Tester on Democrats' crummy messaging to rural America

Senator Jon Tester appeared on Meet the Press over the weekend and commented that Democrats "need to focus...'more on the things we’re doing for rural America.'”  The story continues, with plenty of criticism for Democrats:  

Tester pointed to bills he’s working on that deal with big packers and meat consolidation, which he said would help cow and calf operators make a better living.

He also said he doesn’t believe Democrats talk about their accomplishments in a way that appeals to rural voters “nearly enough,” citing the bipartisan infrastructure law that passed Congress last year.

“It’s going to help rural America big time, when it comes to broadband and electrical distribution and roads and bridges. We didn’t talk about it,” he said. “We didn’t talk about it from a rural perspective.”

In order for Democrats to get the message out to rural America, Tester said, it needs to be a “concentrated effort” because they have been “very bad” at delivering it thus far.

“And "If we’re able to do that and do that effectively, you’ll see those numbers change," he added.

On the Democrats' new heartland caucus, spurred by the urban, coastal provenance of their new Congressional leadership

A month ago, Matt Barron, a Democratic political consultant, tweeted about the proposed new party leadership:  "So the news House Democratic leadership will be from NY (45th most-rural state), MA (47th most-rural state) an CA (49th most-rural state).  Democrats really have become the party of the coasts."  He was referring to the likelihood that, with the announced retirement of Nancy Pelosi and her team as Speaker of the House, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Pete Aguilar of California, and Katherine Clark of Massachusetts would take over the party's leadership mantle.  

That led me, two weeks later, to post the tweet below once this leadership team became official, "Problem of lack of geographic diversity--like same poor level of geographic diversity of #SCOTUS right now.  All urban states represented here, though I credit @RepPeteAguilar for being from the #InlandEmpire.  Still not a good look in the era of rural-urban polarization."  

Still, I didn't see any media coverage of this issue until the past week.  First, Scott Simon interviewed Michigan congresswoman Debbie Dingell on Saturday about this new Heartland caucus, which gives a nod to rural areas--and more than a nod to flyover states.  Here's an excerpt:  

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Does the National Democratic Party have a problem in heartland America? Representative Debbie Dingell of Michigan, who ran and lost for a caucus leadership position in the House, displayed a map that shows the home states of caucus leaders. They're all from coastal states - New York, California, Massachusetts, Maryland. Representative Dingell is forming what's called the Heartland Caucus of Democrats, concerned their party isn't concerned enough with issues felt deeply in the Midwest. Representative Dingell joins us from her district in Michigan.

Thanks so much for being with us.

DEBBIE DINGELL: It's good to be with you.

SIMON: Republicans often call Democrats the coastal party. Is that true?

DINGELL: No, it's not. Would I be a member of Congress and a lot of my other colleagues if we did not have representation from the heartland? Though I think it's important at times that we need to make sure that our voices are heard. We are not going to win the majority back in the House without members of Congress from the heartland. But I think that our new leadership knows that and understands that.

SIMON: And what issues would you like to press?

DINGELL: Well, there are a number - I mean, manufacturing, union workers, trade. We're going to have reauthorization of the agricultural bill next year. There are very significant rural areas in our heartland. And their issues are - have different perspectives than California does. But we are a mosaic. We're just making sure that our perspective is heard and that we're educating people and that we're out there making sure that those in the heartland know that we do care.

SIMON: Representative Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, your colleague's been quoted this week saying she couldn't get fellow Democrats on the Special Committee on Economic Fairness to even mention the Midwest in their final report. Does that happen one way or another when Midwestern Democrats try to get attention to problems in their part of the country?

DINGELL: So I think it's important that we made our voice heard. But I can tell you that Hakeem and Katherine and Pete have all made it very clear that it is very important that the heartland be included. Hakeem has called me and said - all three of them - Katherine and...

The rural issue Dingell and Simon turn to here reminds me of this recent story, which is about the Democrats' move to shift the first presidential contest from Iowa to South Carolina.

