saw neither Trump signs nor Biden signs in either place, but perhaps I wasn't paying enough attention.  

Racism in rural Vermont: 1890s

Vermont Public published a great story a couple of weeks ago regarding the 1890 disappearance of a Black preacher, John Harrison, in Norwich, Vermont and the failure to charge the man who confessed to his murder. It also details a place name with racist origins that may have derived from his presence in the community. You can read (or listen) to the story here. It serves a nice follow up to my previous piece on racism in North Carolina during the same period and a good reminder that racism wasn't the exclusive province of the South. 

This piece touches on a few interesting artifacts of history:

1. The outmigration of people from rural New England in the 19th century. I've touched on this in previous writings but this article does a great job of illustrating the opportunities created by the holes that are left when people leave. In this story, Mr. Harrison ends up in Norwich to serve as a preacher, a job which had become less coveted because of the declining population. It is unfortunate that racial prejudice prevented him from fully taking advantage of the opportunity. 
2. The racism that people of color faced outside of the rural South. The heart of the Abolitionist movement was in New England, but that doesn't mean that Black people were welcome in those communities. People wanted them to be free, but free elsewhere. 
3. The erasure of records, which is a national problem for people of color and historically lower-income people. 

As a student at Dartmouth in Hanover, New Hampshire, I spent four years living across the Connecticut River from Norwich. The Upper Valley (as the area is known locally) is a beautiful community with an interesting history. I'm happy to see my former Sociology of Law professor, Deborah King, quoted in this piece and I am excited to see her research into Dartmouth's role in the transatlantic slave trade. 

Moving backwards - Australia votes no for the indigenous voice to parliament

On Saturday 14 October, Australia was faced with a monumental opportunity to amend their Constitution with the nation's 45th referendum. The proposal was to recognise Australia's indigenous people - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders - through a constitutionally enshrined body that provides non-binding advice to Parliament. This body is known as 'The Voice'. 

The Voice has been a project in the works since 2017, when the Uluru Statement from the Heart was presented to Australian's. The Statement was devised by a 16-member Referendum Council that travelled around Australia to consult with indigenous Australian's in regional areas, about what they believed would be the best step forward in creating a more equal future. The purpose of the Statement is for indigenous Australian's to actually be given the opportunity to have input over policies that directly effect on them. 

In the Referendum Council's final report released in 2017, they put forward two recommendations:

1. Constitutional reform to implement an advisory body that represents Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders; and

2. An extra-constitutional Declaration of Recognition enacted by legislation. 

After seven years of discussion, the first recommendation has finally been acted upon - but not in the way it was intended.

For what could ultimately be deemed as the most important referendum in Australian history, the 'Yes' campaign has been provided an immensely disappointing lack of promotion by the Australian government, while also having to battle against a wave of false information disseminated through various media platforms. The failure to adequately promote The Voice has left a frightening portion of the Australian population completely unaware of what it is, where it came from and most importantly, why it's desperately needed. 

To my absolute shock and horror, an alarming number of those unaware to The Voice are indigenous Australian's living in rural and remote areas. Yes, you read that correctly. The knowledge of The Voice that has been devised as an incredibly important mechanism to represent indigenous Australian's, has not been provided to Indigenous Australian's in remote areas. If this doesn't illustrate the inequality of the urban- rural divide, I really don't know what will. 

For a population that is already disadvantaged with basic, fundamental human rights such as access to health care and education, it appears that the remote Indigenous population is being further discriminated against based on their geographical location. While it can be argued this is not an intentional form of discrimination, it also demonstrates the lack of access to basic resources that rural populations face. 

Paul Kabai, an environmental activist based in Torres Strait, explained that access to any source of reliable information regarding The Voice was an extreme challenge.  

Nothing has been explained to the elders here on the [Sabai] Island ... talking with people about voting, it's all 'what is this referendum vote all about? What is the no, what is the yes?' Voting is just around the corner and there is nothing. 

The burden of seeking information was placed upon the remote communities, but with some of these areas not even having knowledge of The Voice's existence in the first place, there wasn't even the option to self-educate. As a young, white woman, with both a tertiary and private school education, I have come to realise the absolute privilege I have to be informed about national politics. For what I thought was just a factor of everyday life, is actually something I have taken completely for granted - and for this I feel completely ashamed and embarrassed. 

The idea that a constitutionally recognised body, devised to represent me, as an attempt to create a more equal future after centuries of intergenerational trauma and discrimination, was not even brought to my knowledge is simply beyond comprehension. This is not only an example of geographical discrimination, this is a shameful representation of Australia and its care towards remote populations. 

The result of the referendum was released in the late hours Saturday evening - an overwhelming 60.05% vote against The Voice resulted from a majority no vote within all six states and one territory. The one territory to have a majority vote for yes was the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), the home to the seat of the Australian government, and Australia's capital city, Canberra. 

I think it would be completely ignorant to believe that this is merely coincidental. At this point, it is well known that The Voice was not well promoted by the government and the push from the Yes campaign came far too late. The fact that the ACT has the easiest access to any parliamentary based information - with more than half of the population within the ACT are government workers - speaks volumes about what could have happened if every state and territory received the same amount of education. 

The ACT is known as Australia's only city-state. Almost all of its 472,000 population live within urban areas and its agricultural industry provides an insignificant input to the economy. As can be seen below, geographically, information doesn't have very far to travel within the ACT, which places them in a serious point of advantage when it comes to being educated on governmental based issues and incentives. 

Australian Capital Territory marked out on an Australian map. 

Image sourced from Getty Images.

While I strongly believe that self-education is the responsible thing to do when it comes to exercising your right to vote, the reality is, the majority of Australian's are lazy. If they are not spoon fed exactly what they need to know, they simply will not attempt anything further. The fact that the ACT voted yes isn't because they are most progressive out of all states and territories, its because they have the easiest access to all the relevant information.

