Assembling a SWAT team in rural South Carolina

Here is what the South Carolina Dept. of Corrections said about its 4-hour delay in responding to a prison riot in Bishopville, South Carolina on Sunday night.  Seven prisoners died and 17 were injured  in the melee.  Here's I'm quoting from the New York Times report by Richard Fausset: 

When the trouble started, Mr. Stirling [director of the South Carolina Department of Corrections] said later in a telephone interview, there were only two guards on duty in each of the three housing units, and they were armed only with pepper spray. Each housing unit holds about 250 inmates. 

Assembling an armed SWAT team in a rural area on a Sunday night takes time, he said.

Bishopville, population 3,238, is the county seat of Lee County, population 17,635, and is 40 miles from the state capital, Columbia. 

Small-town government run amok (Part VI): Lake Arthur, New Mexico makes billionaire Robert Mercer a law enforcement officer

Bloomberg news reported this week on quite a little scandal out of Lake Arthur, New Mexico, population 436, on the state line abutting far west Texas.  It seems the tiny police department of tiny Lake Arthur has been been making reserve law enforcement officers of folks like Robert Mercer, the conservative billionaire, so that these folks are authorized to carry a concealed weapon anywhere in the United States.

Zachary Mider's story for Bloomberg begins with a firmly tongue-in-cheek description of the place and its law enforcement needs, along with the terms of Mercer's engagement there as a reserve officer:

If Mercer’s trips to Lake Arthur resembled my recent visit, he might’ve climbed into the passenger seat of [Police Chief] Norwood’s police truck, whose black-and-white paint job is fading in the wind-whipped sand. He and Norwood might’ve rolled past the house where someone reported spotting a stolen car—a false alarm, it turns out. While monitoring radio chatter, the plutocrat and the chief might have jawed about the latest news in a town so small it has no stores: the recent pursuit of a motorist across half the county; the record of the high school’s six-man football team; reports of stolen pecans. Pulling up a chair at an Italian restaurant in nearby Hagerman, the chief might’ve urged Mercer to try the lasagna. 

For most of the past six years, as Mercer became one of the country’s political kingmakers, he was also periodically policing Lake Arthur, according to the department. If he followed Norwood’s protocols—and Norwood insists no volunteers get special treatment—he would’ve patrolled at least six days a year. He would’ve paid for travel and room and board, and supplied his own body armor and weapon.

After the Bloomberg story was featured on WBUR on Monday, the program--which apparently had 150 reserve officers at its peak--was abruptly ended on Tuesday.  (Read more here, too) The mayor of Lake Arthur put Chief Norwood on administrative leave, and his credentials were recalled.

Don't miss Mider's full report on the Lake Arthur program, with lots of details on Mercer's politics, too.  Turns out Mercer is quite the gun enthusiast, and getting this concealed carry opportunity through the back door circumvented his inability to get a concealed carry permit on Long Island, where he lives.  What Mercer is best known for, of course, is bankrolling Breitbart and being a king-maker vis a vis Donald Trump.   

During this week 5 years ago - New York Times highlights rural lawyer shortage

Facebook's On This Day feature is often a treasure trove of old memories and items that you thought important to share at one point in your life. Today as I looked through my memories, I found that I shared this article from the New York Times five years ago. At the time, I was a 1L at Michigan State University and incredibly excited to see that the Times had opted to cover an issue that I considered very important. Many of the issues addressed in this article have been expanded upon in this space on various occasions but I still think that it is important to share again because it highlighted, for a mass audience, so many of the issues that many of us care about. This also seems like a great opportunity to reflect on this issue, why it's important, and how it connects to other issues of rurality. I recommend this article to anyone who needs a primer on why this issue is important but may be unfamiliar with the underlying issues.

There's a quote in the article that I cite frequently when I discuss this issue with people who are unfamiliar with why we should care about rural legal inequalities, "[a] hospital will not last long with no doctors, and a courthouse and judicial system with no lawyers faces the same grim future[.]" This quote from South Dakota chief justice David Gilbertson epitomizes why this issue is important and why we should continue to work until we have come up with a way to solve it. The ability to access justice is paramount for the survival of any community. When justice is inaccessible, the most vulnerable in our societies suffer the most and the bonds of cohesion that ties small towns together begin to weaken.