Also regarding the new Democratic leadership, there's this from The Hill by Mike Lillis, "Heartland Democrats are feeling left out--again."  The lede follows: 

Midwest Democrats are warning that the party’s coastal image — encapsulated by its new leadership roster — could haunt them politically as they seek to make inroads in America’s heartland.

House Democrats this week elected a new team of leaders to guide them through the next Congress and into the 2024 presidential election, with the top five — and a presumed No. 6 — all hailing from either the East Coast or California.

Those optics are ringing alarms among the Democrats in the center of the country, who fear the party is only solidifying public perceptions that it’s run by urban “elites” out of touch with everyday Americans — perceptions that will hurt them in the same battleground districts that are crucial to winning back the majority.

“It’s always a current that we swim against every two years in middle America is the identity of our party,” said Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), a 26-year veteran who’s retiring at the end of this term.

“For so many folks back home it’s viewed as an East coast, West coast Democratic Party, and not enough middle-America representation, people that they can identify with,” he continued. “It’s something I think the caucus needs to work on.”

Don't miss the rest of this story for more detail on the recent Democratic leadership contests. 

Back to the Scott Simon interview with Debbie Dingell, which at one point swerves away from rurality to talk about jobs and socioeconomic class, with some nice language about what's at stake for working-class folks who want their kids to get college degrees.

DINGELL: You know, everybody wants to pit people against each other. I know many union workers who have children with college debt, have it themselves. I think this president has worked very hard to let the working men and women who are members of the union know that he cares for them and fights for them. We do have to talk to them. We cannot take them for granted. I had some of the toughest union town halls, quite frankly, this year than I had in '16. But I stay there. I talk to them. We have to make sure that they understand what is being done for them. And we've got to do a better job of communicating how we are helping them.

SIMON: What made those town halls rough, Representative Dingell? What did people say to you?

DINGELL: They were very much listening to Fox, as I heard some of those talking points. They didn't think that people cared. They saw money going to a lot of people. People were worried about inflation and gas prices. And they hear what's happening in California and think that they don't matter. Well, they do matter. And President Biden has made it very clear and has been fighting for those working jobs.

Quite frankly, I think it took the pandemic and people to see for real how we had shipped jobs overseas. Our supply chain had gone overseas. We're making very concerted efforts now to bring that supply chain home. Not only is it economic security, but it's national security.

SIMON: Has the Democratic Party sometimes seemed to favor high-tech over factory jobs?

DINGELL: You know, the Republican Party does that, too, sometimes. By the way, we spend too much time pitting people, pitting issues against each other. What we have to do is to make sure all the issues are heard and not make false choices but figure out a way that we bring everybody to the table.

Big NYT feature on the federal effort to save rural hospitals, by ending inpatient care

Emily Baumgaertner reported yesterday for the New York Times under the headline, "A Rural Hospital's Excruciating Choice:  $3.2 Million a Year or Inpatient Care?"   Here are some excerpts from an important feature: 

For 46 million Americans, rural hospitals are a lifeline, yet an increasing number of them are closing. The federal government is trying to resuscitate them with a new program that offers a huge infusion of cash to ease their financial strain. But it comes with a bewildering condition: They must end all inpatient care.

The program, which invites more than 1,700 small institutions to become federally designated “rural emergency hospitals,” would inject monthly payments amounting to more than $3 million a year into each of their budgets, a game-changing total for many that would not only keep them open but allow them to expand services and staff. In return, they must commit to discharging or transferring their patients to bigger hospitals within 24 hours.

The government’s reasoning is simple: Many rural hospitals can no longer afford to offer inpatient care. A rural closure is often preceded by a decline in volume, according to a congressional report, and empty beds can drain the hospital’s ability to provide outpatient services that the community needs.

But the new opportunity is presenting many institutions with an excruciating choice.