A further factor of concern around the dissemination of information to rural areas, is that indigenous Australian's make up the majority of rural and remote populations. The lack of engagement with these remote communities has been expressed by Mulgyin Jaru-Kitja and Gooniyandi woman, Corina Martin, in what can only be described as an accurate, yet heart breaking summary:

That's a problem with anything to do with Aboriginal people, we are the last lot to get information on ourselves.

While there are strong arguments that The Voice wasn’t the best solution to centuries of abuse and oppression, it was going to be a step in the right direction and the platform for future development. The Australian government and politics has never been a perfect system. So why all of sudden are we wanting a perfect solution? 

As explored in a previous blog post, the theory of 'interest convergence' coined by an American law professor seems to be applicable in this circumstance. Black people only achieve civil rights victories only where white and black interests converge. White Australia has demonstrated in this referendum, that indigenous rights are not within their interests. 

Australia is allegedly the country of giving everyone a ‘fair go’; but this decision has showcased anything but. Just like the kangaroo and emu (our national animal and bird, which can only physically move forwards, not backwards) on the coat of arms, we are meant to be a nation that has the ability to only move forwards. Yet here we are, running back to our white, conservative origins.

Black farmers & land loss in the Black Belt

The Justice for Black Farmers Act, introduced into Congress this year aims to address the history of discrimination in federal agricultural policy. This Act represents a social phenomenon where Black farmers have lost land throughout history due to histories of racial discrimination, Jim Crow policies, and discriminatory lending practices. This Act aims to provide debt relief and create a land program to encourage Black farmers and protect remaining Black farmers from further land loss. To truly understand the significance of this Act and its relationship to rural America, we have to take a look at the rural landscape and delve deeper into the historical roots of slavery and Black land ownership.

Forty-six million people are currently living in rural America, comprising 14% of the U.S. population. This population is also associated with a large swath of land,  97% of the nation's territory. Compared with their metropolitan counterparts, non-metropolitan economies depend more on agriculture, with the industry accounting for nearly 17 percent of employment in rural areas according to the Center on American Progress.  Agriculture can play a key role in the rural economy contributing to about 5% of the GDP.  Embedded within the agriculture sector is a racial hierarchy that led to the Black land loss, and which motivated attempts to remedy it. 

Rural communities are home to people of color who can often be erased from the dominant narrative of rural America. Understanding the history of some of these communities can help address harm and bring equity to these areas. Focusing on Black farmers specifically within the Black Belt, demonstrates how discussing spatiality and geography as a component of identity can be useful in determining how to shape our understanding of rural America and the people of color within it. 

The Black Belt is a region located in the Southern United States. It includes around 623 counties from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi to North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. According to the Black Farmers Network, the older meaning of the term comes from the 1820s and 30s when it used to mean the rich dark soil in which white settlers planted cotton and built plantations.

First used to designate a part of the country that was distinguished by the color of the soil, the term has now come to refer to the large number of Black people who were enslaved there. Since the valuable, fertile land was controlled by rich whites, it was a source of Black slave labor who worked the land. Enslaved people then became the majority of the population over the course of the 19th century when more than 1 million enslaved people were transported and sold to the Southern states. In 1970, the US' first census recorded the Black population as around 760,000 people and by the time the Civil War started in 1861 the population had reached 4.4 million. Black free people only made up about 2% of this population. Slavery continued to be the dominant status for Black people in the Black Belt until the Emancipation Proclamation when formalized slavery became transformed into de facto racial codes.

Black land ownership peaked in 1910 when Black people accessed 16 to 19 million acres of land. The number of Black farmers also peaked at this time with nearly 1 million producers on Black-operated farms according to the same source above. However, these numbers soon began to decline. However, after the 13th Amendment "officially" ended slavery,  the extension of it remained in the form of Jim Crow and Black codes continued to reinforce white power over the land. This prevented the accumulation and transfer of intergenerational wealth. According to Inequality.org, Black people, today, make up 13% of the U.S. population but only own 1% of rural land, a striking inequality. 

Black land loss is important in understanding why geography matters. Racism has fueled Black land loss. This has taken the form of limited access to capital because of discriminatory lending practices, redlining, gentrification, lack of legal wills that can facilitate property transfers, federal policies that excluded Black people from land purchases such as the Homestead Act, and more. "Farming in the United States is enmeshed with both racism and capitalism in a way that has had a profound impact on who owns, accesses and benefits from farmland" according to Megan Horst, writing on Eater. As of 2021, just about 1.4% of farmers identify as Black compared to 14% in the 1900s. 

The effects of the Black Belt slave economy are still felt by people of color who reside there. Formalized slavery has been transformed into substandard housing and education as well as poverty. According to the University of Alabama's report on Poverty, Housing & GDP in Alabama's Black Belt, all 25 Black Belt counties are among the top 35 counties with the highest poverty rate in the state. Black Belt counties have a poverty rate of around 30% while non-Black Belt counties have a poverty rate of 14% a significant disparity according to the same report.

To address the issues that those in the Black Belt face, and issues that Black farmers in rural America face, it is important to consider spatiality and geography. After all, Black people were enslaved and brought to the United States to grow the economy of the Deep South. Discussing rurality thus necessitates discussion of the economy, agriculture, and history.

In recent years, in the judicial and legislative scene, there has been some attempt at repair. The 1999 civil rights case Pigford v. Glickman resulted in a settlement of $1.15 billion in damages to thousands of Black farmers including those from the Black Belt. Black farmers alleged racial discrimination in farm loan assistance and allocation in their complaint.  Ultimately, we need to repair the ongoing harms associated with our deep-seated history of slavery and colonialism. We need to ensure that Black farmers can access economic opportunities to build their families and livelihoods. 