When trying to address the shortage, it is important to remember that this is also an incredibly complex issue that demands an interdisciplinary approach. The rural lawyer shortage is an outgrowth of many of the other issues affecting rural communities. To begin to study the issue, we need an understanding of:

• The role of economic development in the growth of a regional legal market, which requires an understanding of economics. 
• The general social structure of rural spaces, which requires an understanding of sociology. In fact, Thomas Barnett Jr., the Executive Director of the State Bar of South Dakota, noted in the linked article that rural lawyers serve not just in the official capacity as lawyers but, because of their status as lawyers, also serve other roles within rural communities. If you are going to understand the rural lawyer shortage, you need to understand the unique role that rural lawyers play in their communities.
• That lawyers are also important political actors in rural communities so we need an understanding of political science. Even if a lawyer is not a politician, they still need to understand the local political dynamics in order to be change agents for their clients. In small towns, all politics are local. An organization could not just put a lawyer into a rural space without ensuring that they understand the local political dynamics and how to maximize their effectiveness.
• The role of changing demographics in shaping America, particularly the affects of out-migration and the brain drain on making rural America older and less educated than other areas of the country. 
• The law, particularly an understanding of the right to counsel in criminal cases and the disastrous effects of being pro bono in civil litigation

We have seen great progress on this issue over the past five years and other states have joined the call to address the rural lawyer shortage. I am currently working on a project that seeks to create greater awareness of this issue and work with public officials to address it. It was great re-reading this article, particularly because of its importance to my work and its role in bringing greater attention to this issue more broadly.

In 1954, John F. Kennedy talks about the relocation of textiles from New England to the South

As someone with a deep admiration for the Kennedy family and an interest in rural New England and the South, I was particularly interested in an article that I stumbled upon today in The Atlantic. In January of 1954, then-Senator John F. Kennedy wrote about the departure of textile mills from New England and their arrival in the South.

As Senator Kennedy notes, New England's loss of industry was largely due to the more lax labor standards in the South and the ability of the mills to get access to substantially cheaper labor. The lower influence of organized labor also served as a way to keep wages low in the South. North and South Carolina, two of the principal landing places of the textile industry regularly rank 49th and 50th in levels of union participation. This "race to the bottom" continues today with the spread of right to work legislation and the belief that unions are driving wages too high. New England, to its credit, has uniformly resisted "Right to Work."

Not surprisingly, the textile mills have largely left the Carolinas, largely due to cheaper labor in foreign markets. The parallels that one can draw from Senator Kennedy's descriptions of towns in New England that suffered the same fate is fairly obvious. Entire towns in North Carolina have lost their chief employer and are struggling to figure out how to replace that.

The lesson here is that if an industry chooses your community because of cheap labor, they will also leave when cheaper labor becomes available. I would hope that leaders in rural communities realize this sooner rather than later. I also highly encourage you to read Kennedy's article, it is an incredible snapshot in time of a rather huge economic shift in both New England and the Carolinas.

Elite hypocrisy about working class white and rural women? The case of the West Virginia teachers strike

I've been reading elite bashing of working class and rural whites for years now, and I published my first article about it as long as 2011.  But the election of 2016 brought this bashing by the chattering classes to a fever pitch, and I've occasionally blogged about the phenomenon, as here and here.

One "series" I see on Twitter begins:  "And in today's episode of:  I Bet I Know Who You Voted For..." That is the common preface to re-Tweets of headlines that could previously have appeared in the "Darwin Awards" or perhaps the petty crime pages of a local paper.  I'm pasting one below.  It re-Tweets a Fox News Tweet that reads "Substitute allegedly brought boxed wine to school, vomited in class."

Another re-Tweets this Fox News Tweet:  "Woman charged with choking teen for blocking view at Disney fireworks show."

On a related note, here's an item from Instagram just a few days ago, from the account called guerrillafeminism that reads "happy international women's day except the 53% of white women who voted for trump."

Pat Bagley, the cartoonist for the Salt Lake City Tribune (whose work I greatly admire, by the way), has referred to Trump's "idiot followers."

With that background, you can imagine my surprise--but also delight--when I saw this Tweet from Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress, which bills itself as an

independent nonpartisan policy institute that is dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans, through bold, progressive ideas, as well as strong leadership and concerted action. Our aim is not just to change the conversation, but to change the country.