“On one hand, you have a massive incentive, a ‘Wow!’ kind of deal that feels impossible to turn down,” said Harold Miller, the president of the nonprofit Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform. “But it’s based on this longstanding myth that they’ve been forced to deliver inpatient services — not that their communities need those services to survive.”

Some rural health care providers and health policy analysts say the officials behind the rule are out of touch with the difficulties of transferring rural patients. Bigger hospitals — bogged down with Covid surges, pediatric R.S.V. patients and their own financial woes — are increasingly unwilling to accept transferred patients, particularly from small field hospitals unaffiliated with their own systems.

There are also blizzards, downed cattle fences and mountain pass roads that close for months at a time.

“I really want to give this policy a chance to work well,” said Katy Kozhimannil, director of the University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center. But gambling with transfers could mean that “some of the most extremely remote and marginalized communities could end up with no care at all — and that’s what we were trying to avoid in the first place.”

More than 180 rural hospitals have closed since 2005.   

There's lots more recent reporting on rural healthcare worthy of note.  Here are just a few: 

This one, from the Texas Tribune, is about rural hospital closures in the Lone Star State, with Jayme Lozano reporting: 

Texas hasn’t had a hospital close since 2020, a much-needed relief following the previous decade of closures that were predominantly seen in rural communities.

That could change soon: A new report from Kaufman Hall, a health care consulting agency, that was made public Wednesday shows that nearly 1 out of every 10 Texas hospitals are now at risk of closure, twice as many as before the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020.

“Ultimately, our concern is this will impact patient care,” said John Hawkins, president of the Texas Hospital Association.

The report highlights the pandemic’s striking toll on hospitals in the state as they face growing strain from surges in respiratory illness, workforce shortages and rising costs of medication, medical supplies and labor. This has caused hospital expenses to increase greatly — the total expenses for Texas hospitals this year have cost $33.2 billion more than before the pandemic.

While the risk is greater for all Texas hospitals, it’s higher for rural hospitals than for urban facilities — a 26% risk of closing compared with a 5% risk. Hawkins said there is concern about the challenges rural hospitals could face in the near future.

Health experts have long credited support from the federal spending spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic for lessening the closure risk in 2020 and 2021. Those funds are expiring soon, leaving hospitals without that financial safety net. Nearly half of all Texas hospitals are in negative operating margins because revenue is not covering the cost of patient care.

“We know, as that federal funding runs out, we’ve created a fiscal cliff,” Hawkins said. “These operating challenges are going to continue to be real for rural hospitals.”

And two recent stories about rural health care in Colorado are here and here, both from the Colorado Sun.  

On a very blue and metropolitan Democratic congressperson's reasons for going everywhere, including rural America

Ro Khanna, the California congressperson (D) representing Silicon Valley, wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago: 

A robust defense of First Amendment principles online is more important than ever. Citizens in our polarized country need to have conversations with each other based on mutual respect. Suppressing speech we don’t like leaves us blind to alternative perspectives that help us see the whole, complex truth.

My belief in a marketplace of ideas is why I do interviews on media channels across the political spectrum. It’s why I engage perspectives different from mine, why I visit factory towns, rural areas and Republican-dominated congressional districts. Imagine if Democratic lawmakers were required to have town halls in deep red areas and Republicans in deep blue ones.  (emphasis added)

There will always be extremists and partisan media outlets that increase polarization and make conversations more difficult. But we would be wise to remember the teaching of the great liberal political philosopher John Rawls: “It is extremely unwise to conceive of the ideal political society as moved by scarce supererogatory moral motives alone. That leads to hating other persons and taking pleasure in condemning them as falling short.” Rawls believed we should be humble about our own certitude of truth and not rush to condemn others who we think don’t measure up. Robust public debate is the first step in America’s healing and reconciliation.

