Rev Left Radio - Appalachia: Class Struggle In Coal Country

Episode Date: June 30, 2017

Brett sits down with revolutionary organizer and Appalachian local Nic Smith to talk about the Appalachian working class and its history of class struggle. Topics include: Radical unionism, the history of the region, Trump, liberalism's failures and socialism's hopes, stereotypes about Appalachians, the need for a true working class party, and much more!   **Please take the time to rate and leave a review on iTunes! This will help expand our overall reach.**     Donate Follow us on: Facebook Twitter (which we are new to, and trying to build up): @RevLeftRadio or contact us at Revolutionary Left Radio via Email Random Song of The Week From Friends: Featured as the outro music From The Window On A Train - Jack Hotel Organizations affiliated with the podcast: Omaha GDC NLC   Thank You for your support and feedback!

Yeah, it seems like I'm the media whisperer of the hillbillies, and it seems like the media loves to use me as the token hillbilly, so I guess I'll have to step up to the plate. Do you find, like, why exactly is that? Do you find that somewhat offensive on some level, or is it just, it is, it is what it is, or how do you feel about all the attention you're getting specifically? well how do I feel about how the attention I'm getting specifically well I guess the only bothersome thing is I think I'm unfairly getting an amount of attention I think uh there are a lot of people out there that I guess uh I'm not really saying a whole lot of new things you know I mean people have been saying things I'm saying but uh but really I think uh being a white man a white well cis man particularly you know i get a good bit of recognition when i speak yeah you know but uh when you're a hillbillies it's interestingly enough you also get that next

level of uh condescending kind of disbelief so you get me talking i'm just wide enough they want to listen but you know just uh not classy enough that uh they can still you know run me around like a circus animal doing this kind of, you know, oh, look, this is a chicken playing motherfucking tic-tac-toe or some shit, you know. But no, I think liberal media is the only ones I've been mad at. Leftist media have been real respectful. I've been real good about it, you know. Yeah.

Absolutely. And I hope that, you know, this interview falls on that end of the spectrum because I am conscious of exactly what you're saying about, you know, the racial dynamics here and and sort of the novelty of it and how there is some level of you know a little bit it feels a little gross and exploity well you know when the liberal media comes into town and you know wants to shove cameras in your face it's almost as if they're using you at some level and and what I want this to be is more of a of a articulation of the issues that go on in Appalachia and and you know those real issues tied to race and stuff and I want to give your voice

a platform because I think it's important and I think that a lot of people don't understand the issues that plague that area and they don't understand the history of that area and that that's really a lot of it there's a lot of misconceptions out there and I'm just giving you an idea of how bad

how strong the media's narrative is is people would watch that video which is titled think this cold country Southerner voted for Trump if that gives you any idea of what biases they're going with in there. The comments I see are oftentimes to the effect of something like,

well, if he's saying this, why did he vote for Trump? Man, you saw the video. Where are anywhere that sound like I was going to vote for Trump? Exactly. You know? Or my single favorite one, my single favorite one was that article, that guy wrote up for the Washington Post. their title

I'm not kidding their title was I don't want any handouts I just want to live in wage I never said any damn thing like that I'll take all the handouts

you got don't worry for one second I saw that you know they're wanting to paint me like I'm some kind of some kind of like

you know you know what you know what you know what I'm saying like I'm just some kind of stubborn redneck or something you know what I think I'm a very open-minded

redneck thing Thank you very much, Washington Post. Exactly. When I read that article, and I just, I was perplexed by the headline. I'm like, what the fuck? You never, that was not any part of the conversation. Why are you already framing this issue and this person in those terms? It's already politically, you know, motivated the way that they labeled that.

I mean, that's part for the course with the liberal media, though. I mean, there they go. You know, they got to be the friendly, fake social. wing of the capitalist propaganda machines. Exactly. You know, they've got to do their part. Well, I'm ready to get started. I'm so thankful that you came on the show.

I really do appreciate it. I'm coming out of Omaha, Nebraska right now. What city are you coming out of? I'm coming out of Rona, Virginia. I just moved into my new apartment, and we still got some stuff. I'm actually sitting next to a big tower of boxes. It's impressive. I don't know how it's still staying up there.

without falling over on my head. But, you know, if it does fall over on my head, this will make an interesting little thing. In fact, it'll probably go viral, you know, knowing how many, you know, this absurd kind of liberal phone I got of thousands on the internet, they, you know, if we put out an article saying Nick Smith, you know, dies from a box phone on him while on Rev Left radio,

you'll have all sorts of young turk listeners listen to rev left uh radio even just for the controversy well i i prefer your safety over over my listenership so but yeah that's that would be that would be funny we're educated we've been given a certain set of tools but then we're throwing right back into the working class well good luck with that because more and more of us are waking the fuck up so we have a tendency to what we have we have earned right and what we don't have we are going to earn. We unintentionally, I think, oftentimes kind of frame our lives as though we are, you know, the predestined. People want to be guilt-free.

Like, I didn't do it. Like, this is not my fault. And I think that's part of the distancing from white people who don't want to admit that there's privilege. When the main function of a protect and serve, supposedly group is actually revenue generation, and they don't protect and serve. It's simply illogical to say that the things that affect all of us that can result in us losing our house, that can result in us not having clean drinking water,

why should those be in anybody else's hands? They should be in the people's hands who are affected by those institutions. People engage in to overcome oppression, to fight back, and to identify those systems and structures that are oppressing them. God, those communists are amazing. Welcome to Revolutionary Left Radio. I am your host and comrade Brad O'Shea, and today I have a very special guest, Nick Smith,

to talk about Appalachia, the Appalachian working class, and the history of the region. Nick, would you like to introduce yourself and say a little bit about your background? Sure. I'm Nick Smith. I'm from Trammell, Virginia. That's out in Coal Country.

I currently live in Rona, Virginia, and that's where I'm doing the radio from. um and i'm going to be saying the word appalachia a lot and i guess that's not how they pronounce it most of america but that's how you know the majority of people in appalachia uh pronounce it now sure there are parts of appalachia where it's a little a little more appellation but you know the central part where we're going to be talking about today is a little bit more appalachian a little less uh latian yeah and um i met you through the uh facebook group Well, we met through a mutual friend, Ryan Hunter,

and it was through this Facebook group, a weird Appalachia. And I was pronouncing, I'm from Nebraska, so I was pronouncing Appalachia the whole time. But then there was a meme on that group that corrected it. Yeah. Oh, we're thinking the same one, too. I still laughed at that one.