Despite the "nonpartisan" billing, I see it as clearly left leaning (a good thing in my book!).  Tanden's Tweet reads:

The teachers of West Virginia are heroes.  They deserve good pay and a real raise.  I stand with them.

Now, I don't recall any past Tweets by Tanden blasting Trump supporters, though I do recall some highly critical of Trump.  That's a line I've drawn myself--at least in the last year or so (I was a bit less discriminating--a bit more knee jerk--as I reeled in the wake of election of 2016)  I readily take aim at Trump but try to be more thoughtful and circumspect re: Trump supporters.  I'm looking to understand them, trying to listen empathically. (I've got a whole law review article forthcoming about female Trump supporters, delivered as the key note address at the Toledo Law Review symposium in October, 2017; hope to have the text posted soon on my ssrn.com page).

But the bottom line is that some things I saw on Twitter about the West Virginia teachers--many sympathetic comments of the sort Tanden shared--had me wondering if the lefties doing this Tweeting realized that many of the folks they were lauding and advocating for had no doubt voted for Trump.  That is, these newfound labor heroes with their wild-cat strike were one and the same with (many) reviled Trump voters.  Some 68% of West Virginians voted for Trump!  Could I possibly be seeing praise for these women--praise from the left?   These are the same women that many lefties on Twitter have said "get what they deserve" if they lose their healthcare (thanks to Trump's effort to dismantle Obamacare) or face further economic decline (thanks, for example, to the long-term consequences of Trump's tax reform law).

(Btw, I was at an Appalachian Justice symposium at West Virginia University College of Law in Morgantown from Thursday Feb. 22 'til Saturday Feb. 24th, and I got to see the picketing--and hear the honking in support--first-hand, which was pretty cool.  One of my favorite signs, this published in the Washington Post, is below )

Michelle Goldberg, a relatively new columnist at the New York Times who is writing a lot about gender issues, offered up this column under the headline, "The Teachers Revolt in West Virginia."  She called the strike "thrilling," noting that strikes by teachers are unlawful in West Virginia, which became a right-to-work state a few years ago, and where unions do not have collective bargaining rights. Yet, Goldberg writes,

teachers and some other school employees in all of the state’s 55 counties are refusing to return to work until lawmakers give them a 5 percent raise, and commit to addressing their rapidly rising health insurance premiums.

Goldberg further explains that the "obvious impetus" for action is West Virginia's awful pay of teachers, which ranks 48th in the nation (read more analysis here).  She also discusses the critical role that health care/health insurance plays in the labor dispute:

 In the past, solid health care benefits helped make up for low wages, but because West Virginia hasn’t been putting enough money into the state agency that insures public employees, premiums and co-payments have been increasing significantly.  

Ah, there's that health care problem again, by which I mean you should read this and this, among other sources cited and discussed in my forthcoming Toledo Law Review article.

Having pored over many, many mainstream media reports of white working class Trump supporters in places like Appalachia (you guess it, all in that article forthcoming in the Toledo Law Review), I was struck by the women Goldberg identified and interviewed who did not appear to be Trump supporters.  Quite to the contrary, these women are held out as having responded to Trump's election by becoming part of what is popularly known as "the resistance." I was delighted to learn about and hear from these women, but was Goldberg unable to find any Trump supporters among the striking teachers?  I would very much have liked to have heard their attitudes about the strike, also in relation to their support for Trump.  Did they reconcile the two?

Here are excerpts/quotes about the two women Goldberg did feature, Jenny Craig, a special education teacher from Triadelphia (population 811, northern panhandle) and Amanda Howard Garvin, an elementary art teacher in Morgantown:

Craig described the anti-Trump Women’s March, as well as the explosion of local political organizing that followed it, as a “catalyst” for at least some striking teachers. “You have women now taking leadership roles in unionizing, in standing up, in leading initiatives for fairness and equality and justice for everyone,” she said.

Garvin commented:

As a profession, we’re largely made up of women. ... There are a bunch of men sitting in an office right now telling us that we don’t deserve anything better. 

Oh how I LOVE that quote.  In the wake of Trump’s election, Garvin added, women are standing up to say: 

No. We’re equal here.