I like this philosophy.  By the way, the title for the op ed is "Twitter’s Duty to Protect Free Speech," and its subhead is "Censorship of the Hunter Biden story might have helped my party, but it was bad for our democracy."  Khanna no doubt had the opportunity to publish this high-profile piece because of comments he made some time ago about Twitter's prior censorship of a story about President Joe Biden's son.  Those comments were revealed in a story that grabbed big headlines earlier this week.  

Here's some other coverage of Khanna's outreach to surprising places like Indiana and Iowa.  His recent book, Dignity in a Digital Age, takes up the need to spread high tech opportunities to rural America.  

Peruvian president with rural roots removed after attempted coup

Peru's president, Pedro Castillo, was removed from office and arrested yesterday after he attempted a coup.  This action came a few days after the New York Times published this deep-dive story by Mitra Taj and Genevieve Glatsky on how Castillo, a former farmer himself, has failed to solve rural inequality.  The story gets at the tension between rural folks and elites, which I can't help think sounds awfully similar to what we see in the United States. 

Here's an excerpt: 

Last year, Pedro Castillo became Peru’s first left-wing president in more than a generation after campaigning on promises to address the poverty that rural Peruvians have long disproportionately suffered, and which worsened under the pandemic.

* * * 

During his campaign, Mr. Castillo raised expectations in rural Peru with talk of structural change, and promises to replace the country’s constitution, nationalize the extraction of natural resources and double spending on education.

He took a surprise lead in the first round of elections among 20 candidates with 19 percent of the vote by courting voters disenchanted with the political establishment. In the runoff, he eked out a narrow victory over Keiko Fujimori, a polarizing figure and the daughter of a former authoritarian president, Alberto Fujimori, who is in prison for human rights violations and corruption.

But today, many of Mr. Castillo’s rural supporters are struggling to purchase basic goods and services and have become disillusioned by his performance.

Cajamarca, a mostly rural region 350 miles north of Lima where Mr. Castillo was born and built his career, has long been one of the country’s poorest areas.

In communities stretching from the regional capital to Mr. Castillo’s tiny home village of San Luis de Puña, supporters like Ms. Cieza said they expected more from him.

“He said he was going to change the country,” she said. “He tricked us.”

Since taking office, Mr. Castillo has ushered in an era of controversies noteworthy for their clumsiness and frequency, while failing to make much headway on many of his campaign promises.

He has churned through more than 80 ministers and filled many posts with officials lacking relevant experience.

His administration failed to purchase fertilizer for the biggest planting season of the year, after three bids by private companies were annulled because of negligence and corruption. His government has also dragged its feet on cash payments and subsidies to low-income Peruvians.

Mr. Castillo has survived two impeachment attempts in Congress, where critics say he is not morally fit to be president.

The Peruvian leader denies wrongdoing and has denounced what he calls a “new form of a coup” orchestrated by prosecutors, lawmakers and the media. His administration has taken an initial step toward trying to dissolve Congress in response to lawmakers’ refusal to hold a vote of confidence on his government.

One congressman, Guillermo Bermejo, a close ally of Mr. Castillo, said the president’s opponents would not stop until they return power to traditional elites based in Lima, the capital.

“People with fancy last names have been carving up the ham for 200 years,’’ he said in a televised interview on Sunday.

Yet truckers and farmers in rural areas have staged protests in recent weeks over high prices for fuel, food and fertilizer.

In Cajamarca, farmers said they planted half as many potatoes this year than in the past after prices for the most widely used synthetic fertilizer nearly tripled following the start of the Ukraine war. The cost of cooking oil, rice and sugar have doubled, making them unaffordable for the poorest Peruvians. High fuel prices has made it more expensive to get products to markets.

In a slice of Peru where Mr. Castillo’s campaign slogan, “no more poor people in a rich country,” once roused cheers, today it elicits laughter.

San Luis de Puña, the rural hamlet where Mr. Castillo was born, is a five-hour drive from the regional capital along mostly unpaved roads that wind through mountains and past verdant valleys, open-pit gold mines and adobe homes without electricity or running water.