Immigrants should be more than an investment for rural communities

Immigrants and refugees now makeup 31% of new residents in rural communities according to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey. The University of New Hampshire's report finds that rural immigrants are more likely to be of working age (18-64), are more racially and ethnically diverse, and are nearly twice as likely to be poor than native-born rural population. With an increasing immigrant population, it is important to consider the way the narrative around immigrants is structured in rural communities, often emphasizing the labor value that immigrants add rather than focusing on their inherent value allowing for harm to happen.

Often, the narrative around immigration whether it be in our federal government, or the subject of academic literature is that we should allow immigrants into "our" country because they contribute to the workforce, have a strong work ethic, and are family oriented. These traits seem to resonate with rural Americans who too have close-knit family units and identify strongly with the work they do. However, painting immigrants with this brush leads to harmful and real consequences that allow for the continued exploitation and abuse of migrant labor and immigrant communities. 

The harmful narrative around immigration begins as a political strategy and continues as an economic one. Politicians often conflate crime and immigrants, utilizing "tough on crime" slogans to shape their campaigns and rally votes as evidenced here. Constructing a fear-mongering narrative, particularly depicting those entering the U.S. from the southern border as criminals, part of drug cartels, or "aliens" aims to evoke strong emotions that further an "us" vs. "them" mentality.

Inherent in immigration discourse, is the concept of "legality" or rather the lack of it. According to this UCLA Law Review article, "illegality or undocumented status is a function of a border regime, and as such, plays a significant role in creating and sustaining highly exploitable labor pools." Similarly, "where the border regimes are racialized, so too is the highly exploitable labor generated by those regimes." This becomes significant when furthering narratives that tie immigrants' value and worth to the labor they produce for rural communities. 

For example, when immigrants are considered a lifeline to save rural areas that are facing population declines, it allows for exploitation to take place rather than actually welcoming immigrants for who they are. Many jobs, not so coincidentally, some of the lowest paying with the least protections are dependent on migrant labor. Some of these jobs are a part of the agricultural labor, food services, and construction industries that are integral to society and dominate the rural economy. 

The racialization of immigration is crucial to understanding how people are excluded from the U.S. and how labor can be extracted from their bodies. Systemically denying citizenship to those that are not aligned with whiteness allows for the exploitation of those that are already vulnerable. Without legal status in the U.S., abuse within and of immigrant communities is magnified, especially in rural communities.

This violence is also gendered; low-income immigrant women are targeted for sexual abuse and harassment in workplaces and are subsequently silenced with the threat of a call to Immigration and Customs Enforcement looming over their heads. This becomes complicated in rural communities where women are even more isolated, further analyzed here. 

Abuse within immigrant communities also has many layers because victims that are undocumented or don't have citizenship might not want to interact with state authorities for fear of increased attention. Conversely, victims might not want to report their abusers for fear of them getting deported. Deportation acts as the ultimate punishment that can eventually lead to death and aims to scare immigrants into obedience. As we know, almost any sort of conviction or criminal record can be a barrier to naturalization thus risking retaliation for speaking out is usually not an option. 

Ultimately, immigrants should not be valued solely for the work they do, which is often borne out of necessity and as a way to achieve inclusion. Immigration should be viewed as a systemic political and economic strategy used by the state to determine who is included and excluded and for what reasons. Steering clear narratives that try to justify immigration based on labor, profit, and capital is crucial in ensuring that migrant labor is not abused and that immigrants are not prevented from accessing education, employment, or healthcare. Instead, we should ensure immigrants are welcomed into rural communities for who they are- human beings.

Hollywood stereotypes of rural America

When I was a kid, I loved day trips to Chicago. I remember my grandmother having to sign a clearance contract because I "accidentally" stumbled onto the “Transformers 3” set and got picked up by a camera. Movies about Chicago, or even just ones filmed there, have always been my favorite because I get to see a little slice of my childhood on the screen. But when it comes to movies from my real childhood, tucked away in the rural Midwest, I often find myself cringing at the media stereotypes.

I was recently encouraged to watch the movie, “Hillbilly Elegy”, for a class about whiteness in Rural America. However, I fail to see how this movie was anything more than a jaundiced example of media tactics. Stories of underdogs overcoming poverty, abuse, and addiction can be found on any street in America, not just the rural backroads. Yet, Hollywood only uses this type of plot-line as a heartstring blockbuster for people of color, such as “The Blind Side”, or to further depreciate the image of rural whiteness.

Rural America is shown by the media to be either "hicks and hayseeds" or "criminal kingpins and murderers." Dramatic television shows such as Ozark and Sons of Anarchy depict a rural lifestyle of crime, whereas "reality" shows such as Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty uphold the hillbilly tropes. This is seen across Hollywood and has been around since the early 1900s. A 1904 film, "The Moonshiner", depicts rural Americans breaking the law in order to drink. The behavior shown in media such as this culminates and fosters these rural cliches to the point where Rosann Kent, Appalachian studies professor at the University of North Georgia, asks, "Why are we the last acceptable stereotype?" 

This cliche becomes particularly harmful when the political climate of America is considered. The US is increasingly politically polarized and this difference in opinion has been leading to violence. From the January 6 insurrection to protests that turned violent against speakers on college campuses, politics have become a method of assuming one’s moral character and can even determine one's safety and social acceptance. Rural Americans get portrayed as being alt-right and are even being credited as the reason Trump won in 2016. 

Rurality is painted by the media as being predominantly white, with a culture of poverty and addiction. Although there is some truth to both poverty and addiction rates in rural communities, many rural areas thrive culturally. A previous article can be found here describing how music is an integral part of Appalachian culture. By whitewashing rurality, Hollywood loses any appreciation for minority groups who inspire and elevate rural livelihoods.