I sure hope Garvin is right that the sentiment and movement are as widespread as she suggests--and Goldberg implies.  If this is accurate, liberal elites--including feminists--will have to give Craig, Garvin and so many more like them their due.  (Indeed, teacher strikes may be in the works in the equally "red" states of Oklahoma and Kentucky, too).  That will challenge deeply entrenched stereotypes about folks from this region (read more here and here), which will in turn serve all of us quite well.  

You can find more exciting coverage of the West Virginia teachers strike here, here and here.  And don't miss this by WVU Law Professor and education law expert, Joshua Weishart.  

By the way, the strike succeeded, with the teachers getting what they held out for.  

The question that all of this leaves me with is this:  What can the WV teachers strike teach us about how to build and sustain cross-class coalitions, including among whites?  How can these intra-racial coalitions interface with cross-race coalitions for even stronger pacts among progressives? And what role will gender play in that coalition building?  

Other hopeful news of change in relation to women and the national political landscape is here, here and here.  

Cross-posted to Working Class Whites and the Law, Feminist Legal Theory and UC Davis Faculty Blog.     

A shortage of work across small-town America, and immigration as part of the solution

I kicked off the "Working Class Whites and the Law" blog back in January with this post about the shortage of workers willing to do crappy work.  This shortage is obviously integrally linked to immigration and should inform our nation's immigration policy.  If native-born workers (of whatever color) are not available to do the work that needs to be done to keep our economy(ies) booming, then immigrant labor is a necessity if economies are to grow, or even tread water.  And growth seems to be the buzzword of the era, whether or not the growth is sustainable and whether or not such growth is good for the planet.

Never mind those concerns.   Two recent stories from two very different places--California and Missouri--illustrate the need for laborers.   

First, the California story:  well, could be any number of stories, but I'll settle on Darrell Steinberg's interview with NPR on Thursday morning, following Attorney General Jeff Sessions' speech to a group of law enforcement officers in Sacramento on Wednesday. Steinberg defended Sacramento's stance as a "sanctuary city" by noting that the municipality is standing up for immigrants who, among other things, contribute to the economy:

It's the people living in our communities that have lived here, by the way, for decades. These are people going to school, people going to college, people who are contributing to our tax base. And we have an obligation to stand up for those people. And that's exactly what we're going to do.

Here's another California story that links immigration with the economy, this one out of the town of Jacumba Hot Springs, population  561. 

The Missouri story is datelined Branson, Missouri, population 10,520, the self-proclaimed "live entertainment capital of the world." The headline for the Washington Post story is "Why a white town paid for a class called "Hispanics 101'," and it is fundamentally about a labor shortage in southwest Missouri, a region I've frequently written about, e.g., here, here, here, here and here.  (It's a place of great interest to me because I grew up a little more than an hour away, in northwest Arkansas).   This Branson story, though by a different WaPo journalist, is somewhat similar in theme to this January report on a turkey processing plant in South Dakota recruiting Puerto Ricans to meet their labor needs.  The angle on Danielle Paquette's story out of Branson is that employers there are having to develop cultural sensitivity in order to recruit and retain Latinx workers, with a recent focus on those from Puerto Rico.  Here's an excerpt that explains that the economy depends on the success of the undertaking: 

As tourism season kicks off this month, the remote getaway known for dinner theaters, country music concerts and a museum of dinosaur replicas has 2,050 vacancies — and a lack of locals applying. 

So, like other areas with tight labor markets, Branson finds itself getting creative to fill jobs — in this case by recruiting people from a part of the United States with much higher unemployment.

But the plan to bring 1,000 workers from the island to overwhelmingly white, conservative Branson over the next three years has sparked unease, with critics saying that the newcomers will steal work from residents or drag down wages or bump up crime.

Paquette goes on to describe how desperate managers from Branson-area hotels, hospitals, hardware stores and banks have paid $50 each for the "Hispanic 101" workshop led by Miguel Joey Aviles.  Hilariously, Aviles is teaching his students--among other things--how to dance the merengue. 

Aviles advises bosses to check in often, ask about their mothers and request that grocery stores in the area sell plantains and Goya coconut water. 

“It’s not enough to invite them to the party,” Aviles said, twisting his body to the beat. “Bring them to the dance floor.”