That was a good meme. So then, like, getting ready for the show, I had to consciously make sure that I'm saying Appalachia because I wanted to be correct on that front. But you've gotten a lot of attention lately, a lot from the liberal, media, which we talked a little bit about before we started the show. But you are a self-described socialist. So what got you activated into politics, and when did you become a socialist, and why?

Well, what really got me activated in politics was, I guess, first of all, it started with, I saw that it could be done. I saw that, because before, you know, I was just somebody on the internet with an opinion. Um, but when I saw that, uh, 5 for 15 was really getting victories, uh, in a lot of cities, you know, I'd actually met a 515 activist at a anti-Trump rally here in Roanoke because, uh, Trump when he was campaigning, was over at the, uh, the hotel Roanoke doing his speech and all that. And I was there to, uh, counter protest just because, you know, how often is Donald Trump come to town? Come on. You got a, you got to show. up and make your voice heard right um but uh i met some people there and one of them uh you know they were talking about organizing locally and you know uh we we meet up a few other times i met somebody through these meetups who was a 515 activists and uh they had invited us to a national conference and you know we'd went to that and you know uh that same summer i went to the march on

the mansion is this big event in Richmond, uh, uh, March on the governor's mansion over, uh, you know, trying to get him to address his, uh, uh, the environmental issues in the state. There's two proposed pipelines, the Atlantic Coast pipeline, the Mountain Valley pipeline that he's not been, uh, really, you know, touching on and, you know, just a lot of other things. There's mountain top removal, which, you know, if we have time, I'd love to get into on this, on this, uh, episode but so I met people through there and I started really realizing a lot of these theoretical far-left concepts I had in my head could really be materialized you could really you know scientifically you know make some of

these things happen but as far as socialism how I came about to that I think what it was was when you grow up in a very blatantly exploited area. You see the haves and have-nots in the region. You see, you know, that the profit-driven economy really doesn't work. I grew up around poverty. I grew up and saw the need for, for social, you know, social safety net investment. You know, when I was a small child, my family was on welfare. You know, we grew up around a ton of families on welfare. We grew up around a lot of families on disability and none of this income coming to them was enough you know there's not this these comfortable people on welfare like you know the right wing uh you know and i

include the liberals in the right wing half the time uh that just think people living comfy on welfare no hell no there's there's really not uh i saw how much control these outside industries uh the coal the gas, the oil companies, how much power they had over the region, even though it was not people that lived there. You know, local and state politicians in areas that mine and coal

are funded by the coal companies, so they even have their own little puppet leaders. And their propaganda through the generations has really seeped into the minds of the locals, and locals are smart enough to know, well, you know, if we, you know, it's not really tactically wise to

go against these companies you know it's things always gone better for us when we've worked with them at least since since we won our union rights in the 30s but my papa he was a union activist a lot of

great uncles of mine were union activists my parents were you know real liberal you know we and I think one thing one misconception people have is that Appalach has always been very conservative. Well, Appalach has always been very socially conservative. It still is. That's not really changed a whole lot.

As far as politically, the unions and the Democratic Party have had a long, long presence in the region. And that actually, one of the most significant things about the Obama presidency is it more or less has flipped Appalach, a central Appalach specifically on its head and make it go you know far right what we saw in West Virginia was

national politics they'd go Republican but in state politics everything's blue right well now everything's red state local national it don't matter but really I saw

just how little difference a vote made I saw how I used to think I used to be at the liberal mindset of oh it's the symptoms of capitalism and we need government regulation to make it happen right to make things work for the common man you know we need checks and balances a mixed market because that's what I grew up being taught by my family who had similar views like it um but I slowly started to realize through just thinking

just thinking on it and you know through a reading through a um just Wikipedia here and there and, you know, until I actually picked up, you know, a book or two and realized, well, damn, no, the problem isn't, these are symptoms caused by capitalism that, you know, need to be controlled back. Capitalism itself is the problem. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think. On Rev. Left radio, I can, I can go ahead and identify myself as more of a social, more than a socialist because, you know, socialist is more or less a vague euphemism, but not

inaccurate at all I use for liberal media. Because when I say that to them, they think, you know, Bernie Sanders and I don't get immediately discredited, but I identify as an anarcho-communist. Absolutely. I got some malice

sympathies now. Don't get me wrong. Yeah. I think anarchists have been pretty shit when it comes to dealing with um imperialism historically but but you know i still identify more or less with the ideals of anarchism you know more than anything there yeah i i identify as a libertarian marxist a left communist a Marxism that's heavily informed by anarchism so yeah we have people all over the spectrum we had an episode on anarchism we had an episode on Maoism just in the last few weeks so all those tendencies i respect you know i'm really about promoting leftist unity um i

paying respect to tendencies and then trying to find ways to come together and be comrades and not just in fight all the time but I think one of the one of the big things about our generation how old are you out of curiosity I'm 21 yeah 21 wow yeah I'm 28 one thing about our generation is the some of the taboos around socialism coming out of the Cold War don't really apply to us because we were born after that and then the internet's really allowed us to come into contact with like-minded people like never before. So there's this stark turning to the left for people in our generation. And I think those two things play somewhat of a role in it.

But yeah, that whole thing is very interesting. You mentioned the history of unionism in the 30s. What role has coal mining and unionism played historically in Appalachia? Well, it used to be – well, historically, I guess I can start from the very beginning. of all this in the in the late 1800s what we saw was Appalachia was largely

an agricultural that there was largely agricultural industry and the land was most it was pretty undeveloped for industry where you did see a lot of development was along areas they had major rivers or

valleys you know by which transport goods like you notice all the all the big cities and Appalachia built on rivers, which I guess anthropologically speaking, you know, all large cities pretty much built on waterways with, you know, a handful of exceptions. But really up in the mountains, there's not been a whole lot of reason to build, you know, railroads through there for a long time.

