Covid-19 and the rise and fall of workers' rights in the meatpacking industry

A few weeks ago, our class discussed the immigrant experience in rural America--more specifically the exploitation of immigrant communities in rural America by the agricultural industry. Pulitzier-prize winning journalist Art Cullen wrote for the New York Times, In My Iowa Town, We Need Immigrants about the importance of immigrant communities in small towns like Storm Lake, Iowa, population: 11,269. 

The article reminded me of a reading my torts professor, Sarkar, assigned to our class 1L year. We were nearly a year removed from the initial statewide Covid-19 lockdown and still attending class via Zoom. My whole life was confined to my apartment and zoom classes. I was miserable. 

Professor Sarkar assigned The Battle for Waterloo by Michael Grabell and Bernice Yeung. He instructed us to skim the article so that we could briefly discuss possible tort liabilities arising from Covid-19 exposure in the workplace. 

As I began reading the article, I was drawn in and could not stop. It was the most powerful and important assignment I read that whole year. It tells a tragic story of the meat butchering industry in Waterloo, Iowa--from what it once was to what it has unfortunately became.

It also made me realize how lucky I was to be stuck inside my apartment while so many other people died because they did not have that option. Those other people, often designated "essential workers," had to work.

The Battle for Waterloo explores the complicated, intertwined story of race and labor in Waterloo, Iowa, population: 67,314. This story began when Black workers were recruited to come work as strikebreakers over 100 years ago. 

Before Tyson took over, the meatpacking industry was a pathway to financial stability for Black families in Waterloo. It also became an avenue for working class coalition and historic civil rights victories. Rath Packing Company was a family-owned pork processor where heavily unionized workers challenged management for better conditions and wages. 

The article tells a beautiful story of Rath's union, "Unlike most unions, it welcomed Black workers, and while Rath wasn't a racial utopia, the union's logo of a white hand clasping a Black one symbolized its belief that worked solidarity wouldn't exist without racial solidarity."

Moreover, Black workers' assignment to the particularly gruesome "kill floor" gave them the unexpected benefit of immense power over production and profits. The authors note that once upon a time, Black workers would simply wave a flag to halt production completely until their demands were met. Wages reached $24 to $32 an hour in today's dollars by the mid-1960s. 

Black and white workers used these same heroic strategies to tackle the discrimination Black citizens faced throughout the rest of the town, using their combined economic power to force change. 

This all began to change in the late 1960s when a new company, Iowa Beef Packers (IBP), which was later bought by Tyson, moved into the town and transformed the industry to automated factories that required less skilled labor. Rath tried to compete through layoffs and wage reductions but eventually closed its doors in 1985.

Grabell and Yeung note that the story of Rath is not unlike those told across the country within this industry. Many meatpacking plants went through a similar transfer of power between workers and employers. 

The story of IBP and Waterloo began when they came to the town promising 1,500 jobs, but these jobs were unlike the positions of empowerment found at Rath. IBP was known for working its employees hard and not worrying about turnover. They purposefully, "...tried to take the skill out of every step," stated IBP's co-founder. Once they had run through all the local employees of Waterloo, "...the industry turned to immigrants and refugees from some of the most vulnerable parts of the world."

Over the years, Tyson realized that refugee immigrant communities were their best bet because they had papers, so they were safe from immigration raids. Most importantly, "It was a population for whom exploitation was also an opportunity, and desperation silenced complaints."

By the time Covid came around, refugees from Myanmar, Congo, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Liberia, Bosnia, Haiti, and more countries, worked in communities where they faced language barriers, health disparities, and cramped work environments that made them even more vulnerable to Covid.

The details of just how badly this whole health crisis was dealt with are horrific--from managers betting on how many employees would be infected and directing interpreters to downplay the severity of the pandemic, to OSHA relaxing its safety requirements at the instruction of the government, to workers vomiting from illness mid-shift and being told to continue working. 

At the time of the article, 1,500-1,800 of the workers at the Waterloo plant had contracted Covid. Researchers estimate that 236,000-310,000 Covid cases and 4,300-5,200 deaths can be linked back to community spread from meatpacking plant outbreaks. 

One of these deaths is thought to be Terry Mabry. A Waterloo resident and father whose family came to the area from Mississippi to work at Rath in the '60s. Terry's twin brother, Jerry, blames his death on the mishandling of the Tyson outbreak, stating, "'If it wasn't for Tyson's lying, the community would be a lot better off. I'd have a few more friends that are still living, and my best friend, my twin brother, still living. Somebody from Tyson should have went to jail." 