Paquette goes on to focus on Branson's whiteness, with these details: 

[O]fficials acknowledge that some in the area, which is 92.4 percent white, are clinging to the past. Confederate flags adorn shop windows. A billboard outside town advertises “White Pride Radio.”

“We get nasty comments all the time,” said Heather Hardinger, programs director at the Taney County Partnership, which is working with the chamber on what it calls the “talent attraction” plan. 

States and companies from across the United States are competing for Puerto Rican workers, which had a jobless rate of nearly 11% in 2017, the highest in the nation. 

All of this highlights for me the gulf in understanding--broadly speaking--between California and Missouri, when it comes to the value--even necessity--of immigrant labor.  I'm also wondering how to bridge that gulf.  And I'm wondering--as I asked in that post back in early January--what happened to the good ol' working class whites who used to do jobs in places like Branson?  Have they succumbed to the meth (or other drug) epidemic (or here)?  gone soft?  moved to the city?  I'd like to know. 

Cross-posted to Working Class Whites and the Law. 

How rural students not attending college affects the rural lawyer shortage

Addressing the resource gap between rural and urban areas is going to largely depend on two possible outcomes: rural students deciding to return home after college graduation to work in their communities and rural communities attracting new migrants. The latter is already a challenge for many rural communities and as it turns out, the former is as well. As a recent NPR article notes (and Professor Pruitt covered here), it's a challenge because rural students are attending college at a rate lower than their peers in other locations. Only 59% of rural students pursue post-secondary education, a rate that lags behind urban and suburban communities, which send 62% and 69% of their students to college respectively.

The article goes on to mention that 48% of people between 18 and 24 are enrolled in higher education  but only 29% of rural people in that age range are enrolled. While the gap between the different geographies in terms people choosing to pursue higher education isn't that great, the low percentage of people that are enrolled points to a broader issue. I have no reputable study to confirm this theory but it would appear that rural students are remaining in and ultimately completing college at a far lower rate than their urban and suburban peers. This is also troubling.

As the NPR article notes and I've seen in other studies as well as anecdotally, a lot of rural students grow up in environments where their role models were able to make a living without a college education. Many of them may be unaware of the economic trends that have made a lot of these industries non-viable in the long term and may assume that they can pursue the same career with the same results. They may also see higher education and high status career as something that is unattainable for them, a fact particularly true in low-income communities. Of course, the rural lawyer shortage almost becomes a self-perpetuating cycle because many rural students may lack role models such as doctors or lawyers who can show them that these careers are possible.

Nebraska has realized the importance of addressing the rural lawyer shortage through taking steps to get rural students into classrooms. In 2016, the State of Nebraska created a scholarship program, the Rural Law Opportunities Program, which sends high achieving students to rural colleges in the state where upon completion (and obtaining a 3.5 GPA and a minimum LSAT score), they would earn a scholarship to the University of Nebraska Law.

In order to address the rural lawyer shortage, early intervention is sorely needed. Hopefully this data combined with the efforts already being undertaken in Nebraska can show the way to addressing this critical issue.

NPR on rural students in higher ed--or not

Jon Marcus and Matt Krupnick reported a few days ago out of Iowa under the headline, "Who's Missing from America's Colleges?  Rural High School Graduates."  The story features Dustin Gordon of Sharpsburg, Iowa, population 89.  He graduated from high school in Lenox, Iowa, population 1,407.

In his sparsely settled community in the agricultural countryside of southern Iowa, "there's just no motivation for people to go" to college, says Gordon, who's now a senior at the University of Iowa. 

"When they're ready to be done with high school, they think, 'That's all the school I need, and I'm just going to go and find a job.' " That job, Gordon explains, might be on the family farm or at the egg-packaging plant or the factory that makes pulleys and conveyor belts, or driving trucks that haul grain. 

Variations of this mindset, among many other reasons, have given rise to a reality that has gotten lost in the impassioned debate over who gets to go to college, which often focuses on racial and ethnic minorities and students from low-income families: The high school graduates who head off to campus in the lowest proportions in America are the ones from rural places.

Here are some sobering data points to provide context for the profile.  While 62% of urban high school graduates and 67% of suburban high school graduates go to college, just 59% of rural ones do--that's all races, at every income level. Nationally, 42% of those aged 18 to 24 are enrolled in higher education, but the figure is just 29% of rural folks, compared to 48% from cities. 