But on these river banks and such, you saw a lot of logging camps initially. but in late 1800s we saw was industrial capitalists just saw how much coal there was in these areas and saw these largely uneducated agricultural locals that were not using a lot of this land and you know a lot of them that if you put a hundred dollars in front of their face they'd think it was the world, you know, um, so they, they went through and bought enormous swaths land and had, uh, bought mineral rights to over 90% of land in these regions. Um, and it, it definitely, uh, these outside industrial capitalists had, you know, right before Appalach even developed, had a strong, uh, iron fist grip,

on the direction which the industry in Appalachia would take. So they built basically the infrastructure from that point on in these coal field areas to keep people in and get coal out. In fact, the town I grew up in Tramel, it didn't even have a store. Well, it did initially, you know, I had a company store, but I'll get to that in a second. But here it is, we had about, you know, 30 or 40 houses, you know, and we had a railroad going right behind tramble, but still, you know, no passenger rail or anything, you know. They didn't even have a highway going through there for a long, long time, but they had a damn rail. But either way, I'm getting slightly off track.

They had built rails through these areas to get coal out, and they would build entire towns. what they called coal camps these entire towns that were built by coal companies well actually buy workers but you know what I mean by coal companies what Americans would say

buy coal companies to house the workers there would be one store in town store slash post office where really they would where the company would sell you know their goods

to the workers So you had, from the get-go, as soon as industry hit Appalachia Hardcore, Central Appalachia Hardcore, what we saw was your employer, was also your landlord, and was the only person you could really get goods from. In fact, in a lot of areas, they didn't pay you in U.S. dollars. They paid you in a company script. They would just go right back to the company. So it starts right out of the gate as a super exploited area. Now simultaneously as Appalachia was being developed industrially and, you know, because it was a largely remote region, what they saw was these people were, in a sense, easier to exploit in that, you know, the American public really didn't give a damn. Well, you know, Appalachian wasn't on the minds of really anybody except here and there during the civil.

war because, you know, you know, you had interesting things going on there. I mean, West Virginia, the new state in 1863 and all that. And, of course, there's a Hadfield-McCoy feud, which got some media attention, but, you know, Appalach wasn't really on anybody's mind. So these industrial capitalists simultaneously as they were setting up the industry, in the economy for super exploitation, they were also more or less creating the media narrative. And the media narrative was basically one of dehumanization. The idea is we need to paint this picture that the Appalachian person is not someone we really should care about.

That these people are inbred backwards, un-American, lazy, you know kind of people there was you know definitely this intentional othering that was done

and you know a lot of most of it was absolutely blatant lies a lot of it was exaggerations from observations that they made out there

but the big thing was dehumanization and ridicule so you couldn't really get a lot of Appalach and

you know sympathizers out there. So that's what you had with a lot of the locals here you're getting to work with you, you know, but they brought a lot of people in, a lot of out-of-work, black folks

from the south, a lot of out-of-work, even, you know, poor white, southerners and northerners, and a very, very, very significant number of eastern and southern European immigrants were more or less flush in this area. So people

that nobody really gave a damn camp about anyways. Right. And these were who built the rails. These were also who they moved into these camps. So we now have an idea of the kind of relationship they had from the get-go. Well, the work conditions back in the late 1800s, early 1900s, across the country, Appalachia being no exception, were abhorrent.

They were horrendous, just terrible things. People working, you know, six, ten, hour work days six seven days a week you know in appalachia you had that in mining mining being an industry you know where people are dying sometimes daily where if if everything goes right if everything goes right you're going to eventually develop a black lung disease or lung cancer or something to that effect from breathing in all that cold dust and from all the carcinogens in the deep mines that fall goes well you know you're going to if not all goes well you're going to develop injuries because this is you know very

laborious you know labor intensive work you could have rock fall you know that could kill you could you could have all kinds of things go wrong mine explosions if you ever heard the term

canary in a coal mine meaning the warning sign that came from they would literally have canaries in the coal mines and when they die we know there's a methane

build up and we had to get out so people you could suffocate from methane you could literally blow the fuck up up down there

you know absolutely yeah Somebody in my apartment's laughing, you know, because I said that. But, I mean, that's the fucking truth. Yeah. So you had to work these conditions. Then, you know, you had to go home, you and your family to these houses. A lot of them weren't built with indoor plumbing.

And all your surplus, well, not all, but yeah, actually pretty much all of your surplus value that you'd spend with, go back to the company. It was like neo-indensured servitude practically because, you know, if you, let's just say you did go on a strike and they raised things, you know, they raised your wages. Well, guess what? They can just raise the prices on everything else and the money goes back to them. Right. So they made sure that they could get the most profit out of you.

Well, you know, it didn't take too long for people got pissed about that. You know, and eventually they, they, people would start talk. union to start to talk about changing these conditions. You know, because when you've got nothing to lose but your chains, well, all you need is fucking, you know, organization and your revolution is essentially inevitable. Right. It's inevitable.

The only thing that could hold it back is a superior might of, you know, of the capitalist essentially exerting their will over you, which shit they're doing, they were doing that anyways. Yeah. Well, what they used when people would talk union is they would use private detectives. Well, that's what they called them. In Appalachia, we use the term gun thugs. You know, they would use gun thugs like your Baldwin-Felts and your Pinkerton detectives and such,

and they would basically take, you know, guns and they would intimidate strike workers. people that go on strike they would basically intimidate them to getting off strike and now what could you do you know we didn't you know in the late 1800s early 1900s

there's not really a whole lot it's not like you could just pull out a video camera and you know cop watch you can't go to do that right so these people who literally represented the interests of the coal companies would

they've assassinated killed threatened intimidated and sometimes it beat you know half to death strike leaders and another attack that used is they would forcefully evict you from your house because came out of companies on that too

to get you out of there so that's you can kind of see how the system set up that not just unionism but radical unionism would be needed in order to have any kind of foothold of a labor movement in these areas. So we got a need, you know, and so we got a why, all you needed was a how.

Well, you had all kinds of things going on, but in 1921, things got really kind of antsy in this town called mate one, West Virginia. and what happened was you know strike workers were being evicted from their homes and a law enforcement officer Sid Hadfield who was pro-union was a sympathizer

you know he had you know these gun thugs were throwing these people out of their homes and he said you know you can't be waving these guns around and mate won get the hell out these people you're not you're not a victim these people from their homes gunpoint and they said no these homes are uh are private property of a company we represent

we can you know wave guns around in town you fuck off well i he didn't really take kindly to that too much so you know what he what he did was uh he had found some you know rather uh radical strike work and said how many y'all want to go shoot a company gun thug and they deputize these people on the spot and he you know forced these gun thugs out of town I mean you know I said you've missed had a shootout in the middle of May 1 West Virginia this small

cold camp in southern West Virginia well not long after that Sid Hadfield got arrested by West Virginia State police on charge of murder well they had his trial and he was eventually found not guilty because he did everything you know

more or less right well god damn it if he wasn't shot presumably by gun thugs on the steps at the courthouse as he got his not guilty verdict so here it is mate one was seen as a symbolic victory

for the mine workers but you know here it is it really didn't matter because as soon as you you got something they had to take it back so workers were pissed and they went out They protested in Charleston, West Virginia, right at the Capitol, and they had gotten together.