As we discussed potential tort liability my 1L year I couldn't help but to think of Jerry Mabry's words. To me, this ordeal goes so far past negligence. These refugee communities escaped wars, violence, corruption, famine, etc. and came to America to be killed at a Tyson plant because decision makers couldn't prioritize workers' safety over their high-hundred-million-dollar profits. And the government officials who were supposed to help them turned a blind eye. Even their own union representative, Steven Stokes, is quoted defending the plant for doing all it can and blaming employees for not cooperating.

So many people died--sick, scared, and isolated--because they were put in the impossibly desperate position to go to work and risk their lives or not be able to provide for their families. The article was a huge wake up call for myself, as I sat at home sad because I was overwhelmed and lonely, reading casebooks all day. What a privilege it was to be bored in the pandemic, while so many others' lives had to dangerously continue as if there wasn't a national health crisis.

As of today, it looks like no one has faced any criminal charges for the deaths of those lost at Tyson. The lawsuit appears to be ongoing, with the US Supreme Court refusing to hear arguments on why it should be moved from state court to federal court. I'm not sure if this refusal is a big deal, but I hope it is a good sign for all the families that suffered so much because of Tyson's exploitation. I hope they win so much money they never have to pack meat again. Unfortunately, Tyson will just find more vulnerable people to exploit in their absence. 

This blog by Professor Pruitt explores more stories dealing with Covid-19 outbreaks at meatpacking plants throughout the country. 

Poll shows Californians support rural investments

Maggie Angst reports today for the Sacramento Bee today under the headline, "Free mental health care, invest in rural areas. Here’s the future California wants, says poll."  Here's an excerpt: 

A new poll released Friday by Stanford University’s Deliberative Democracy Lab lays out a vision for the direction Californians are hoping to see the state take in the years and decades ahead.

The poll, conducted in collaboration with the California 100 Initiative and the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, brought more than 700 people together for a weekend in February to weigh 56 diverse policy proposals in the realms of housing, energy, health care and education. 

Participants were polled at the start of the weekend and then again at the end, after multiple small group discussions and panels with experts. In many instances, the deliberation led participants to adjust their thinking.

* * * 

In broad strokes, the poll results demonstrated that Californians are yearning for more transparency and want the government to work more effectively for its residents and businesses, said Karthick Ramakrishnan, executive director of California 100.

“Do these findings spell hope or doom for California’s future? I’d say it’s a qualified hope,” Ramakrishnan said. “The kind of solutions people are pushing are pragmatic and aspirational — and some are also quite bold.”

Among the 10 most supported proposals, the fourth most popular related to rural California specifically and implicated spatial inequality: 

4. California should invest in rural areas to ensure that they have adequate funding for infrastructure, such as roads and digital broadband. (70.8% to 73.7%)

I must say that I find this concern for rural California quite heartening. I'm guessing a majority of those polled--perhaps a vast majority--are metropolitan, making this prioritization of rural needs especially heartening.  It shows that even urban folks want their rural counterparts to have core services like broadband and roads.  

And because I know readers will want to know and may not be able to get behind the Bee's paywall to see, the most supported proposal of all was:

1. California should strengthen its high school civics requirement to include experiences with participation, discussion, negotiation, and compromise in a democracy. (68.9% to 80.4%)

Texans dig in to keep rural schools open in face of conservative school choice movement

J. David Goodman wrote in the New York Times today about a topic that's been on my mind for a while: the threat that the school choice movement presents to rural schools and how that's playing out in so-called red states.  The dateline is New Home, Texas, population 334, in the state's panhandle.

Some key excerpts from the story follow: 

The school voucher movement, which seeks to direct public money to private or religious schools, has rapidly gained steam in conservative states as parents battle public schools over books in the libraries, the teaching of race and racism and transgender issues. More than a dozen states have adopted some form of school vouchers. This year several, including Florida, Iowa and Utah, voted to create expansive new programs open to all students, an approach pioneered in Arizona.

But Texas has been an outlier so far, in large part because of the longstanding support for public schools in deep red communities like New Home. In far-flung districts around the state, parents and educators have defended their schools, which are often the biggest local employer and the center of community life.

 * * *

Amid a growing national movement to give parents public money to spend on private schools, it is in places like New Home — where the football coach is a local fixture and students learn both how to read and how to judge the quality of a cut of meat — that the conservative campaign has run up against the realpolitik of rural Texas.

* * * 

The governor’s aides point to polls showing support for school choice even among rural Republicans, though opponents argue that such numbers are dependent on how the question is framed.

“There’s no groundswell for this in my district,” said State Representative Travis Clardy, a Republican who represents rural counties in East Texas. He voted against vouchers last week.

