Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 2: Who Gets To Save Appalachia? (w/ special guest: Willa Johnson)

Episode Date: March 1, 2017

For round two, we examine the legacy of anti-poverty work in Appalachia. Also, big shouts to dem Mary Kay ladies pushing those pink caddies. Dedicated to the memory of our forest granny, Ms. Carol Judy.

The one, you know, icon of this whole thing is something that I actually love. And when I see them, they always make me smile so big. It's that pink Cadillac. For the women who've sold. You had to sell like $100,000 worth of Avon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you get a pink fucking Cadillac. That's fucking tight.

That is pretty tight. Every time I see that pink Cadillac, I'm like, you baby, you. You were on the corner with your trunk pop just fucking hustling running that running it out of the trunk

and I'm so fucking proud of you and you oh you deserve that oh yeah that's some G ass shit though it's kind of like selling tapes out of the like all the rappers

in the south were like millionaires before they even got records they sold 2 million CDs basically like what I do with our podcast I sit out there in the corner

on Main Street and just like hey you heard that new TWP? You want this hot fire? You want this hot fire? Bars, baby, bars! I tell that bitch to come comfort me I swear these niggas is under me That hate and the devil keep jumping me Bankrolls on me, keep me company We do the most, yeah, pull up and ghost Yeah, my diamonds a choker Holding a fire with no holster Rip the ruler, diamond cooler This a roller, not a mueller Dabbing on him like the usual

Magic with the brick, do voodoo Courtside with a bad bitch Then I send the bitch through Uber I'm young and rich and plus I'm bougie I'm not stupid so I keep the Uzi Mentees on records, got back ass on packets So my money makin' my back ache You niggas got a low act rate We frontin' off, yeah that way Fat cookie blunt in the ashtray Two bitches just nassin' on smash day Hop in the lim have a drag race I let them birds take a bath babe Raindrops, drop top, smokin' on cookin' a hot box Fuckin' on your bitch, yeah, thot, thot, thot Cookin' up dope in the crock pot, pot

We came from nothin' to somethin', nigga I don't trust nobody, grip the trigger Call up the gang and they come and get yanked Cry me a river, give you a tissue My bitch is bad and bougie Cookin' up dope with a Uzi My niggas is savage, ruthless. We got 30s and 100s too. My bitch is bad and bougie. Cooking up dough with a ooze. My niggas is savage, ruthless.

We got 30s and 100s too. Okay, so this is y'all's mic. You got a fancy mic. And so when you're talking... Did you steal this? No. No. And so when you're talking. Did you steal this? No. That's the SLR mic.

That's your response to hotter than a pistol. Gotta look like somebody that steals stuff. What pot shop did you get that from? Yeah, where the hell? All right, so I've been trying to think about how to open this conversation. But right before you came, I was thinking about, this is probably a good week to talk about the, I don't know if you want to call it a movement or just a trend, something that's hot right now, is saving Appalachia. This has been a trend since 1960, I think. You say this like it's a new thing.

I think the sexiness comes and goes of it though like right yeah yeah the sexiness comes and goes because the saving the savior part it incorporates all these different parts of our sort of national psyche so like for example you've got like the local foods thing you know what i'm saying like and that has a very sort of like liberal cosmopolitan i don't know it's like it's like this sort of cosmopolitan idea that yearns for a sort of rural facade earnestness to it yeah yeah yeah yeah even though we legit have the best farmer's market in the region we have a fucking great farmer's market it's bad as hell it's good anytime someone comes to visit from out of town on a Saturday in the summer, I am like a fucking peacock. I run them down to the farmer's market.

I'm like, look at our farmer's market. I did the same shit. I just looked at an apartment and was like, this is walking distance to the farmer's market. We have city things. Thinking about the steps I would take and how easy it would be to get there. And I was like, it was a selling point for me to live in a windowless apartment. Yeah.

You can go down there and you can get on the bike and make your own smoothie. Oh my god. No, the best shit ever, probably the best Snapchat I've ever sent into the world was of some little boy riding the shit out of that bike and Debbie Owens just like squalling

Go Bubby! Go Bubby! Go! And he's trying to make that fucking smoothie. Oh my god, I couldn't take it. There's nothing better than a smoothie that you've worked your ass off to grind up the ice and the fruit. Yeah, you earned it. You earned that motherfucker. Yeah. No. So maybe that's you earned it. You earned that motherfucker. Yeah.