Furthermore, there are many parallels exist in how rural Americans and people of color are depicted. Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film examines this further and argues:

Appalachian people in cinema have been portrayed as phenotypically white, but using the same tropes that have long been used to portray non-whites in film . . . The similarity in the way these groups are portrayed draws a connection between the treatment of non-whites and the treatment of Appalachians, both of which maintain and protect a particular image of whiteness.

I have personally experienced the negative impact of this "white trash" stereotype. When I moved to California, I experienced a culture shock so large I felt like I was in a different country. Being thrust into high-level academia with a background that matched these stereotypes, I was set up to be looked down upon. After the intro week of law school, I began to state that I was instead from Chicago, hoping that people would think I belonged there. I recategorized my uncle's hand-me-down tees into "vintage thrift finds" and made an aesthetic out of never owning clothes nice enough to ruin. However, I can't blame the people around me for making those assumptions. Most of my classmates are from urban areas and likely gathered their understanding of rurality through their media consumption. Even though many of the Hollywood portrayals are hyperbolic, the cumulation of negative stereotypes is othering rural people, and the misunderstood cliches need to be retired.

Election shenanigans in two far northern California counties

The headline for this post is derived from two stories published in the last few days.  The first story is out of Nevada County, California, population 102,000, with Hailey Branson-Potts reporting for the Los Angeles Times.  Here's the lede:  

The campaign mailer featured red letters over a distorted, close-up photo of the candidate’s face: THIS ELECTION VOTE FOR ANYBODY BUT NATALIE.

It called Natalie Adona, who is Asian American and running for office in a predominantly white, rural Northern California county, “a CARPETBAGGER.”

The postcards that were sent last month — which provoked outrage by some residents and by elected officials who called them racist — have been part of a vicious campaign for what was once a mundane, nonpartisan position: clerk-recorder and registrar of voters for Nevada County.

Adona’s sins, in the eyes of her detractors: She called the 2020 election legitimate, and she enforced a mask mandate in a county office.

Adona, the assistant clerk-recorder/registar, is running to replace her boss, Gregory Diaz, who is retiring.

* * * 

The election in this Sierra Nevada county of 103,000 people has become a microcosm of the conspiracy-laden and bitterly partisan politics gripping the nation, as Americans — many enraged by pandemic policies and culture-war issues like critical race theory — head to the polls in this midterm year.

* * *

Unlike much of rural Northern California, it is not exactly a Republican stronghold, having backed Joe Biden over Donald Trump, 56% to 41%, and last year voting against recalling Gov. Gavin Newsom.

But the specter of Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen looms large for many, with the distrust of vote tallies and election workers he fomented trickling down to small local races like this one.

Paul Gilbert, one of Adona’s opponents in the June 7 primary, is a self-described “citizen auditor” who personally inspected local 2020 election results. He says he found sloppy, outdated voter rolls and evidence of fraud — claims the county refutes.

Gilbert, a retired information technology engineer, says he thinks voting by mail leads to cheating.

He also believes election officials should have the right to break open and inspect voting machines because they could, among other things, have cellphone modems hidden inside that collect information for nefarious actors.

“There is a lack of due diligence,” Gilbert said. “That’s what it boils down to.”

Gilbert said he had nothing to do with the mailer disparaging Adona and called it “a hit piece.” But he said the flier — which accused her of bringing Beltway politics to a county where she’s a relative newcomer — raised “valid questions.”

The second story is out of Shasta County, which I've written of frequently and most recently here, where militia-backed (or just militia) folks endorsing a slate of candidates closely watched the count.  By some accounts, they tried to intimidate election workers.  They also put up a wildlife camera to observe the back door of the building where votes were being counted.  This is from the Redding Record-Searchlight, by Damon Arthur and David Benda:

Shasta County elections officials said discussions with representatives of anti-establishment candidates became "contentious" and at least one worker said she felt "intimidated" by them.

Joanna Francescut, assistant county clerk and registrar of voters, said some of the people who showed up Tuesday night were trying to intimidate election officials by telling them to seal off a room where the ballots are kept.

Francescut said the office's employees are following the law.

At one point, several people gathered around County Clerk and Registrar of Voters Cathy Darling Allen and confronted her.

Darling Allen said later she spent more than four hours talking to observers in discussions that she said were at times "contentious."

"I've been doing this job the same way for 18 years, and all of a sudden things are different. And I am a little bit flummoxed by it. But that's OK. What I'm interested in is trying to figure out how to come to a compromise that works for everybody," she said.

"But at the end of the day, I am the registrar. I am the expert at doing this, and we're doing it. We are complying with all laws and other regulations," Darling Allen said.

Elections officials also found a trail camera, such as a hunter might use to spot game, set up in the alley behind the election’s office. They do not know who put the camera there.

By 12:35 a.m. the trail camera had been removed. At that hour, the elections department was also closed up and all ballots had been delivered from precincts from throughout the county.

Among those present earlier in the evening at the downtown office were activist Carlos Zapata and Shon Northam, a North State criminal defense lawyer who has been an outspoken critic of Shasta County District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett. Late results showed Bridgett winning re-election.

DA candidate Erik Jensen has said some of his supporters have overlapping affiliations with those who sponsored the supervisor's recall, including the Red, White and Blueprint group.

Many of the observers at the elections officer were supporters of a slate of candidates that billed themselves as "anti-establishment."

Darling Allen said the number of observers Tuesday night was unprecedented.

"I haven't had an election night crowd like that. I don't know if we've ever had a crowd with as many people that were here yesterday, ever," she said on Wednesday.