In New Home, nearly 400 miles northwest of Austin, parents said they were not yet seeing the issue as a threat.

“Let’s say they did this,” said Kayla Ferguson, a Republican who owns The Spot, a recently renovated small restaurant by the school, where her three daughters are students. “It wouldn’t be something where they wouldn’t have public schools, right?”

Martina Torres, a parent who works at the restaurant, chimed in from behind the counter. “To me, the big scare would be if so many parents chose to go with that decision, and it would cut the money for the public school,” she said.

“I don’t like the idea,” Ms. Ferguson said. “I would never send my kids to a private school.”

Unlike many rural districts, where the public schools are the only nearby options, New Home is close enough to the city of Lubbock that parents could choose to send their children to nearby private schools at their own expense.

Instead, the opposite has been taking place: Many parents unhappy with the public schools in Lubbock have been moving to New Home, instead of enrolling their children in private schools. Others remain in Lubbock but drive their children 25 miles each way to school. Enrollment is soaring.

Many say they are transferring from more politically and culturally diverse Lubbock in search of smaller classes and a place where the values more closely align with their own.

I've marveled that commitment to rural schools and communities hasn't brought more attention to this issue in Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas, which have also gotten swept up in strong school-choice movements.

Law and Order in the Ozarks (Part CXXXVII): Recent developments in the reach of Newton County law enforcement

It's been a while since I've blogged about issues out of Newton County, Arkansas (population 7,225) where I grew up, but I want to catch up here primarily on recent news regarding law enforcement staffing in the county.  My focus here is on two stories about beefing up security/law enforcement presence in two places--one a school and the other the courthouse.  

First, a Newton County Times story from October, 2022, reported that the Deer/Mt. Judea School District was hiring a school resource officer.  Here's an excerpt:   

The board has been discussing the possibility of hiring an SRO the last couple of months as the need for on campus security has become a growing concern of school staff and students' parents.

Superintendent Brenda Napier said the cost to the school district would be meeting the officer's salary which has been estimated between $34,000 and $40,000 per year depending on the officer's amount of training and experience.

The actual interviewing and hiring process will be done by the Newton County Sheriff's Office.

The scope of the officer's duties and how the officer would be assigned to cover both campuses will have to be determined by the school board, Napier said.

Nothing in the story indicates why an SRO is needed--that is, whether safety issues have arisen.  

In other news, the board accepted the resignation of the district's school nurse and approved a list of transfers into the school district. All will be enrolled in the district's Digital Education Program. One student is transferring out of the district. The board also accepted the annual legislative audit report.

I have not seen any update on the hiring of an SRO, and meanwhile, in March 2023, the Jasper School District Board of Education applied for a $120K School Safety Grant from the State of Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education. The application notes that the school district has not conducted a comprehensive school safety audit or assessment, but it has done the following:

• Conducted an annual lockdown (active shooter) drill at each school
• Provided current floor plans and pertinent emergency contact information to appropriate first responders
• Developed a School Safety Plan for each school and provided annual training for all staff
• Identified an individual in the district responsible for overseeing school safety
• Implemented strategies to increase the presence of trained law enforcement officers or commissioned school security officers on school campuses.

Safety measures not yet in place on all campuses include:

• Electronic access controls for high frequency use exterior doorsCovers for vision panels on classroom doors that prevent viewing into the classrooms and allow students a blind area to hide during a lockdown
• Temporary door stoppers or blockers for doors that need additional security may also be purchased, but must comply with current state Fire Prevention Code and ADA standards for accessible design
• Numbers on classroom interior and exterior surfaces easily identifiable to first responders so they can reference the position of students and or intruders.
• District campuses should have fencing that limits access to the school entrances, especially the main entrance.

Other priorities include security cameras, shatter resistant film or other reinforcement for glass windows and physical barriers to prevent access at the main school entrance.

More recently, the Newton County Times reported on March 13 that the Quorum Court has created a courthouse security officer position.  Here's an excerpt: 

The Newton County Quorum Court met Monday night, March 6, and created a position and the budget for a courthouse security officer. Now, all that is needed is for interested, but certified, individuals to apply for the job.

County Judge Warren Campbell said having a courthouse security officer isn't required by state or federal laws. However, he and other courthouse officials feel times being what they are additional security in the courthouse would benefit county employees as well as the public who comes here to do business or attend court. Over the years, the courthouse security has been beefed up with closed circuit monitors, electronic locks on the entry doors and stronger interior doors.

Rarely is there an officer from the sheriff's office in attendance at quorum court meetings.
The security officer would be required to attend all county courthouse functions upon the request of the county judge at the same pay scale that is approved. "No extra pay." 