They'd gotten in mass numbers, and it pretty much turned into a full-scale riot, and they just pretty much said enough was enough, and they got armed. You know, a lot of guns were supplied by the union. Some of them were stoned or expropriated from other sources, but they went on general strike. Basically, general strike with guns. They'd even gotten the point of stealing a fucking train. Damn. And they were going across, across these cold field towns,

picking up people as they went to more or less, you know, kick the gun thugs and corrupt police out. The gun thugs and the state police and the county police in these, areas where they that were very you know pro company were we're falling back and gathering together and you know these other ones were advanced and they eventually found themselves at this point Blair Mountain West Virginia and there's about 3,000 I'm going to call them bad guys and 10,000 you know strike workers And, you know, these strike workers to identify each other, would tie red bandanas around their neck.

There's a lot of theories as to why some theories, excuse me by this in 1921, this was four years after the Russian Revolution. This was during a time of a lot of radical unionism in the United States. Some of them it was this theory of the red was to signify they were socialist or to signify they were in solidarity with, you know, these. international working groups. And there was another theory, which I seemed like better, is that it was more or less making fun of, you know, the term redneck. Because even though this was a multiracial rebellion, don't get me wrong, but it's in southern West Virginia.

So it's still predominantly white. It's southern, poor white. You know, these people would be, you know, would have been regarded to as rednecks. Again, a slur that originated in the mid-late 1800s for, you know, basically it was a derogatory class term, you know, for people who worked down the field and, you know, got their, you know, their sunburned. It basically just meant poor white, you know. Right. And I like that theory himself, you know, putting in front of the term redneck.

but either way, this literal redneck revolt is what they were. Y'all knew a shootout with these company gun thugs who had machine guns, had law enforcement, had planes that were dropping motherfucking bombs. Jesus. On the mine workers. And they had this shootout and fired over a million rounds over Blair Mountain, West Virginia.

well President Harding got wind of this had gotten word of what was going on that is 1921 he's thinking holy shit what happened in Russia

is going to happen here we need to prevent a a communist rebellion from happening because he's hearing workers have picked up guns and they're shooting cops they're doing all kinds of shit

we need to send in the U.S. Army, that's what they literally did. They literally deployed the United States Army into southern West Virginia to to oppress the workers and stop this, this rebellion, which they successfully did. I mean, you know, if the U.S. Army comes rolling in, what the hell are you going to do, right? Only 10,000 of you. And a lot of these people were war veterans because World War I had just happened. So, you know, I mean, I'm sure there were some, you know, misguided patriot. motherfuckers that you know thought the army was showing up on their side poor bastards

um but that's conjecture i've not i've not read anything saying such it really goes to show um how when there is explicit class war the side that the cops and the military will almost always take which is the side of the capitalist ruling class and that's been that's been you know shown in history over and over and over again and i think this fast story of radical unionism in the region shows it exactly perfectly because this is exactly what we would expect to happen and this is exactly what happens anytime whether it's working class or black liberation movements anytime a segment of oppressed people stand up in this society to fight back against their rulers the the capitalists and the state come together to

crack down on that movement oh yeah well it's funny you say the state and the capitalists because really, you know, that's just one entity more or less. Really, the state is just the armed wing of the capital. Exactly. You know, if you really think about it, you know, that is the people's army of the bourgeois. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. So that history, you'll never hear that in liberal media.

When these liberal journalist outlets come to you and interview you, all of that, context is whether purposefully or just because they don't understand it themselves, it's left aside. And so to understand the region and understand its current condition, you have to understand the history involved and the radical unionism that took place. It's truly, I mean, I find that whole story extremely fascinating. I'm sure you could go on and talk about more elements of the history of Appalachia, you know, indefinitely. But how has, so moving things into the present, how has de-industrialization and the move away from coal in the last few decades affected the region?

All right. How is the de-industrialization and the move away from coal really affected the region? Well, it started really in the 40s, and the big move was mechanization, was, you know, kind of automation of labor just because of cheaper, more available technologies. And we had an industrial boom post-World War II that, you know, made a lot of that possible. What we saw was at that time in the 40s, we had a major loss of jobs in the region. Well, you know, still coal industry was king still in that area in the 40s. And this was not too long after the UMWA. started gaining power, a lot of political power in these areas, where at the very least, you know, the bourgeois puppet politicians would have to give lip service to the unions, you know.

It's what all the liberal politicians do. But either way, in the 40s, we saw it was tens of thousands, really hundreds of thousands of people leaving the Appalachian region and going to the Midwest where there was a major jobs boom. and they can get into a unique history of organizations like the young patriots and such but really in the 40s Appalachia itself the biggest thing we saw was a lot of people moving out well you know things there were still cold jobs in fact you know a lot of people had moved into these cold boom towns because that's where jobs were you know and in fact a lot of you know a lot of union jobs. Some of my family had moved from states like North Carolina up to southern West Virginia

and deep southwestern Virginia around, you know, a lot of these time frames, you know, because there were some cold jobs in the area. McDow County, West Virginia, which currently has population in the low 20,000 used to have population of damn near 100,000, you know, just because there was so much going on. but over time mechanization has has advanced

more and more and more and in the 70s we started seeing mountain top removal and you know those y'all that don't know the process mount top removal is where they literally blow the fucking tops off mountains they literally blow

them up and then use heavy machinery to to move a lot of that rubble and then dig up the coal seams and a lot of the rubble that's got you know heavy metals and all sorts of good carcinogen and coal dust on it goes into these valley fills and you know a lot of the chemicals they used to wash the coal they you know they dump in these areas what we'll call slurry ponds and that has a major environmental impact you know

gives people cancer, you know, cause birth defects in children, gets into water supply, all kinds of things, kills off wildlife. It's fantastic. You should look into it. But that started killing jobs and, you know, more and more, you know, eventually by the 80s, coal production itself started to go down and natural gas production started to go up. well after the hydraulic fracturing boom you know fracking boom as colloquially known as fracking

we started seeing coal production go even lower and even lower and really in the 80s when we started seeing massive massive drops in employment but there was still you know coal was still significant and actually still is a significant part of the industry By the time I came into this world, December 1995, a lot of coal was gone. A lot of coal jobs were gone, but a lot of coal was gone.