Then there's this "defense" from an elderly female farmer who lives in Castillo's home district: 

“They really hate him, don’t they? Because he’s from Tacabamba,’’ Alicia Delgado, 68, said while noting the president’s rural roots in a country where rural Peruvians have faced centuries of discrimination.

The Dismantling of Rural Legal Aid

Christopher Chavis wrote on this topic for the Daily Yonder last week.  Here's an excerpt:  

When Reagan became President in 1981, he set out to abolish the LSC and end federal funding for lawyers for the rural poor. He initially proposed abolishing the agency altogether but was rebuked. He did succeed in reducing its budget, which was a consistent theme throughout his term. He also tried to appoint a hostile board, but the Senate also rebuked that. However, this resulted in a series of recess appointments governing the agency. While Reagan did not kill the LSC, he did succeed in weakening it and introducing opposition to its very existence into Republican orthodoxy.

When Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 1994 for the first time in decades, House Speaker Newt Gingrich sought to do what Ronald Reagan could not do – finally kill the LSC.

The House Republicans sought to decrease the LSC’s funding incrementally until its ultimate elimination in 1998. However, this also failed. As with Reagan’s failures, the 90s House Republicans succeeded in weakening the LSC. The Republicans passed restrictions on the types of cases the LSC-funded entities could take and effectively banned them from lobbying for and against pending legislation. These restrictions effectively banned LSC-funded entities from advocating for systemic change and limited them to only focusing on the individual issues of their clients.

Why is this especially important to the rural poor? In 2017, when Donald Trump’s Administration proposed eliminating the LSC, then-LSC President Jim Sandman noted to CNN that the LSC provides the majority of legal aid funding for 12 states: Alabama, Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and Utah. Many of these states have large rural populations and high rates of rural poverty.

What is more, when Legal Aid entities lack funds, they close rural offices. For example, when Legal Aid of North Carolina (LANC) lost state funding in 2011, they closed three rural offices. LANC had lost funding after Republicans successfully took control of both chambers of the North Carolina legislature for the first time in a century.

Over the last 50 years, we have seen the weakening of civil legal aid in the United States. According to the Center for Law and Social Policy, the LSC was appropriated $300 Million in 1980. If its appropriation had kept up with inflation, it should have received $936,391,172 in 2017. Instead, they received $385 Million. In 2022, the LSC received $489 Million through the appropriations process. They had requested $1.01 Billion.

The federal government funds the LSC at less than half its estimated need. This lack of funding represents a considerable barrier to expanding rural legal services in this country. The Republican Party’s grudge against civil legal aid started with Ronald Reagan’s fights with rural legal aid lawyers and their decisions continue to influence lives of people in rural spaces.

On libraries, including the rural ones

New York Times columnist Charles Blow wrote a few weeks ago of his gratitude for libraries, and the column included this nod to the rural variety: 

Had we had a public library in town, I would have spent my days in it, but we didn’t. The nearest one was eight miles away in the town of Arcadia, La. In fact, the town where I grew up — Gibsland, named after a man named Gibbs, whose plantation it had been — didn’t open its own library branch until this year, nearly 140 years after the town held its first elections.

Gibsland is now a dying town whose population has been declining for decades. About half as many people live there now — 773, to be exact, according to the Census Bureau in 2020 — as in the year I was born.

But particularly for these kinds of people, living in rural areas, libraries can be an incredible tool. When I was a senior in high school, I won my way to the International Science and Engineering Fair. That year, 1988, it was being held in Knoxville, Tenn. It was the first time I would fly and the first time I would travel far from home.

Determined not to expose myself as a hick, I went to the library in Arcadia and checked out every book of etiquette on the shelves. They were familiar to me, reference books, books of rules that in my mind were the only thing separating me from the appearance of refinement and sophistication. I devoured those books. 