This is a full-time position with an annual salary of $28,080. The county would also pay the officer's health insurance, $7,476; noncontributory retirement, $4,301.86; Social Security matching, $2,148.12; Workmen's Compensation, $500 and Unemployment Compensation, $300.

Some of the Justices of the Peace (members of the Quorum Court, like a County Board of Supervisors) noted that the county insurance alone would be attractive to prospective employees.  Still, Donnie Davis, County Clerk, said that although the position has been discussed openly around the courthouse, no one has yet to inquire about it.  The lack of inquiries may be due to the requirement that the employee must have graduated from the Arkansas Law Enforcement Academy, and the cost of the training is not included in the county budget.  

That same issue of the paper includes this story about a man who accuses the federal park rangers with the Buffalo National River of abusing their authority.  Thomas Jefferson, a  U.S. Army veteran and resident of Marion County, is accusing National Park Service rangers of abusing their authority.  He is seeking to make the public aware that these rangers' authority applies only within national park boundaries.  An excerpt from the story follows: 

Johnson appeared before the Newton County Quorum Court at its March 6 meeting and asked for time during the part of the meeting when JPs open the floor for public comments.

He called attention to NPS Director's Order #9 - 2005, a copy of which he distributed to the court members.

Johnson contends,  

[T]he park service doesn't want you to know about the[se limits on their power].

The information he submitted defines more in detail park service rangers' law enforcement limitation. They may request local, county or state law enforcement personnel to assist with law enforcement actions within the boundaries of a national park. Rangers cannot be deputized by local or state law enforcement authorities for any law enforcement action that occurs outside a national park boundary.

NPS park ranger assistance can be obtained by outside law enforcement only in cases of emergency. Emergency is defined for use only in response to an unexpected occurrence the requires immediate attention and to the administration of the park such as fire, accidents, local/state law enforcement assistance or actions that place the public in harm's way. NPS law enforcement park rangers cannot assume law enforcement authority outside the national park boundaries.

Johnson cited the National Park's Reference Manual 9-2015, which defines the scope of the rangers' jurisdiction, and he took questions from the Justices of the Peace.  Johnson explained, 

If a violation occurred within the boundaries the ranger can pursue and make a stop outside the park boundaries. But if the ranger is making a stop for a violation outside the park boundaries he has no authority to do so. Johnson said to let the ranger know the limitations of the ranger's authority.

Johnson argues there is a conflict between state and federal laws and courts are allowing this to happen, apparently for the revenue collected through fines.

Johnson concluded: 

I've exposed it and I'm not shutting up.

Also in that issue of the paper is this story about a man sentenced for leading unauthorized hiking tours on the Buffalo National River.  Here's a prior post about the man working as a guide without the permission of the Buffalo National River authorities. 

The February 15 issue of the paper reports that the Jasper Police Department purchased a 2023 Dodge Durango with a USDA Rural Development Grant.  That issue of the paper also reminds readers that Newton County is served by Sanctuary, Inc., a "temporary shelter and extended assistance, support and education to victims of domestic violence."  This information was shared at a meeting of the Newton County Hometown Health Coalition.  Sanctuary, Inc. is located in Harrison, 20 miles from Jasper.  

The February 22 issue of the Newton County Times reports that the Sheriff's office has been awarded $62,673.51 by the Arkansas Department of Public Safety to purchase equipment, including 16 tasers, taser certification and required software and warranties. 

In other news reported March 1, the Newton County Sheriff's office has signed a Mutual Aid Protection Agreement with the sheriffs departments in Boone, Searcy Carroll and Marion counties.  It also includes the Harrison Police Department.  The March 22 issue of the paper reports that the Sheriff's Office got a new roof at a cost of $13,700, replacing the one that was 20 years old.  COVID-19 relief funds were used for the project.  Additional work is scheduled on the interior.  

The March 15 issue reported on cases adjudicated in the Circuit Court.  

In non law enforcement news, lettuce grown in a greenhouse on the campus of Jasper School is being served in the school cafeteria, and the Jasper School Board has declared the day of the 2024 eclipse a "professional development day."

Rural voters in Wisconsin protect abortion rights: Democrats should take note

Last week, on April 4, progressive Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz was elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, thereby creating the high court's first liberal majority in 15 years. Protasiewicz won out over her conservative opponent Daniel Kelly, a former state Supreme Court justice, in the contest to replace retiring conservative Justice Patience Roggensack. Notably, the race became the highest profile and most expensive judicial election on record in the United States, with campaign spending totaling over $45 million.