And during the 80s, under Reagan, what we saw was a lot of union busting. A lot of the victories that we had won from the radical unionism of the 1930s and 1920s was starting to go away. you know because there was federal crackdowns and state crackdowns especially in red states like Virginia and Kentucky of union activity in 1989 in my part of Virginia

Pitts and Cole had pissed off UMWA workers so much that I mean I could go on later about the Pitts and Coal strike at 89 but that'd begin a little off topic but the thing is the industrialization started hitting the U.S. really hard

but decline of coal kind of went with that because we're you know if we're producing less steel if we're you know having less coal fired you know things going on

right less industry we're going to not needing as much coal and of course with modern And, you know, with more access to renewable energy and with the more accessibility of cheap natural gas, which, now, there's a lot of natural gas in the region. There's a lot of natural gas wells in the region, but natural gas itself doesn't provide jobs. It provides construction jobs and putting them in, and it provides a handful of maintenance jobs in extraction, you know, basically making sure the oil wells or the gas wells keep going. and so in the 80s they actually thought that natural gas was going to be the new Appalachian industry well sure natural gas took hold there and still there but it didn't really provide a lot of industry

so by the 90s there was already union skepticism that started creeping into the culture it was the new generation one that's pro-union as prior generations the jobs were going, jobs are going, jobs were going, jobs were going. But there were still the token coal jobs there that paid these huge $60,000 a year incomes. And coal, well, let me just give you an idea of the makeup here. Because, you know, I mentioned how the coal industry had controlled, not just through politics, but through the actual infrastructure building of these areas, had controlled the economic development of these areas

they made sure they were dependent kept people there kept people for got the coal out and a lot of them left well they so that they the dependency was still there well the coal jobs

these 60,000 dollar year incomes these people would spend in the local economy because that's just how economics fucking works you know so businesses thrive from it who's going to buy a new car is it somebody who works at walmart no it's somebody who works in a mine who's going to buy new camping equipment at your store it's going to be you know somebody who works in mine well coal jobs or you know the coal industry provides more jobs in non-mining than in mining because you got to transport coal right meaning that there's going to be a job jobs in railroad, there's going to be jobs, a lot of trucking jobs, and driving coal buckets.

There's going to be diesel technician jobs, you know, electrician jobs, things like that, and making sure that coal equipment and coal trucks are running. There's, you know, local construction jobs in your mandatory shutdowns, you know, your regular maintenance of coal-fired power plants in these areas. So that is your entire blue collar middle class in the area is dependent on coal, the entirety in some areas, except for the very small fraction of people who are in logging industry or in natural gas. So these people are spending the economy too.

So we see in some areas like McDowell County, West Virginia, when coal starts to go away more and more, even Walmart starts shutting down. I've never heard of Walmart shutting down. I didn't know it could happen, but, I mean, it happens. And that's because the total economic ripples of taking the coal industry out of that economic context just destroys all other aspects of the economy in the area because they are all one way or another dependent on that coal industry out of that economic context just destroys all other aspects of the economy in the area because they are all one way or another dependent on that coal industry. coal industry. Right. So what we saw was the dependency never went away.

Dependency never went away, but the jobs did. So the Democratic Party in the 90s you know, in or I guess to compete with the Reagan Republicans, these Reagan Democrats like Clinton came along with

their own warped version of liberalism where they were cutting welfare, where they were passing these free trade bills that were killing manufacturing more or less trying to seal the put the nails in the coffin

that Nixon's trade deals and Reagan's deregulation had created so what we started seeing there was Democratic Party was doing less and less for working people

and Appalachia really felt that Because Appalachia was, you know, already pretty socially conservative, but they definitely had some loyalties to Democratic Party. Well, when Democratic Party started, you know, being less and less loyal to poor people, less and less loyal, which they were never loyal. We understand that as leftists. You understand as Appalachians, as just Americans, you know, the Democratic Party is America's, quote, unquote, left. unquote. So when they started pushing right wing, pushing right wing, you know, there was less and less to offer the people of Appalachia. But whereas the Republicans, they were saying,

oh, well, if we just cut down on the environmental regulations, we'll bring coal jobs back. So the Democrat Party was not talking about bringing jobs there so much, but the Republican party was talking about bringing the jobs that already existed or went away. back well who the fuck are you going to vote for right exactly you know and in the 2000s this is what you know the coal industry calls a war on coal but we started saying that environmentalism became a bigger issue or i'm sorry not environmentalism green capitalism right green capitalism became a big deal in the democrat party so you know the the big symbolic thing was attack coal which not against. I'm not against

tacking coal. I am against you know not investing in people that are dependent on an industry you know be less dependent on that industry. There's not enough local wealth to you know pick yourself up by bootstraps and just put new

industry there. If you ain't got shoes how the hell are you going to pick yourself up by the bootstraps you know what I'm saying? Exactly. So started getting more and more right wing so I think the industrial not only made the area poor because the service industry is collapsing, the blue-collar jobs were going away, you know, which it left, basically the only large sectors of middle class you have down there are either these blue-collar jobs, which, like I said, you know, we know their situation. And then the medical field, which medical field is still going strong in that area, but it pays less than other parts of the country.

which I think is probably proportionate because the cost living in these areas is so much lower but the fact is you know if you're not in nursing you know if you're not doing something like that you're you're pretty much going to either leave be poor or take some kind of niche job doing something you know so or like be a teacher you could be a teacher in that area you know just Like anywhere, every place in the U.S. has schools, every place in the U.S. has things like that. So along with increased poverty, increased unemployment, lowered wages, we started saying politics go more right-wing. It's kind of this shitstorm, basically, is what the industrialization did to us. And this strange, strange pro-coal rhetoric, this Friends of Coal bullshit.

you know to where it's almost become more about defending coal the rhetoric has been than it has been about defending workers and I'd say that's the biggest thing industrialization did and that's scary as shit right and there's a distinction there when they say that they're defending coal when the Republicans talk about bringing back coal jobs you know the Republican platform is a pro-corporate angle on that so when they talk about that they're thinking about the corporate interest that involved and how they can win a short-term election by convincing people in the region they're going to do this. On the other hand, the Democratic Party totally abandoned working people. It was never

really in their corner, but over the last few decades have totally abandoned them and turned to this quote-unquote ethical green capitalism, which we all know is bullshit. So both parties completely abandoned the working class. And now you have a figure like Trump, who rises from the ashes comes into the coal areas of the country and does this bullshit thing where he promises to bring back coal jobs. The statistics show that that did resonate with some, you know, a large percentage of the people in that area. In your opinion, why did that, why did that Trumpian sort of pitch catch on in the region?