I appeared with Darling Allen on Capital Public Radio earlier this year to discuss the militia-backed recall of a member of the Shasta County Board of Supervisors.  I found her to be highly articulate, the consummate professional.  

Here's an LA Times story that ran a few days before the election, about how things in Shasta County were shaping up.  

"White trash," rurality, and revenge in Percival Everett's new novel "The Trees"

The novel, The Trees, out next week, was featured on National Public Radio this morning, and Guggenheim award-winning author Percival Everett's discussion with NPR host Scott Simon intrigued me because it implicated both rurality and, more prominently, race and whiteness.  Here's an excerpt from the interview: 

Special detectives Ed Morgan and Jim Davis are the big-city heat from Hattiesburg. They're with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, and they're in the small town of Money to investigate the murder of two men in the back room of the same shotgun-style house - one, a white man who's disfigured in a way so gruesome we can't tell you without a trigger warning, if you please; the other, a Black man, seems to just walk out of the morgue.

Simon observes near the end of the interview:

SIMON: I've got to ask you. I enjoyed the book a lot. So many of the white Southerners in this book are not just bigots. They're obese. They're dumb. They smell, as you write, memorably, of one, of excrement - and you don't say excrement - Aqua Velva and pimento cheese, which is an awfully clever phrase. And with no apologies made for white bigots, are you stereotyping white Southerners?

EVERETT: Welcome to club. Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

EVERETT: I am, in fact. How does it feel? That's my question. Yes, I'm not fair in this novel. It's not a novel about fairness. In fact, after I wrote the first page, my admission to my wife was, well, I'm not being fair, and I'm not going to do anything about it.

This left me wanting to know more, and then I found this by Christian Lorentzen on Book Forum.  This explains the premise of the book, which implicates revenge for the murder of Emmett Till.  I'll just excerpt a quote here from the lengthy commentary titled "Hillbilly Effigy": 

Not much present in The Trees are white liberals or leftists. The novel isn’t about them (us), unless perhaps it’s meant to flatter them with a vision of their redneck white-trash cousins getting a comeuppance at the hands of cunning and ruthless Black assassins (spoiler: the Black corpse is not the real killer, nor is it a ghost) and their Asian counterparts, avenging their own victims of lynching. Everett has had his go at white liberals elsewhere, most notably in Erasure, his satire of the publishing industry and the Quality Lit Biz. The Trees is looser and more freewheeling than that novel, Everett’s masterpiece.

Prior to that is this, also touching on class in relation to whiteness:

Most of the white characters in this novel are guilty: even if they are merely the descendants of the perpetrators of lynchings, they are unrepentant racists (or “know-nothing, pre–Civil War, inbred peckerwoods,” as one character puts it), frequent users of the N-word (with the hard r), stealers of livestock, or members of a pathetically diminished Ku Klux Klan. The racists are present all the way up the chain of American power.

Cross-posted to Working-Class Whites and the Law.  

Covid stimulus bill includes $4 billion debt relief program for Black farmers

Most experts expect the Democratic-controlled Senate to pass President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill in the coming days, although negotiations will continue as Republicans use various procedural levers to amend some aspects of the bill. 

This will be the third stimulus package passed by the United States Congress since the start of the pandemic, and like the previous two, this bill (the American Rescue Plan) will also include funding for agricultural programs (see agriculture provisions in the March 2020 CARES Act and the December 2020 stimulus package). 

However, one new centerpiece of this round of agriculture funding is a $4 billion program of debt relief for “socially disadvantaged” farmers. More precisely, the program would provide farmers of color with direct payment to pay off U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) loans and USDA-guaranteed loans and provide an additionally 20% in funding to cover related taxes. 

Today, 98% of agricultural land is owned by white people. Slavery and the Homestead Act of 1862 primarily benefitted white men and disadvantaged women. Further, outdated tenancy-in-common laws (sometimes called heirs’ property) that trigger land partition persist in many states, leading to widespread land loss for many racial and ethnic groups, particularly African American families in the South. Despite these giant obstacles, law professor Jessica Shoemaker notes, “[B]y 1890, African Americans represented 14 percent of all farmers and owned roughly 15 million acres.”

Yet, over the past century, Black land ownership plummeted dramatically. Black land owners lost 12 million acres of farmland, which has especially impacted people in Southern states as illustrated in the below graph from the New York Times. For example, Black farmers in Mississippi lost 800,000 acres of land from 1950-1964, which researchers have calculated would be a $6.6 billion loss today. 

This bill merges a 2020 proposal by New Jersey Senator Cory Booker with a proposal by newly-elected Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock. 

Despite the bill’s likely passage, there is still plenty of pushback. Former Republican New York lieutenant governor, Betsy McCaughey, argues in an op-ed that the bill won’t solve any problems “because the restaurants that accounted for half the demand for . . . [farmers’] products aren’t buying.” What is noteworthy about this reasoning is its focus on the plight of New York restaurants—an urban-centered argument. 

Additionally, Georgia Republican Rep. Austin Scott argues that the allocations are unjustified because there is no proof of discrimination against Black farmers. He offered as a better model the 1997 Pigford v. Glickman class action, which resulted in large settlements paid out by the USDA for discriminating in its allocation of farm loans. (For more background on the history of civil rights and the USDA, including Pigford, see this prior blog post.)

However, Scott’s argument only underscores the need for legislative action here because it shows Black farmers’ reasonable distrust in the USDA as an institution due to its historic discriminatory practices. As journalist Mark Bittman writes in an op-ed for the New York Times:

Black farmers understandably have called the USDA “the last plantation.” 

Moreover, this bill reflects an important public policy interest in preserving Black agricultural land ownership, which is already at such low numbers. Many Black-operated farms are smaller and have less income, which can be precarious in an industry where farmers regularly rely on credit to finance operations. As a result, the USDA recently suspended debt collections for distressed borrowers, but this may not be enough wiggle room for some farmers. 