While the campaign was hotly contested, in the end, Protasiewicz defeated Kelly by more than 10 points in what represented a significant shift towards the Democratic party by Wisconsin voters. Perhaps the most interesting voting pattern that emerged during this election was that the statewide voting trends were bolstered by a pivot on the part of rural voters towards the democratic candidate. While Protasiewicz did ultimately lose the rural vote, the 45% of the rural vote that she was able to accumulate constitutes a significant 5-point gain for Democrats with this demographic when compared to the 2020 presidential and 2022 Senate elections. 

The headway Protasiewicz was able to make with rural voters might come as a surprise to some, given that the existence of a widening urban-rural divide with regards to Americans' political ideologies and partisan affiliations has come into sharp focus in recent years. Specifically, over the past few decades, urban voters have increasingly leaned democratic and rural voters have overwhelmingly supported republican candidates (previous posts on America's urban-rural divide here, here, and here). Moreover, Wisconsin is no outlier from these trends; like elsewhere throughout the nation, Democrats in Wisconsin have struggled to pick up votes in the countryside and in small towns (another posts on the rural vote in Wisconsin here). This is particularly evident in the rural western and northern portions of the state, where Democrats continued to watch their voting bloc erode through the 2022 election cycle. In fact, less than a year ago a post on this blog discussed multiple news reports forecasting bad news for Democrats in rural Wisconsin, highlighting how they have gone largely unsupported by the Democratic national party.

So, what changed? One predominant theory is the United States Supreme Court's 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (recently discussed on this blog here and here). Dobbs is the Supreme Court case that reversed Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, stating that the constitution does not confer a right to abortion.  

Since Dobbs, there has been an emerging national trend by which support for abortion rights has appeared to translate into electoral gains for Democrats. In August 2022, Kansas voters shocked much of the nation by rejecting an amendment to their state constitution attempting to decoding abortion rights. Strikingly, the high-turnout, pro-abortion outcome represented a 30-point deviation away from the support former president Donald Trump garnered in 2020, with the most significant and surprising departures from Republican partisan loyalty coming from small cities and rural areas (more on the Kansas abortion referendum here). Considering these results, one possible takeaway is that rural voters, at least in Kansas and where abortion is concerned, are not completely behind every aspect of the leading Republican agenda. 

It is likely that similar forces were at play in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election last week. Abortion rose to the fore of debate surrounding the election as, post-Dobbs, it was almost guaranteed that access to abortion in the state would hinge on whether it was progressives or conservatives that would secure a narrow majority on the state's supreme court. Wisconsin's current governing law on the matter is a 1849 statute criminalizing abortion in virtually all cases, with a singular exception carved out for situation in which it would be necessary to save the pregnant person's life. 

Adopting a slightly controversial strategy, Protasiewicz openly campaigned on the issue of abortion, not only publicly announcing her personal pro-choice beliefs and collecting endorsements from pro-choice groups, such as EMILY's List, but also running ads painting Kelly as a staunch pro-lifer who would surely uphold the state's 1849 abortion ban. Kelly, on the other hand, feigned impartiality, but accrued endorsements from the state's top three anti-abortion groups, including Wisconsin Right to Life, and was perceived as very likely to act in accordance with his well-documented pro-life stances.

While it is difficult to assert an exact or singular cause, the theory that Protasiewicz's pro-choice position contributed to her victory is supported by a recent Marquette University Law School Poll indicating that a majority of Wisconsin citizens support abortion in most or all cases. That said, the election was also undoubtedly influenced by the other hot-button issues spotlighted during the campaign, including gerrymandering (Wisconsin's district maps are considered among the most undemocratic in the country) and election administration (Wisconsin is a perennial swing state in which the most recent presidential election results in favor of Joe Biden were upheld by the state supreme court by a margin of only one vote).    

Regardless of the exact mechanics of the outcome of Wisconsin's Supreme Court election, Democrats should take note and stop writing off rural voters as a lost cause. In conjunction with the referendum in Kansas and other rural Democratic success stories, such as the rise of John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, Protasiewicz's gains in rural Wisconsin suggest that rural counties might be much more politically contestable than many believe. It is even possible that inroads with rural America could be the key to Democratic success in 2024... but only if the party begins investing sufficient time and money into rural communities, constituents, and candidates. 

Brookings: Why U.S. rural policy matters

The Brookings Institute published this today by Tony Pipa, senior fellow.  The subhead is "a response to readers... and anti-rural rage."  Pipa writes: 

On December 27, 2022, the New York Times published an essay I wrote calling for a renaissance in federal rural policy. My motivation for writing the article was borne from a frustration of the media’s obsession with rural politics—that is, who in rural America is voting for whom, and why—with little regard or attention to rural policy, or how federal, state, and local governments could do things differently to help rural places to thrive.