I would really say the big thing is Trump, and I'll admit to this, you know, this is something I'll admit to. Trump doesn't talk like a politician. He talks like you and I. He talks very crude, very crass, very to the, well, very to the point in his own kind of fucked up way, but he uses small words. He uses layman's terms. He is seen as an outsider by a lot of people.

You know, Appalachia, and the U.S. as a whole, Appalach is not extremely exceptional to this. But Appalachia is sick of business as usual status quo politics. They're sick of it. And for a lot of people, Trump kind of embodied that non-status quo, you know, I'm going to do what I like. You know, fuck the Democrat and Republican Party's will kind of attitude. And that, you know, made a lot of people kind of believe. he's saying it's not just Appalachian people

but American people were like hey he's not a bullshitter which we all know that his his layman speak is bullshit you know we know that he it's just lying he knows exactly what he's doing yeah people think Trump's just unintelligent no Trump's really fucking

smart and we underestimate him he knows exactly what he's doing but he specifically addressed coal jobs he specifically did it and a lot of the Republican candidates really didn't and the ones that did seemed very kind of wishy-washy status quo. So this person that seems like a to-the-point, you know,

I'm not going to get caught up in the bureaucratic bullshit. A person comes in and says, I'll bring back coal. And then he says enthusiastically, you know, a lot of people believe him, but a lot of people want to believe him. He's saying what they want to hear. Exactly. He's saying the way they want to hear it. and that really stood out.

Now, he did the same thing in the Rust Belt with manufacturing jobs. He said, oh, yeah, we'll repeal NAFTA. We're going to, you know, put the boot in China's ass, and we're going to get all your jobs back. And guess what? You know, Michigan and Pennsylvania voted for him, too, so let's not forget that. Appalachia overwhelmingly went for it,

but Appalach is also more dependent on those industries. Appalachia is more white, so some of the other shit that Trump said isn't as scary to them as it is to a lot of people in Michigan, Pennsylvania, but guess what? They still went for Trump. So that's a big thing. Now that Trump's been in office for a while, and none of these things are coming to fruition, and for the people that do pay attention, he's just more or less carrying out this corporatist, far right wing free market fundamentalism, you know, huge

cut tax breaks for the rich, filling his department with Goldman Sachs characters. I mean, he's just another perpetuation of neoliberalism that hurts the Rust Belt and that hurts Appalachia. Have you seen an increase or decrease in support for Trump in your area since

he's had time to do nothing? I've heard a few people say they regretted voting for the jackass. That's, you know, a lot of times the exact words some people would use but um for the most part some people waiting for the other shoe to drop and another thing and this this is something that people aren't really talking about they need to talk about is some coal jobs have come back and it's not because of anything trump did but it's because a lot of these coal jobs that the companies could be putting out there

they're not putting out there they intentionally hold on to and open up at politically opportune times to basically sort of manipulate people to vote in the way they won't anytime a Democrat would win an election they would start laying people off anytime a Republican will win an election they would start hiring more people and

proving more mining permits so we have had more mining permits actually open up we've actually seen that And we saw it in November and December before Trump even took office. We saw that happen. As soon as he won, we started seeing them open up. And you ask people in, you know, but see, there's no, there's no economic boom from it, though. It's not what he promised.

It's still the same conditions, but there's enough token jobs to say, oh, look, he's doing something. so it's not as big of a as big of a disappointment as we're all kind of expecting it to be right now I think when he starts doing major cuts specifically to the region I think is when we're going to start feeling it but a lot of people waiting for the other shoe drop you know a lot of people are finding out he was bullshit

a lot of people aren't surprised a lot of people that voted for him you know like okay well he's just another fucking republic you know but really unless he does something significant to specifically fuck over Appalach we're probably going to see a repeat in four years but in a way there's been a shift a small shift in a lot of people that voted for him away from from Trump but it's mostly been because of the the questionable shit he's been doing lately the whole fire and Comey thing and that and the others you know getting to some people

but not so many others right yeah absolutely and a lot of what Trump ran on was this this racial this ethno-nationalist racial sort of platform it was pretty

damn explicit it played well with lots of parts of the country and there are stereotypes about the region you know Appalachia that kind of play up this notion of like hillbillies are racist sort of thing so how big of a problem is racism in the area and how do politicians and pundits use race as a wedge to split up and weaken the working class well what we really see is and i will say this hillbillies are white hillbillies

i should clarify because people have this misconception oh hillbillies are white no because I just want to clarify anytime Appalachia as a region and as a culture suffers it is not just white Appalachians that feel it. It's black Appalachians, it's Latinax Appalachians, it's all kinds of people.

Right. So you just want to put that out there. But all of white America is racist. All of it. Appalachia is no exception. So as far as hillbillies are a racist, yes, white hillbillies are

racist. It's more in a systematic sense than anything, but what we do see is in rural areas and largely white areas. There is a little, there's more of a racist, you know, echo chamber, you know, of there, there's not enough people calling out, you know, the, some, some of the, some of the fringe hardcore bigots. You know, there's not enough, you know, because, again, you can ignore racism if you're white. You can look the other way. And it's not blatant enough you won't look.

The racism has always been used to divide the working class, but because the region is so overwhelmingly white, because the region is, you know, there is a class thing because the white working class, their racism manifests itself in a more direct manner. because we've always been the foot soldiers of racist

depression. You know, we've been the people that have been getting our hands dirty for the white middle class, the white laborer stock scene petite bourgeois, we've been the ones doing that while at the same time have been the scapegoats

for their scapegoats for racism. So when I talk about Apple, Hillbillies aren't racist like everybody says. Well, I'm not saying that hillbillies aren't racist. What I am saying is, and I mean this wholeheartedly, I am saying that we are scapegoats.