Senator Booker believes this is only the start if the aim is to increase the number of Black farmers. Shoemaker observes that “10 percent of U.S. agricultural land— or roughly 100 million acres—will change hands over the next five years based on natural aging events,” which creates opportunities for meaningful intervention for the next administration. Bittman proposes the U.S. federal government can buy out “buy land from farmers cashing out for retirement so that rather than being absorbed by existing large landholders, the land can be redistributed to smaller or beginning farmers of color.” Additionally, law professor Thomas W. Mitchell recommends state legislatures adopt the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act to stave off Black land loss by updating tenancy-in-common and partition laws—a proposal that recently passed in Florida, Mississippi, and Virginia. Hopefully, this bill signifies potential political momentum.

A photo essay about women's high school basketball in nonmetro North Carolina

NPR reports from Kinston, North Carolina, population 21,677.  An excerpt follows, but click through to see the photos, which are the real attraction. 

In Kinston, N.C., basketball is king — or queen, as the case may be.

The town has a reputation for producing more NBA players than anywhere else in the country and the boy's team is often in the spotlight. Yet the girls team wins just as often as the boys. The girls often receive top grades — in the spring, two players graduated at the top of their class — and after graduating, many stay in the community, sometimes serving as assistant coaches for the team.

* * * 

Growing up in Kinston isn't always easy. In the 2017-18 school year, more than half the students at Kinston High were economically disadvantaged, according to the most recent state report card — and that was before the pandemic hit. The school also rates below the state average in math and English language arts.

Head Coach Chris Bradshaw understands that basketball can only take the girls so far. "The most important thing is academics," Bradshaw explains. "Athletics come and go, but what you learn in academics you can take with you for your whole life."

Kinston is the county seat of Lenoir County, population 59,495. 

Exposing injustice in Rural America means recognizing its diversity

When you hear the phrase, “rural America,” what comes to mind? This answer certainly may vary based on the background of the reader and their exposure to rural spaces. For many, they think about a bucolic and pastoral country side that represents a place that they may have visited on a family vacation. Yet others may think of “conservative” America, typified by gun toting, Bible worshipping “Trump supporters.” The same reader may juxtapose these images and use them to represent one in the same, almost as if to represent rural America as a “good place to visit but not live.” But is there even a common image that can accurately depict rural America? After all, the phrase “rural America” be used to describe terrain as diverse as the snow swept Alaskan tundra to the lush Green Mountains of Vermont to the pine forest swamps of eastern North Carolina to the mountainous deserts of Arizona. And people as diverse as the African American people of the Black Belt South, aging “Back to the Landers” in northern New England, coal miners of Appalachia, and Native people all across this country. 

It is a landscape of challenges, an increasingly aging and poverty stricken landscape with vast systemic inequality that the popular imagination is increasingly leaving behind. Being disadvantaged in rural America often means vulnerability. Your ability to seek redress for injustices is significantly impaired by inherent systemic inequalities. After all, approximately twenty percent of Americans live in rural America but yet two percent of lawyer practice there. However, the perceptions of these communities and the struggles that they face are often shrouded in an invisible veil. The lack of attention paid to these communities and the mischaracterizations and overgeneralizations that are made in their popular depictions serve to obscure or distort these issues.  

In the wake of the 2016 Presidential election, many media outlets sought to explain how Donald Trump became the 45th President of the United States. This led to some deep soul searching and ultimately a series of thought pieces on “rural America” and how its citizens were led to vote for Donald Trump. This paper will not seek to litigate the election result and how it ultimately happened, there are other forums for that. However, I will note that Donald Trump was not uniquely popular in rural spaces. In fact, his share of the rural vote was only 3% higher than Mitt Romney in 2012. Trump also performed almost equal to the two previous Republican presidential candidates in urban and suburban communities so Trump also wasn’t uniquely unpopular there either. The bigger shift of rural voters happened between 2008 and 2012 when Mitt Romney gained a 6% greater share of the rural vote than John McCain had. The image of rural America being uniquely Trump obsessed is greatly at odds with the statistical reality of a partisan shift that was better reflected in the 2012 presidential election. 

The statistical reality of the situation did not stop many media outlets from attempting to portray rural America as “Trump Country” and using that as a basis for thought pieces. It is grossly unfair however to look at rural America through the lens of a single election result. It is an outright disservice to the people and institutions in those regions. The systemic inequalities that plague many rural spaces are decades in the making, centuries in some places even. An oversimplification of the struggles faced by rural America is also problematic because it complicates the process of building the political will to address the issues faced by people in those spaces. These systemic inequalities are drive the need to ensure that rural Americans have equitable access to justice. Ensuring that these issues are adequately depicted is essential for creating the political will to get it done. 

This dire reality faced by rural America is reflected in the raw statistics. As a whole, rural America has a higher poverty rate than urban and suburban America. Many rural communities are suffering because their economies were based on a single industry and that industry has left or become obsolete. Others are suffering because of an ongoing decades long economic malady. After all, poverty in rural America tends to be persistent, deep, and remarkably long lasting. In fact, of the 353 “persistent poverty” counties (defined by federal law as a county in which “20 percent or more of its population [has lived] in poverty over the past 30 years"), 301 are “non-metro.” Many places are also suffering because of the economic consequences of racism and the creation of power structures that disadvantage certain groups of people, a commonality shared with urban areas but yet exacerbated by the spatial isolation inherent in a rural existence. A 2018 study by the Bridgespan Group and National 4-H Council found that of the rural counties where a quarter or more of the population was African American, none of them ranked in the upper quartile in terms of social mobility. It is important to remember also that none of these categories are exclusive and a lot of areas are afflicted by multiple issues. For example, a community may have been based around a single industry but the majority of the population who worked in it were impoverished. The economic makeup of a given industry can also doom those who rely on it to poverty. For an example of how this may look in reality, think of a Southern mill town or a town where a significant number of people work as sharecroppers. While the given industry never brought prosperity to the average worker, its collapse only served to further bury the people who depended on it for their survival.