Federal policy has historically played an important role in helping rural places contribute to American economic and social life, but it is no longer fit for purpose. This is leaving rural places starved for investment as they navigate 21st century shifts in the economy and seek to become more vibrant, inclusive, and sustainable. The essay included a call for a national rural policy to help “put local assets to creative use, unleash entrepreneurial activity, share the benefits widely and retain the value locally.”

It resulted in almost 1,700 comments from readers and a flood of reactions in my inbox. “Don’t read the comments” counseled colleagues, warning against the rabbit hole of negativity. Yet many comments surfaced thoughtful questions and gaps, and in the spirit of advancing a policy discourse, I offer responses to several of the themes that emerged.

Here are those themes:

1. “Ask rural places what they want.”
2. “What about the role of state and local governments?”
3. “Big business is killing rural.”
4. “It’s not just rural: What about other places that are lagging?”

And here is Pipa's conclusion: 

Getting past the “anti-rural rage” and the vitriol reflected in the reactions to my essay will be as important as addressing whatever resentment rural people are harboring. When I listen to the stories of real people in rural places working to provide the best for their families and communities, I find commonalities that cut across the divisions defined and deepened by the obsession with rural politics. So my final response to readers is where I began: We urgently need a constructive bipartisan dialogue to consider policy solutions that can enable thriving, sustainable economic and social structures and create opportunity in all sizes of places across America—and specifically rural ones.

"How Rural America Steals Girls' Futures"

That's the headline for Monica Potts' essay in The Atlantic.  It's based on her forthcoming memoir, The Forgotten Girls, which was scheduled to be released on April 14 but has been delayed until May 30.

Potts writes from Clinton, Arkansas, population 2,602 and the county seat of Van Buren County. It's where she grew up, on the southern edge of the Ozark mountains, a place with a median household income of about $46,000 in 2021.  Potts describes the culture this way: 

Almost everyone goes to an evangelical church, and in the halls of the town’s only high school, everyone knows everything about everyone else, or seems to: whom you dated, where you bought your clothes, how you acted on weekends, and even your destiny, inherited from the generations that came before you.

Here's part of her story: 

Growing up in the ’90s in Clinton, Arkansas, all that my best friend, Darci Brawner, and I dreamed about was getting out. “I want to see new people and new places,” I wrote in my journal when I was 12. I wanted to move to California but would take “any state besides Oklahoma or Mississippi.” We wanted careers; we wanted to be rich and famous; we wanted to be far away. Boys and sex would only stop us, catch us, or so my mother had warned.

* * * 

I moved away for college when I was 18. While I was gone, I heard updates: who was getting married, having children, getting divorced. I heard worse stories, about who was on drugs, who’d been arrested and sent to prison, who was in rehab, who was in rehab again. Who had died. By the time I was a journalist writing about rural poverty in my mid-30s, I’d seen studies and data that helped me put the stories from home in context. One of the most alarming trends emerged about a decade ago.

That trend was the shrinking life expectancy of women like those who'd raised her, those she had grown up with.   Potts got curious about why these women were being lost not only to deaths of despair but to cancer, heart disease and other chronic conditions.  The essay continues: 

I returned to Arkansas more and more, trying to reconnect to my hometown, looking for answers. In 2015, on a visit home, Darci contacted me out of the blue. We’d once been as close as sisters, but that spring was only the second time I’d heard from her in the nearly two decades since high school. We visited, and as we caught up and reminisced, I began to realize that I could pinpoint the time when our lives had first begun to diverge. It started during those boy-crazy middle-school years, when we were at the cusp of growing up, when our futures had not yet been written.

Some of us—because our parents were strict or wealthier and more educated, or because we were “good girls” too nervous to break the rules, or because we were just plain lucky—got out. Others got pregnant.

And as a fellow rural Arkansas female like Potts, here's the paragraph from the essay that most resonated with me: 

When it came to liquor, there were two modes in Clinton: alcoholism or abstinence. This paralleled the bifurcated morality I saw everywhere: Girls were either virgins or whores; students were either geniuses or failures; you could go to church or you could be a sinner. The town seemed to operate in two modes—the buttoned-up propriety of the churchgoers, who held power in the county, versus the rowdy hillbillies in families like my dad’s. The rigid divide allowed no room for subtleties or missteps.

Even children were sorted into the binary: the upstanding citizens and the ne’er-do-wells.

I recommend it in its entirety and am looking forward to the book's release next month.