We are, you know, a lot of the racism is blamed on us and not society as a whole. But racism in our area and in a lot of areas where there isn't that, politically correct kind of class classness about it. Racism is more direct. Racism is more open. But in all honesty, from what I hear

anecdotally from people in New York, what I hear anecdotal from people in Portland, all these areas outside of the South, you know, there is open racism in these areas. Absolutely. And there's less ignorance about race you'd figure, right? Just because of diversity.

But no, they're segregated in those areas too. There's still racial ignorance in a lot of the country. But what is? Appalach lacks certain kind of political correctness. But Appalachians no more racist. Appalachians are no more individually racist than other parts of the country. I've read some statistics. It was like in 2016, 99, I repeat, 99% of school children in New York City schools who were handcuffed were black or Latinx.

99%. And, you know, when I, you know, I'm like New York, that's a weird way of spelling Appalachian. No, you know, that's, it's, it's an American problem. But because it is so white, there are segments of the Appalachian population that feel as if they're, they don't belong and there's a media whitewashing of Appalachia you know and as far as these issues of job outsourcing like the poor white community is fed certain lies you know by media by politicians by a lot of people that a lot of the problems that they face are because of minorities and they do think the people in their situation that are of different colors and

different cultures are more or less put themselves there what media tells us about black folks that they're lazy what they tell us because these poor white people don't see their own privilege they have privilege but they see you know a lot of people see oh well I'm poor I'm proof that white privilege don't exist what they see is okay we're just poor as them but we're not in prison like they are we're poor like them we're not we don't have the gang violence problem they have you know and when you have when when you're smart enough and informed enough to see these patterns but you're not there enough to see the uh the oppression firsthand you start to think well what are they doing wrong what are we doing

right that they're not right you know and they're not doing anything more right because guess what drug crime is just as much of a problem in Appalachia as it is in communities of color that are just as poor and special ones that are poorer property crime is just so much of a problem in Appalachia as other areas violent crime's not because guess what there's not population density right but what we also see is why aren't they locked up as much well white people aren't getting the same kind of prison sentences that black folks are, that Latin folks are. There's also not the police repression. In fact is, poor Appalachian communities are policed by Appalachians.

The fact is, the cops in Dickinson County, I guarantee you all or most of them are from Dickinson County. these people in your community that at least have a stake in keeping you know somewhat giving some community because they see it as their community

now they still enforce capitalist law don't get me wrong I'm not saying ooh you know cops are good as long as they're in their communities no that's not what I'm saying at all but I'm saying that they are they treat it differently they don't treat it

as if they're an occupying army like a lot of big city police do because cops who are not from these areas or police in these areas

so that's a lie and a lot of these people do believe that they don't see that the reason they're doing somewhat better as far as some things

isn't because they're choosing to do better it's because they're not facing some of the same obstacles but because they do face other obstacles because college

is just as inaccessible for a lot of these people, you know, or is not just as, but close to similarly inaccessible to a lot of these people because goods still are expensive because they still live in food deserts because these schools are still failing. These schools in these areas are still being consolidated and shut down. They're lacking funding because there is the drug addiction problem because there is the obesity and the health

Christ because there's a low life expectancy if you look at the health statistics of a lot of Central Appalach communities they look like the health statistics of minority communities in the U.S. So there's also a resentment a racial resentment that poor black folks and poor

people of color in general are getting more attention. So there's there's a lot of racism to it. And these politicians know it. Jim Webb, a Virginia politician, even made so bold and so racist of a statement as affirmative action is racist against white folks, against poor white folks. And that does, that message really does speak to a lot of struggling white people in Appalachia.

so the system pits poor white folks against poor people color poor white folks are 40% of poverty statistics so they're less than half the poor people but there's still these single large group of poor people if you just get them pitted against everybody else you've got half the working class pitted against each other already so racism is used racism is a major problem

but again racism isn't what liberals say it is. Liberals say it's a moral issue that has to have individual prejudice. And when you get into that, you see these white insecurities you see across the nation in white areas that have

when put in similar situations. You know, you really see it. And there's a lot more effort put into keeping the poor white you are. There's more effort put into making sure that you don't identify with people who live more similarly to you. That you don't look at, hey, I'm standing the same

you know, welfare line, same social security line as a person with different color. They don't want you to look at that. They want you to think, oh, I'm the exception. he's the rule. Exactly. So I think when we do talk about people misunderstanding our racism, you know, we can't ignore the fact that we are still racist and we still have things we need to work on.

But when we talk about liberal racism, what liberals understanding of racism, Appalach is not exceptional. Appalach is not super racist in those regards. It's not that you go to Appalach and it's nothing but fucking burning crosses and people hurling around the inward.

It's just not that. That's not an accurate depiction. You have people like that and because they're in a white area there is like I said the echo chamber effective they feel more open about doing these things

but you look at hate crime statistics they're really high in non-appalachian areas is welcome to america right right and i think the way you laid it out right there is is so perfect but it's that that that perspective on racism is never ever ever heard you cannot turn on any channel and hear that complex nuanced where the accountability is taken class is brought into it that that whole discussion never happens. Entire region of people are just dismissed as dumb hillbillies or racist voting against their own interest. And anybody listening to this, I hope this allows you to see through that even more than you probably already do and see the bullshit and see the way all people are framed

and divided so that the working class kind of eats its own tail. But I do want to ask you this question. We're well over an hour at this point. So I'll just ask a couple more questions, but I love this conversation, so I have to get these out. What do you think would happen if, and we all know that Republicans suck and the Democrats suck, if there was a truly progressive in like the social sense, like, you know, anti-racist, of course, and hardcore socialist economic platform, or they talked about the working class and explicitly leftist terms, do you think that that would resonate in Appalachia, especially if that party was able to connect, the present condition of the working class to that long history of unionism, or do you think

the social conservatism is so strong that a socialist message wouldn't get any real foothold in the area? Okay, well, that's a very good question that I've not been asked yet, so I'm, you know, I'm kind of blushing. I'm happy to hear that question. But there's a complex answer to that. thing is using explicitly socialist terms you're not going to get that going on you have a lot of

a long military tradition a lot of these families you have a lot of patriotism in these areas and you know Appalachia has an older population than a lot of areas because you've had this brain drain you've had a lot of the young people leaving to

to get more opportunities so you have a lot more people in Appalachia who were alive during the Cold War and who socialism is a dirty word for and especially communism is a dirty word for so that is a factor that's a significant factor but when you start talking about the issues themselves independent from using terms like seize the means of production and shit like that it does resonate with people it does I remember I was a last summer over at a party on Bad Ridge over in Dickinson County, Virginia. And I was, you know, around some of my family, a lot of my stepfamily, I mean.