This reality also reflects a community development problem. The migration of job opportunities to urban areas is leading to a corresponding outmigration to urban communities. One has to only drive through old mining towns in West Virginia, old logging towns in Maine, old tobacco farming communities in eastern North Carolina, and countless of other rural landscapes to see the effect. Communities are dying all over this country and the politicization of “rural America” is contributing to the apathy surrounding this trend. Instead of coming together to recognize the struggles of these communities, people are instead being conditioned to frame these people’s struggles in the context of who their region voted for in the last Presidential election. Even if those results don’t reflect the wishes of the most vulnerable people in those regions. As always, the reality is much more complex than whatever simplistic narrative can be spun up. 

Vulnerability is perhaps the biggest factor that is created by the spatial isolation of rural America. When we think of rural America as dominated by white, conservative interests, we are dooming the people who do not fit that archetype to an existence of marginalization. To provide a concrete example, the South is littered with “red” counties that have a significant African American population. However, when we look at a map and see that a Southern state is “red,” we ignore the collective existence of the people in its rural pockets that do not constitute a majority but have to live under the decisions made by the majority.  To be vulnerable in rural America means that you are often subject to the whims of people who support policies that are at best apathetic to your best interests and often times diametrically opposed. In some communities, it also means that you are up against a power structure that was built to oppose your interests and whose existence has been fortified over the years.

The diversity of challenges in rural America also bears mentioning. For communities in rural northern New England, they continue to face the perpetual issue of outmigration, which has plagued them in some way since their son and daughters started leaving for the West and the urbanized Industrial Revolution cities of southern New England in the 19th century. This reality is manifested in the fact that New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine lead the nation in median age. For communities in the South, they continue to face the plague of persistent poverty and economic despair, which has plagued them for generations. In some ways, these wounds were self-inflicted, the product of policies that served to subjugate entire segments of the population. This reality is reflected in the fact that Southern states are routinely among the leaders in poverty rates around the country. For communities in Appalachia, they have to reckon with the collapse of the coal industry and the declining of mining as an integral part of the local economy. This fact is reflected in the dire poverty statistics and life outcomes for Appalachian communities. And yet even this list is obviously non-exhaustive and other regions of the country are dealing with other issues that I did not name here. Also, no issue is exclusive to any region. There are rural communities in every corner of the country dealing with aging and outmigration and the legacy of racism is also present in every corner of the country, especially in areas along the Mexican border and in Tribal communities. However, these issues are minimized when they are not adequately represented. When rural representation is oversimplified, the vulnerable people in those communities suffer.

Rural America and her citizens deserve better.

From Axios: The rural American death spiral

Now that is a very bracing headline.  I'm not sure whether to see this as simply depressing, or a necessary tonic to inform those not in the know on rural challenges, those who would dismiss rural concerns.  Here are some highlights--or should I say lowlights--from the piece by Stef W. Kight and Juliet Bartz, and I have put in bold the big takeaway about the 46 million people "being left behind in the middle of America," apparently simply because they live in "the middle of America"

Many of the nation's current pathologies are taking a heavy toll on the majority-white population living in rural America, which was severely impacted by the opioid crisis and has dealt with falling populations, job losses and rising suicide rates. 

Why it matters: The malaise and discontent that President Trump has tapped into goes beyond the racism we've seen over the past few weeks and includes anger at a changing world and frustration at dwindling opportunities close to home. These trends are further entrenching the rural-urban schism that came to light in the 2016 election.

The big picture: Political and economic power is shifting to the cities, and 20% of the population — 46 million people — is being left behind in the middle of America. These communities face increasingly difficult barriers to education, wealth and health.  (emphasis added)

And if you're African American or Hispanic, your chances of success and survival at every turn are even worse.

Many of the facts listed in this piece were not new to me, facts about relative health of rural people compared to their urban counterparts, as well as the relatively poor educational and job opportunities. But here's one of the facts I had not yet heard:

If you keep working in your hometown, your job is more likely to be taken over by AI, according to a study by the Brookings Institution — especially if you live in Indiana, Kentucky, South Dakota, Arkansas or Iowa.

Depressing as this is, the piece does a nice job of linking to lots of sources that will be of interest to folks interested in rural people and places. 

Another story on the rural lawyer shortage, this one from Pew Trust

Read April Simpson's story, "Wanted:  Lawyers for Rural America" here.   The focus is primarily on Arkansas, including this opening illustration/anecdote about the southern part of the state and implications of the rural lawyer shortage for criminal law:

After an early career modeling in Los Angeles and New York City, Furonda Brasfield returned home to pursue her passion: practicing law in rural Arkansas. 

Brasfield had graduated from high school in 1999 in Stuttgart, a town of 7.2 square miles known for its fertile soil, good for growing rice, and the migratory ducks that draw serious hunters. She left the state to become a contestant on “America’s Next Top Model,” returned to attend the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, and left again to pursue her modeling career. But her legal ambitions, rooted in memories of growing up during the war on drugs, pulled her back. 

“Every summer there would be a wave of mostly African American men who were taken from the community,” Brasfield, 38, recalled in a recent interview. “And then there would be a new group trying to reintegrate [from prison] into the community, most of the time unsuccessfully.” 

With the support of a program encouraging more lawyers to practice in Arkansas’ underserved areas, Brasfield finished law school in 2015 and went on to do her part to fill a national shortage of attorneys in rural America.