I've noticed the media paying more attention to the rural education gap since Election 2016.  That's got to be a good thing.  

Update on rural voting patterns, and a bit about the Bustos report on the "heartland"

This overview paragraph is from Dave Weigel's piece in the Washington Post on Democrat Margaret Good's win in the race for Florida's 72d congressional race yesterday, a seat based in Sarasota: 

But for years, Democrats had been spending little, and losing more — nearly 1,000 state legislative seats, many gerrymandered further out of reach after the party was routed in 2010. Starting last year, they’ve seen money and volunteers flood the sort of local races where the party had been wiped out during Barack Obama’s presidency. In many of the races they’ve lost, they’ve erased most of Republicans’ margins, often with the same pattern — strong Democratic turnout in suburbs and a Republican fade in rural voting. In an average of legislative races, Democrats have seen a 11.9 percent swing since 2016 results.

I've not yet posted about the extensive coverage given to Representative Cheri Bustos's (Democrat-IL) report with recommendations on how the Democrats can take back seats in the Midwest.  Read more about that report here (In These Times), here (Politico), and here (NPR).  In These Times coverage by John Collins includes this description of the report:

Hope From the Heartland: How Democrats Can Better Serve the Midwest by Bringing Rural, Working Class Wisdom to Washington compiles interviews with 72 current or former Democratic officials who, in recent years, won over their rural constituents despite the national popularity of the Republican opposition. According to the report, these were candidates who “bucked the trend and succeeded in the rural Midwest, now dominated by Republicans.”

In the interview with Bustos on NPR, she was asked if she was "suggesting that Democrats went too far in their backing on issues like gay marriage or transgender rights" and whether "that has been part of the [Democrats'] problem." She responded: 

Well, I don't think we should ever lose sight of fighting for the people who need us to fight for them, whether it's, you know, the LGBTQ community or whether it's communities of color. You know, we're Democrats, and we fight for people and for better lives for families. 

But what I'm saying is that we need to stay relentlessly and I - you know, just keep our eyes on the ball for economic recovery in areas that have yet to see it. You know, when we say that we're the big-tent party, you know, that doesn't mean that you leave one group outside pounding the stakes and you let other people - you let them in the tent. When we say we're the big-tent party, we've got to be inclusive, and we've got to fight for everybody. And that includes people in the heartland who have gone through some tough times.

This Bustos-led report was also mentioned in a podcast on This American Life.   One striking thing about that episode was Bustos coaching a female candidate for office not to play up her college education given that many voters in the district were not similarly educated.

Changes to SNAP program may have impact on rural economies

By now, most of you are probably familiar with President Donald Trump's proposal to at least partially replace the SNAP program with a food delivery service that OMB Director Mick Mulvaney has compared to "Blue Apron." There have already been many criticisms of this proposal and the fact that it will take away the right of SNAP recipients to choose their own meals and subject them to eating whatever food the government sees fit to provide them. After all, Mulvaney defended the proposal by saying that one of its benefits is that the government will be able to negotiate prices on the wholesale market. What Trump however is proposing is not an entirely new program. The federal government already delivers pre-boxed food to families on tribal reservations all over the country. Consider that the federal government has not conducted a nationally representative study of that program since 1989, a fact that is quite troubling.

One of the most overlooked aspects of this proposal is the impact that it will have on low-income economies, particularly in isolated rural communities. With the federal government at least partially assuming responsibility for delivering food to SNAP recipients, money will be lost from local economies. As I covered in a previous post, SNAP has a measurable economic impact. A SNAP recipient is likely going to spend their dollars in local stores, which employ local people. Even those who spend their dollars at big box retailers are still contributing to keeping an employer in the local community, which helps to keep people employed.

According to the Center on Budgeting and Policy Priorities, over 80 percent of SNAP authorized retailers are small businesses. For many of these small businesses, revenue generated from sales to SNAP recipients may be quite significant. In fact, we already have examples of towns whose economies have been significantly boosted by revenue generated from SNAP. According to a study published by the United States Department of Agriculture, each $5 of SNAP generated approximately $9 of community spending. After all, when a person buys something at a store, their dollars continue to work its way through the economy.  If you want a more detailed explanation, feel free to visit this link.