And I was talking my stepsisters' boyfriends, one of his relatives, I don't know who it was, if it was, if it was his cousin or what it was, but he was talking about Trump. And he's all in favor of Trump. And, you know, we were getting into it and shit. He was talking about how horrible Obamacare was. And then he said something that really stood out to me. He said, I don't even know why they're forcing us to pay for insurance anyways. That's bullshit.

That's come out of our taxes. And then I just stopped talking. I said, yeah, I fucking agree with you. Fuck Obama. You know. But we get these people talking about the issues themselves, especially when you draw from their history of radical union activism. You know, there's Gen Xers and baby boomers. who were in Pittston Cold Strike of 1989.

But I didn't get to talk about, but got to mention, there were people that were allowed for that. There were people that remember, and what they'll talk about is back when it was our party, back when it was the workers party, which never was. But, you know, talking about the Democrats, you know, when you get talking like that, when you say workers' liberation or workers'

instead of socialism, you do resonate with people. But with a young generation, special with Bernie Sanders, socialism isn't necessarily a dirty word. It might be a dirtier word in Appalachia in other areas because it is more conservative culturally. Because when you live in a smaller area, family influence, community influence has more meaning. In cities, you can be more anonymous.

you can be kind of not giving a damn a whole lot, you know, who hates you? Because you don't hurt as much socially, you know, from you don't lose your entire support systems if you're, if you're, you know, if you're disagreeing with family, you know, you don't take, you're not an atheist taking your kids to church because it makes their mamma happy, your mom happy, doesn't, you know. So in Appalachia, you do have that problem. but really in all the global rural areas you see that you there is still that anti-communism there is still that red scare that that's a major problem but Appalachians won't they just want job they just want to have a life they don't want a lot of them don't want to get rich they want to be able to work and have a family or just work there's a lot of them don't want a family there's a lot of people that just

want to be free from capitalist depression. There's people that want to be out of poverty. And there's a lot of people that have this kind of nostalgia. They go on nostalgia trips. We just want

like, we want things, quote unquote, like we had it. They want to be able to just get a job and get a blue collar job as if they still, you know, really were prevalent and just be able to get a single income household

if they wanted one you know they that where that was a possibility and I think if you like Bernie Sanders when he went to McDowell County West Virginia and did his town hall 80% of those people in that crowd were Trump supporters

and they were digging everything he was saying or at least most things he was saying when he was talking about we need health care access out here they were like hell yeah when he was saying you know we need stronger unions more jobs like that they were like hell yeah you know when he was saying these things they were all for

but he can't just come in and say you know oh we need socialism you know sees the means har har har tank you this thing it won't resonate right it just won't so it's complicated but at the young generation who has internet the young generation who

has silently these more radical opinions and this acceptance of socialism if these are the ones to get organized and get around doing the canvassing getting around to the community building the activism you really can have

I think change in Appalachia but it does need to be eased into and I'm not going to be so pessimistic but it will take a good bit of the baby boomers a lot of them dying off I love them to death but you know when you've felt the same way

for 60 70 years a lot of people will like some people will change a lot of them will and we still put forth the effort to reach out to them and definitely cover them but you know you're not going to get support from a lot of them but if you build the information now

make socialism not a dirty word and make the ideas dominant in the region again you really could have socialist change i think if you had like you're saying this uh this more progressive you know platform for the democratic party you know you you could reach out to a lot of them especially the young people yeah well all right nick um thank you so much for coming on it's i had a lot more questions to get to maybe i can have you come on again and we can go through

some of those other questions but you've been a great guess before we before we wrap up are Are there any recommendations that you would give books, articles, films, anything, that people who want to learn more about the history of the region that they could turn to to educate themselves a little bit further? Okay, I think probably the best thing to do as far as that goes is there's this documentary that I just got on Netflix recently, it's called Blood on the Mountain. That will give you a lot of perspective, a lot of perspective. It's on Netflix.

A lot of y'all ain't got Netflix. I don't know if there's any plays you can pirate copies online, but I encourage you to do so. Or, hell, you know, PM me and I could find somebody that's got a Netflix password, you know, send me a dollar here and there. I can make it happen. Oh, well, I can't say that on the air, I guess I can't say. But shit, you get the idea.

There's also this documentary, 1970. Harlan County USA that God, it's classic. You get to see coal labor struggle, radical unionism in the 1970s

in action. You get to see company gun thugs literally shooting at people in the fucking documentary watching. Watch Harlem County USA. It's not on Netflix,

or at least wasn't last time I checked. The only times I've seen it have been the times here and there where YouTube ain't taking it off so you could probably look it up now, it might not be there, look it up tomorrow it'll be there, who knows,

but a Harlan County USA is one to watch. As far as reading material, well, I can't think of anything off top of my head but start with blood on the mountain in Harlan County USA and a lot of non-Appalachian leftists will

definitely, I think kind of connect with these i'd hope all right well you have a comrade here in Nebraska this has been a hell of a conversation I can't wait for my for my audience to hear this because this is a perspective that just never gets any hearing so you you have a friend and a comrade here and thank you so much for coming on I look forward to maybe you coming back on some time and going to some of these other details even deeper well thank you uh uh bread I really appreciate that well solidarity you've got a comrade here in Virginia and I appreciate you giving me a platform

to spew my bullshit absolutely solidarity to you too talk to you later all right lightning splits the sky into one side's me and one side's you rain, the streaks across the glass It's quiet through the underpass I love to hear them drivers sing And I love the sound of that big machine I hear the wind and I hear the rain and I'd love to watch the storm from the window of the train

Conductor's coming An hour to the closest town I know that I am getting old I feel the rainstorm in my bones I love to hear them drivers sing And I love to sound of that big machine I hear the wind tonight the rain and I love to watch the storm from the window to train

We're going to be able to be. Lightning splits the sky in two One side's me and one side's you Rain the streaks across the glass It's quiet through the underpass Thinking what you said was true How I always run away from you. away from you

I love to hear them drivers sing I love the sound of that big machine I hear the wind and I hear the rain I love to watch the storm from the window of a train I don't know.