Simpson's story includes link to many sources, including several articles I have co-authored.  She touches on not only the situation in Arkansas, but also Nebraska, California, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Maine, South Dakota, North Dakota and Georgia.

Big feature on (would-be) State of Jefferson in Sacramento's alternative newspaper

The Sacramento News and Review, my city's "alternative newspaper," recently published a big feature on the State of Jefferson secessionist movement.  Freelance journalist Steve Magagnini writes:

Almost anywhere you drive through Northern California, you’ll see green and gold signs, flags and banners heralding the arrival of the State of Jefferson, a separatist movement that nearly succeeded in 1941 and, more recently, has grown like a grass fire in the era of Trump. 

The signs feature “The Great Seal of the State of Jefferson,” a gold pan emblazoned with two X’s—Jeffersonians have long believed they’ve been double-crossed by big city politicians in Sacramento who take their money but ignore their concerns. 

Over the last two years, the signs have popped up on billboards, front yards, and haystacks, sometimes next to Confederate flags and anti-immigrant slogans. 

This blog has featured lots of posts about the State of Jefferson over the years, and a few of those posts (and other stories about the State of Jefferson) have speculated about the racist motives behind the Jefferson movement.   One thing I especially appreciated about Magagnini's story is that he calculates the racial/ethnic demography of the would-be State of Jefferson:

Here’s what Jefferson would look like based on census records from the 23 counties that have signed on and two others on the fence, either through referendum or a vote of their board of supervisors: 2.5 million people, 69 percent Caucasian, 21 percent Hispanic, 4 percent Asian, about 3 percent multi-racial, 1.6 percent American Indian and 1.6 percent African-American. Nineteen counties voted for Trump, four (Mendocino, Lake, Nevada and Stanislaus) went for Clinton.

Magagnini also quotes me regarding the spread of Jefferson ideology--or at least the geographic spread of its marketing effort:

Lisa Pruitt, a UC Davis law professor specializing in rural and urban differences, said she has seen Jefferson signs in El Dorado, Amador and Calaveras Counties. 

“I saw a Jefferson decal on a Prius in Fair Oaks, and on I-80 near Davis,” she said. “It’s all over rural California and creeping into urban California. I’ve seen their stickers on cars in Target parking lots.” 

The further north you go, the bigger the signs, Pruitt said. 

“There’s a lot of agitation on the part of rural Californians who feel their interests are not being heard or taken seriously in Sacramento,” Pruitt said. “The example is the state gas tax: people in rural areas who drive long distance don’t feel they get anything for their buck.” 

Mark Baird argues that there’s a historic precedent for Jefferson: Vermont left New York and New Hampshire in 1791, Kentucky left Virginia in 1792, Maine bolted from Massachusetts in 1820 and West Virginia—which argued that Virginia committed sedition by breaking away from the union to join the confederacy—got its independence in 1863.

Pruitt, however, disagrees. 

“It’s not a winning analogy,” she said, adding that West Virginia’s split happened more than 150 years ago. 

“People are intrigued by it, but peeling themselves into a separate state would not solve their economic woes, and might make them worse,” she said. “I’m not convinced they would be in a better situation if they got more representatives, rural interests would still be greatly outnumbered by urban interests in Jefferson. Legislators represent people, not cows and trees.”

That last bit of the quote is a reference to Reynolds v. Sims, a 1964 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.  As for the part about rural interests still being outnumbered by urban interests "in Jefferson," I think he misquoted me.  I don't think we know how the rural-urban split would shake out within what would be Jefferson, but I do note that the largest city on the California side of the line is Redding, at about 90,000.  To say it's not a very urbanized region is perhaps an understatement.  (Of course, on the Oregon side of would-be Jefferson are the mid-sized cities of Medford, Roseburg and Klamath Falls).

As for those decals and signs around the region, I'm including some photos below.  (Sadly, I failed to capture, before it was removed, a photo of the Jefferson decal on the guardrail by the I-80 exit at UC Davis)

Birdcage Shopping Center, Citrus Heights, California, 2018

I'm guessing this Prius I photographed in the Birdcage Shopping Center in Citrus Heights California (suburban Sacramento) may belong to one of the women Magagnini interviewed for his story, Jean Colgrove, 64, of Citrus Heights.  He describes her as a libertarian who "confessed she lives in Sacramento County, behind enemy lines."  Colgrove says she sees support for Jefferson growing in her suburb and in neighboring Folsom and Orangevale. 

Birdcage Shopping Ctr. Citrus Heights,
Sacramento County,
California, 2018 

Pleasant Valley Road, El Dorado County, California, July 2018

Magagnini mentions Mark Baird, a rancher and reserve deputy sheriff for Siskiyou County who leads the State of Jefferson movement from his ranch in Scott Valley.  I happened to travel through Scott Valley this summer as I drove from Weaverville (Trinity County) to Yreka.  (Read more here)  I passed through Callahan, just north of the Trinity County-Siskiyou County line, at the south end of the Scott Valley.  I've never seen as much State of Jefferson swag as was on sale at the Callahan Emporium, with complementary signs in the surrounding area, including in Etna and Fort Jones, where several businesses (like the Cemetery Memorials below) are branded "Jefferson."

Callahan Emporium, Scott Valley,
Siskiyou County, California, July 2018

California Hwy 3, between Coffee Creek and Callahan

Map of the Oregon Trail and depictions of historical structures, Callahan Emporium 

Callahan Emporium, Scott Valley,
Siskiyou County, California, July 2018

Jefferson Flag at Callahan Emporium

Jefferson swag on sale at the Callahan Emporium, Scott Valley, July 2018

Jefferson Memorials, Fort Jones,
California, July 2018

Signs at the entrance to Weaverville, Trinity County, July 2018