By fundamentally changing a program that generates positive economic outcomes for impoverished communities, the Trump Administration is setting many communities up for failure. The impact of this proposal goes beyond the people who are receiving SNAP. Consider the economic impacts of the SNAP program and how it helps local business owners employ people in the community. If SNAP is cut and fewer dollars flow into a business then the business owner may have to lay people off or even close his business. The quality of life then also goes down for people in the surrounding community, especially in rural communities. Many rural communities are not exactly awash with options so losing a neighborhood grocery store could result in substantially longer drives to do simple things like grocery shopping, which can represent an additional hurdle for low-income people. The lack of a grocery store in the community may also affect their ability to attract new businesses, which often want access to basic amenities. Further, if a retailer is thinking of expanding into a community and sees examples of prior failures, they may be more reluctant to open up a location there. The end result of all of this is a weaker rural economy and a worsening of the rural:urban gap.

As you can see, changing SNAP is akin to knocking down a domino, it starts a chain reaction that can have a potentially disastrous effect on a local economy. It is my hope that President Trump and Director Mulvaney reconsider this project but if they do not, I hope that Congress decides to not pursue it.

Rural minded governors can make a difference

Yesterday, the Roanoke Times published an op-ed written by Virginia Governor Ralph Northam. In the op-ed, Northam discusses a lot of themes that are frequently discussed here. He talks about people growing up in rural Virginia and then having to settle elsewhere because of the lack of economic opportunity available to them. He relates his own upbringing on Virginia's Eastern Shore and his decision to settle in Hampton Roads, which as he notes is close to home "but not the same." He then goes on to talk about the need to invest in infrastructure, including broadband, in order to ensure the future economic viability of rural Virginia. He notes the duty of the governor to represent all of Virginia and that he represents "people in Russell County just as much as ... people in Alexandria."

Northam's dedication to rural issues is admirable and reminiscent of the governor of the state to his immediate south, North Carolina's Roy Cooper. Now in his second year as governor, Cooper recently announced the beginning of the "Hometown Strong" initiative, which will see the state government work with local officials and non-profit leaders to develop and complete projects as well as identify their long term needs. Like Northam, Cooper also mentioned the need to develop and improve rural infrastructure, including broadband. Cooper, a native of Nashville, also noted the personal impact of this initiative.

North Carolina and Virginia are similar in many ways. Both are coastal states in the Upper South, have growing urban centers, world-class flagship public universities (UNC and UVa), world class land grant universities (NC State and Virginia Tech), booming tech centers (based in Northern Virginia and Research Triangle Park), and--along with Florida--are the only true electoral battleground states in the South. They also share a common historical link. North Carolina's predecessor government, the Albemarle Settlements saw its first governor appointed by the Colonial Governor of Virginia. In fact, many early North Carolina settlers were Virginians who were migrating to the south.

North Carolina and Virginia have also been leaders in forging a New South, a South that is defined by its brains and not its manufacturing or agricultural might. The evidence of this is fairly obvious. In Durham, I have seen old tobacco warehouses filled with office space. In Charlotte, glistening skyscrapers now fill spaces that were once hubs of shipping agricultural goods on the railroad. In Northern Virginia, tech companies and government contractors drive the growth that has turned old farming towns into suburban sprawl. However, as Northern Virginia, Charlotte or the Triangle grow, it is important that we do not forget the people who are still in those rural spaces and are being left behind. In the old economy, the rural spaces supported the urban spaces; farms in rural North Carolina provided the tobacco that sat in the warehouses in Durham and the agricultural goods that were shipped out of Charlotte. For many rural spaces in North Carolina and Virginia, the economic successes of the state at large have done little to help them partially because the symbiotic relationship between rural and urban appears to be lost. This phenomena isn't limited to North Carolina and Virginia however. As I noted here back in November, the link between rural and urban also helped rural New England grow during the Industrial Revolution. Based on their words, it seems that Northam and Cooper are well aware of that and are working to solve it.

The future of rural America is going to depend on leaders who have a personal investment in rural communities and are willing to work to ensure that they remain viable. I am cautiously optimistic about the futures of rural North Carolina and Virginia and hope that Cooper and Northam can deliver on their promises to their home communities.