I guess you could say that now, all that information can be found online, but high-speed broadband is not as ubiquitous as you might think. In 2019 the Pew Charitable Trusts explained that the number of Americans without broadband “could be over 163 million,” and that included 40 percent of schools and 44 percent of adults in households with incomes below $30,000.

I must applaud Joe Biden’s administration for using billions of dollars of American Rescue Plan funding to help close this digital divide, but for those who still lack high-speed internet, it is libraries that help fill in the gap.

Vera Institute publishes results of rural jails project, with detailed finding out of two states

Vera Institute's web page about the project is here, where you can download policy briefs on recent studies in Georgia and Washington State.  

Here's the Georgia policy brief and here's the Washington policy brief. Both were written by Jennifer Peirce, Madeline Bailey, and Shahd Elbushra.  The research on which the briefs was based is by researchers at the University of Georgia and Washington State University, Pullman (Jennifer Schwartz and Jennifer Sherman).

Washington

A new report by the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) shows that punitive penalties for not meeting system rules are driving jail incarceration in rural Washington, not violent or dangerous charges. What’s more, the state’s mandatory arrest policy for domestic violence calls is likely having a significant negative impact on women: most jail bookings for assault are related to domestic violence, and these charges are the second most common reason that women were jailed.

The report draws on data from five participating counties analyzed by Washington State University (WSU), highlighting an often-overlooked problem. While Washington state has one of the lowest jail incarceration rates in the United States, the number of people in rural Washington county jails on the eastern side of the state has not declined. Charges like failure to appear for court and driving with a suspended license, due to unpaid fines, missed child support payments or minor traffic infractions, are among top reasons that Washington’s rural residents are being jailed. Assault charges also stand out in jail rosters, the majority of which are misdemeanors related to domestic violence.

The disparate impact of the justice system is also evident in the data from Washington’s rural counties: both Black and Indigenous people are overrepresented in jail admissions.

This analysis highlights an opportunity for state and local policymakers to address unnecessary criminalization of poor and vulnerable people and reduce jail populations. Vera’s policy recommendations include expanding the use of citations in lieu of arrest, reducing the use of money bail, curtailing prosecutions and criminal penalties for poverty related issues, eliminating mandatory arrest for domestic violence calls, and providing support and services to avoid unnecessary jail time and address root problems.

Georgia

A new report by the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) shows that punitive responses to probation, drug use, and poverty are driving jail incarceration in rural Georgia, leading to high rates of jail incarceration and stark racial disparities.

The research, which is based on the University of Georgia’s analysis of jail roster data from seven rural Georgia counties (Decatur, Early, Greene, Habersham, Sumter, Towns, Treutlen) reveals that 83 to 93 percent of jail admissions were for nonviolent charges. Notably, drug possession charges, particularly cannabis possession, in the state are more common than drug trafficking charges. Probation violations and traffic-related offenses also stand out in the jail data, with a significant number of charges related to driving on a suspended license.

The impact of probation on Georgia jail populations is no surprise, given that the Peach State also has the country’s highest rate of people on probation, with more than 350,000 (1 in 19) adults on probation or parole supervision. Harsh enforcement of probation conditions is likely sending a significant number of people to jail for not abiding by stringent conditions of probation, and this contributes to longer stays in jail.

Racial disparities in jail incarceration are stark in all seven counties, with the proportion of Black people being booked into jails far exceeding the Black percentage of the county population.

In each of the counties, the combined number of violent and DUI charges make up a quarter or less of jail admissions. While these cases often do have public safety implications, the details are likely more complicated. More than 90 percent of the violent charges landing people in jail were assault and battery charges, 19 to 60 percent of which were domestic violence–related. Assault and battery charges can encompass misdemeanors to serious felonies, with penalties ranging from 1-20 years of incarceration. What’s more, national evidence suggests that people arrested on domestic violence related charges are often themselves survivors of domestic violence.