More on rural gentrification in the mountain West, from In These Times

Two headlines from In These Times this week were "In Montana, an Avalanche of Wealth is Displacing Workers," and "The Vail-ification of the West."  Both stories are by Joseph Bullington, who grew up in Montana and edits Rural America In These Times.   Here's an excerpt from the first story: 

The Covid-related explanations emphasize the pandemic, which provoked a surge of interest in living rurally, particularly in the West’s so-called vacation communities. A rush of remote workers and second-home buyers, able to outcompete locals in cramped housing markets, drove down the available housing stock and drove up prices. Real estate speculators soon followed. As Guyer says, ​“When the speculative real estate investors arrive in a place like Livingston, your average home buyer just can’t compete.”

In truth, the pandemic land rush is only the most recent episode in a much longer story.

Where I’m from in rural Montana, the towns mostly come in two types. Some lie where they fell when an extractive industry — copper or coal, gold or timber — pulled up stakes and moved on, taking the money and leaving a pit of economic ruin (and maybe a pit of poisoned water on the edge of town). Other towns, due to some alchemy of proximity to an airport, an interstate and a famous national park, have attracted the interest of the outdoors industry. Instead of digging ore, workers in these towns spend their days in a different kind of extractive industry — prying a living from the wallets of vacationers and second-home owners.

Here's the lede for the second story:

Welcome to Colorful Colorado,” reads the sign beside the highway as the road climbs from the alkaline flats of New Mexico into the foothills of the San Juan Mountains. But the landscape holds no color when Ana and her family cross the state line in the predawn dark.

When the family arrives in Durango at 6:30 a.m., Ana’s husband goes to his construction job installing heating and A/C ducts. Ana waits at her sister’s house until the bus comes to take their son to school. Then, Ana goes to work, too, cleaning houses.

This whole tiresome routine is new. Originally from Chihuahua, Mexico, the family lived for seven years in Durango, where they found work and a supportive immigrant community. But a recent influx of second-home buyers, wealthy retirees and highly paid remote workers rapidly drove up housing costs here, which pushed Ana and her family not just out of town but out of state — to a trailer park an hour south of Durango in Farmington, N.M., where rents are cheaper. (I’m not using Ana’s real name because she fears what might happen should the Durango School District discover they no longer live in the area.)

They are hardly the only ones making this daily commute.

Don't miss both stories in their entirety.  They don't being new news beyond what's been covered on the blog for many years, but they're both terrifically well done, with a focus on low-income workers struggling to stay housed in a booming ecotourism economy of wealthy folks, most owning second homes. 

Rural unrest strikes The Netherlands

Ben Coates, a columnist for Algemeen Dagblad, wrote for the New York Times yesterday of recent protests by Dutch farmers, largely represented by the Farmer Citizen Movement (BBB): 

For months, farmers flew the Dutch tricolor upside down to protest government plans to cut nitrogen emissions in half by 2030 by reducing the number of livestock in the country by a third. The government warned that there could be compulsory buyouts; the farmers lit bales of hay on fire, blocked roads with manure and blockaded government buildings in The Hague with tractors.

The public was irritated by some of the protesters’ tactics, but the movement itself generated widespread support. Enough that a couple of weeks ago, the Farmer Citizen Movement, known by its Dutch acronym BBB, unexpectedly triumphed in provincial elections here, sweeping aside established parties to become the largest party in the Senate. The future of the government’s plan is suddenly uncertain.

* * *

Farming occupies a particularly important place in the Dutch psyche. Toward the end of World War II the Dutch suffered through the “Hongerwinter” (Hunger Winter), a famine that killed thousands of people and left many more scrabbling to survive. A national postwar effort to build up the agricultural sector was wildly successful: Despite the country’s being about the size of Maryland, the value of its agricultural exports is second only to the United States.

In a country with more than 100 million cows, pigs and chickens — and around 17 million people — nobody lives more than a short train ride from farmland.

* * *

For many Dutch farmers, the fight is not ideological, and the BBB cast itself as the voice of rural interests against an urban elite that can’t tell a Hereford from a Holstein.

Don't miss the rest of the essay, with its references to similar unrest in other European nations.

How the Dobbs decision worsens dire conditions in rural hospitals

Rural hospitals have been struggling, citing financial and staffing issues. More than 140 have closed nationwide since 2010, with many more facing challenges that could see them shutting doors in the future as well. An additional 114 rural hospitals ended all inpatient services from 2010 to 2019. 

One of the care units hit hardest by these problems has been the delivery room, which often pose unique challenges to many hospitals across the country due to their unprofitable nature under the current US healthcare system. In 2004, 55 percent of rural counties offered obstetric services. That number shrank to 45 percent by 2018, and continues to shrink to this day.

The Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v Jackson has only exacerbated these issues. Dobbs held that the US Constitution does not provide a right to an abortion, representing a huge blow to women's rights and healthcare nationwide. Often overlooked, however, is the disproportionate effect the decision has on rural hospitals across the country. More reading on the Dobbs decision and the state of rural hospitals can be found on this blog here and here.

Following the outcome of Dobbs, trigger bills in many states across the country immediately went into effect. One of these states was Idaho, whose near-total abortion ban includes a provision which exposes physicians to both criminal and civil litigation for performing an abortion. Idaho is one of only six states in which health care providers are open to this type of prosecution. As a result, the already precarious situation rural hospitals find themselves in appears to be getting worse.

Bonner General Health, a hospital in Sandpoint, Idaho, recently announced that it would be discontinuing all obstetrical services starting mid-May of this year. As a result, labor and delivery care will be halted entirely. In a press release, the president of the hospital cited Idaho's political climate and staffing shortages as the main reason for these changes, saying: 

Highly respected, talented physicians are leaving . . . the Idaho Legislature continues to introduce and pass bills that criminalize physicians for medical care nationally recognized as the standard of care . . . We hoped to be the exception, but our challenges are impossible to overcome now.

Sandpoint is a town with a population of roughly 9,000 residents, who recorded 265 births at Bonner General last year. New parents in labor will now have to travel to Kootenai Health in Coeur d'Alene, which is about an hour away from Sandpoint. 

To make matters worse, Kootenai Health is experiencing its own troubles. Similar to rural hospitals all across the country, staffing shortages and financial hardships forced the hospital to shutter its addiction recovery and outpatient psychiatry programs. Due to a recent staffing shortage and Covid-19 surge, a US Army medical team was dispatched to Kootenai Health to help the overwhelmed hospital. Given the looming closure of Bonner general Health's obstetrical services, Kootenai will likely face similar challenges once this change is put into effect on May 19th. 

Additionally, the Idaho legislature recently passed an "abortion trafficking" bill, which would bring criminal charges to those who help pregnant minors across state lines for the purposes of obtaining an abortion without parental consent. An amendment to the bill accepted by the House would add the ability for rapists to sue their victims for undergoing an abortion procedure. The bill could mean increased burdens on Idaho's neighboring states, who all currently allow abortions.

In Mississippi, a similar trigger bill went into effect post-Dobbs, banning all abortions except for cases of rape, incest, or danger to the pregnant person. Mississippi's only abortion clinic shut its doors shortly after. As a result, some in the state legislature predict an additional 5,000 babies will be delivered within the state. This reality will once again disproportionately affect rural hospitals already struggling to survive.

Hospitals in Mississippi's rural areas have already been suffering, as the state is one of only 10 to refuse federal Medicaid expansion funding. Medicaid currently finances roughly 42 percent of births in the US, and covers a majority of births from people with low incomes. While the funding is largely a temporary band-aid on a much larger problem, states that opted out of the program accounted for almost three-fourths of rural hospital closures from 2010 to 2021. 

While the state's rural hospital situation has improved slightly in more recent times, danger still remains. 38 percent of Mississippi's rural hospitals are in danger of closing, which would put 28 of the state's 65 rural counties without a hospital. Staffing shortages will similarly put a strain on obstetrical services within the state, where already limited delivery room capacities in rural areas may quickly become overwhelmed. 

It remains to be seen how these challenges facing rural hospitals can be solved, but it is clear that the Dobbs decision further worsens an already significant issue. Larger expansions to Medicaid may alleviate some stresses for the immediate future, but long-term solutions have yet to be offered by state legislators. Unfortunately, many hospitals in rural areas appear to be heading towards a bleak future, or complete closure. 

Canadian report on 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia implicates rural-specific law enforcement failures

Ian Austen reports for the New York Times on a Canadian government report investigating law enforcement failures in a mass shooting in rural Nova Scotia in April, 2020.  Here's an excerpt from Austen's story focusing on why and how rurality mattered to law enforcement failures:  

Though the [Royal Canadian] mounted police [R.C.M.P.] is a federal force, it patrols rural Nova Scotia under a contract with the province. The commission found that staff shortages meant not only that the Mounties often failed to provide the number of officers called for under the contract, but also that the force paid little attention to rural policing and the needs of rural communities.

“The R.C.M.P.’s career model undervalues rural general duty policing,” the commission wrote. “The approach creates a disconnect between R.C.M.P. members and the communities they serve.”