In total, this research reflects the degree to which current system rules and available resources discourage safe alternatives to jail detention. Vera calls on state and local policymakers to reduce rural jail incarceration, by overhauling Georgia’s probation system, strengthening pretrial services, eliminating penalties for driving with a suspended license, and investing in behavioral health resources rather than bigger jails.

Earlier posts about the Vera Institute  and its work on the rural jails boom are here.  

On an expensive effort to save an aging Italian village

Jason Horowitz reported for the New York Times reported a few days ago under the headline, "An Italian Village Hit the Jackpot. Will That Save or Destroy It?"  An excerpt follows:  

This year, Livemmo beat out dozens of other villages in the Lombardy region for a share of about €200 billion in Covid recovery funds set aside for Italy by the European Union. Italy has one of the oldest populations in Europe, and the combination of its paltry birthrate and the increased longevity of its booming population of older people has created an economic and existential crisis that has vexed successive governments.

* * * 

To make up for the loss of its lone doctor, who is retiring at the end of the month, it has also proposed telemedicine bracelets that monitor the vitals of the village’s aging residents (€183,000). It has budgeted incentives to draw more families, businesses and “creative start-ups in the sector of contemporary art, with particular focus on the theme of wood” (€1.46 million).

“It’s a unique, once-in-a-lifetime and unimaginable opportunity,” said Giovanmaria Flocchini, the mayor of the town that includes the village of Livemmo. He considered the village part of a critical experiment for Italy, but also for aging societies across Europe, to prove that an influx of cash can save towns — and all of their cultural heritage and history — from depopulation and abandonment. “I feel doubly responsible,” he said. “If it fails for us, it fails for everybody.”

* * *

The deeper challenge, though, may be that a significant, and senescing, portion of the population does not want the money in the first place.

“There is not a lot of enthusiasm in one part of the population,” the mayor said, adding, “You can’t change the minds of 80-year-olds.”

Or some 70-year-olds.

“My fear is that the whole town will be changed. We’ll be invaded by people we don’t know,” Graziella Scuri, 73, an owner of one of Livemmo’s five restaurants, said as she spooned out homemade casoncelli pasta doused in butter. She added that a defining character trait of the hard-working, and often isolated locals was “we’re a little closed.”

The Washington Post ran this story by Chico Harlan in October titled, "Italy has 334 Most Beautiful Villages.  Can Their Beauty Survive?"   Here's an excerpt: 

At this point I’ve been to dozens of hill towns across Italy, including 20 on the Most Beautiful List, and often I get the impression that their residents are the last courageous holdouts, fighting for something that is already half gone.

No matter how small the village, they host festivals and summer concerts that go late into the night. They offer daily gatherings for cards and aperitivi at the central piazza.

But there are also so many abandoned homes — the result of more than a century of rural depopulation. Who wouldn’t want to live in a storybook medieval town on a hill? But also: How many of us actually could?

This is from journalist Harlan's visit to the village of Abbateggio, in the Abruzzo region:   

With excitement, another Abbateggio man, Giacinto De Thomasis, took me on a tour through the oldest part of the village, cutting this way and that, through little passageways he said he knew from playing hide-and-seek as a child. We came to a narrow stairwell that sliced between two homes, and at the end of the stairs there was nothing but a drop-off and a green panorama — the end of town. De Thomasis pointed out the fortified exterior of the village.

“This area,” he said, “used to be a castle.”

But whatever it used to be, the houses on either side of the stairwell were now in disrepair. Same with a home across the street, its old wooden door swung half-open, decades of rubble inside. Up and down the street hung For Sale signs, and even the properties that looked tidy from the outside, De Thomasis said, were nothing more than “shells.”

“No water. No electricity. Unlivable,” he said.

He knew because he’d been looking to buy. And he’d been looking to buy because he hadn’t lived in Abbateggio for decades — having been effectively forced out, at age 19, by a dearth of available jobs.

Another story about rural population loss and rural aging in Europe, this one out of Spain, is here.  

Brookings Institute launches "Reimagine Rural" podcast

Anthony Pipa, a Senior Fellow at Brookings, is the host of the new Reimagine Rural podcast.  The series is introduced thusly: 

While the dominant narrative regarding rural America is one of decline and division, Reimagine Rural is a new podcast that visits rural towns across the United States that are experiencing positive change and explores how public investment in rural people and places can lead to increased and equitable prosperity.

Hosted by Tony Pipa, a scholar in the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution and a product of rural America, each episode features local voices telling the story of progress in their community and considering the intersection with policy and public resources.

The first episode (published Nov. 22) is out of Shamokin, Pennsylvania, population 6,942, where Tony Pipa grew up, in the central/east central part of the state, the Susquehanna region.   Here's an excerpt that intrigued me because of its focus on a place's identity--in this case the need to shift from a work-focused identity (in their case, coal mining) to one based in tourism.  

So, think about taking a coal-region town who’s very much brought up in that hard work mentality. And we need our mills and we need our coal and we need to just work hard and transitioning that into a tourism destination. And that’s what we’re doing here. So, it’s been a struggle for a lot of the individuals who have grown up and have been bred in this hard work mentality to really be that destination.

So, about a year and a half ago, the city passed an ordinance to allow a portal so that the AOAA riders could ride right into our town. We were the first city in the country to do that. Many other villages and communities have, but we’re told we were the first city to allow that. Now we have ATVs driving up and down our streets. I personally love it because that’s bringing revenue. That again, changing to that tourism mentality is difficult. But let’s embrace that because that is our future.

Don't miss this inaugural episode.  It has me looking forward to more episodes in this series focused on rural economic development and what it means to invest not only in rural individuals, but in rural places and regions.  And on that note, here's a November 29 tweet from Tony Pipa: 

I'm focused on the bit that says "for both Ds and Rs, the policies are generally focused on individuals.  But places, esp. rural places, need investment, too."  The first part of the tweet quotes an NPR report on the rural vote, by Ximena Bustillo, "But rural advocates say that the party often fails to communicate policies to rural voters." 

On remote work for American Indians and Alaska natives

Marketplace, from American Public Media, did this story a week ago, "Telework could help tribes curb outmigration, but Native workers are being left behind."  Here's an excerpt:  

Maleah Nore has a job she’s passionate about, promoting mental health and working on suicide prevention in Native communities. But she’d like to do that work closer to the rural southeast Alaskan village where she grew up.

“Part of the reason that we’re experiencing such drain in our villages is that people are forced to move to these huge hubs,” she said, like the Portland metro area where she lives now.

A hybrid model allows Nore to sometimes work from her home office, but not from her Tlingit homelands.

“In order to do the work that we need to do to help our people and get further in this world, we have to leave our villages,” she said. “That is just counterproductive.”

Because distance makes it harder to be a good relative and community member, Nore said.

* * *

Research from the Brookings Institution and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis’ Center for Indian Country Development finds that the remote work revolution could have unique benefits for tribal communities and economies, but that Native workers are being left behind.

“No one is accessing the remote work environment as little as the American Indian/Alaska Native population,” said Matthew Gregg, a senior economist at the Minneapolis Fed and an author of the report.

At the height of the pandemic, Gregg said, data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows 23% of Native workers were teleworking because of COVID-19, compared to 31% of white workers.

“One of the key reasons is that there’s employment differences between whites and Native Americans,” Gregg said.

Native people are overrepresented in fields we’ve come to know as “essential,” such as health care, education and service work, and underrepresented in office jobs that are more likely to allow telework.

More than two years into the pandemic, Gregg said the telework gap has narrowed, but those occupational differences no longer explain the gap.

“In fact, within occupations, there’s a racial disparity,” he said.

Gregg and his co-author, Robert Maxim, a senior research associate at the Brookings Institution, have some ideas about what else might be going on.

“The first is access — or I should say lack of access — to broadband internet,” Maxim said.