No. So maybe that's a bad example. You're right. Let's start from the top. I just want the sunny face here a little. No, you're right. It has been hot since 1960. But in the age of social media,

in which you can develop your own sort of like personal brand, you can sort of brand yourself as a savior yeah and well and i think it's also relates to branding yourself as as like country or not or rule is or not and that comes and goes that's cool tom has said this the best where he talks about you know the same women that he was trying to pick up five years ago they would have said they were from cincinnati and now they're from like hey y'all breathitt county baby kentucky but they act like they're from breathitt now they're from the bourbon trail yeah it was it was it was uh it was very much considered day class in 2003 to say you were from Kentucky. You were from Cincinnati.

It didn't matter. My whole theory on the coming and going of saving Appalachia always is like America wants to feel better about itself. So like, you know, Vietnam War happens and everybody's like mad and there's civil rights issues that are taking over the news. And so everybody's like, but look at the poor people issues that are taking over the news and so everybody's like but look at the poor people in Kentucky we should do a war on poverty there

and so like you kind of shift gears and then the economy collapses in 2004 and everybody's like worried about whether or not they can keep

their three cars and two houses and everybody's like but Diane Sawyer should do a Children of the Mountains special right

you're right when the shit hits the fan they always turn the camera back on. Yeah. Yeah. A crisis needs to scapegoat. That's why the white working class, like we were talking about last week, that's why this was such a big thing in the election.

In the liberal psyche. Yeah. On election night, like I saw it, like on election night, they started talking about rural America and they were like pulling up those rural counties and talking about them. And I was like, oh, God. Here we go. We're going to be blamed for Trump. Well, and so in this age of sort of neoliberalism where you can create your own brand,

you can create your own sort of online brand, I feel like as a result of that, you get these really sexy ideas. So whether they're Silicon Holler, you know, like Hal Rogers. Hal Rogers ideas. You know, you get these you can get these very sexy ideas that

like, they're trying to mirror an aspect of American culture, but they're telling us, they're telling Eastern Kentuckians like, if you want to be a part of the national economy and a part of our society, you have to get up to our level. And like cecilia con holler is it is an example of that you know what it reminds me a lot of do you remember when like we were growing up in the church and will i i don't

know what your religious macro baptist officially okay you may have experienced this too then but do you remember like when the contemporary Christian movement tried to commodify like every aspect of culture so you didn't have like music from artists that happen to be Christians you had like Christian pimps like yes like southern-style rap music right stuff then you had like the Christian like indie rock kind of guys and it was just like putting a great spin on that yeah like it's yeah exactly on the right thing but I feel like it's the same thing with the appalachian thing it's just like they just take a concept and try to put like a country veneer to it but we suck all the fun out of it right you can have silicon holler you all can learn to code but we want you to code for like medical

billing if you don't know what's office this idea is so pervasive in our national discourse and so pervasive in the way we look at economic development. We are so wedded to the idea of like your value being tied to your labor that we can't just come to the obvious conclusion, which is just give people money. Just give people a basic income, give them free health care and a job guarantee. You know what I mean? Like we have the economy and the government to do it. Yeah. And don't ever let nobody tell you they can't do that.

Yeah. It can be done. Yeah. If we just, we've talked about this before, if we just taxed adequately just the offshore accounts that belong to U.S. citizens, we could fully fund all education. You get a free PhD. We could fully fund all of our medical services, all the things. Well, like the problem is, is once you start talking about those things, policy solutions and sort of collective liberation, like that's the operative word here, collective. Like people don't like to, you know,

they would much rather like buy into this sort of like venture capital idea of progress, rather than solidarity, rather than working with. Which is why Mark fucking Cuban's going to be the next Democratic president. Oh God. You also can't deny the realities of reparations when you get into that conversation

and that shuts down. Liberals just lose all their shit. Oh yeah. At the thought of reparations when you get into that conversation and that shuts down liberals just lose all their shit oh yeah at the thought of reparations right to people who built this because again it's the neoliberal idea like you have to work to have value you know you had your you have to create profit to have value we can't just give people it's like why not and reparations would have to admit the egregious realities of slavery which is what they don't want to confront and other realities today right no well um so okay so so like where to go from there um i'm supposed to be where were you all doing before i got here

well we were talking about okay so like i was talking about this idea like in how pike county they're going to put this greenhouse so they're going to build this greenhouse that's going to employ like 125 people they're getting like millions of dollars in capital investment and they're going to like there's a quote from matt bevin saying that like kentucky is located within a one-day drive of 65 percent of like u.s farm farmers markets and other markets, vendors markets. And like, therefore, it doesn't make any sense why we shouldn't be doing something like this. But there's a couple problems with it. It's just like, people were talking about it online, like, they're gonna have a really hard time competing with other farms and other they're gonna have a

real hard time like getting their food to market and all that. And it just got me thinking. Again, it's just one of those fucking things where we treat employing people, we treat giving people actual living standards as this thing that they have to achieve. Or it's this big idea that we bring down from big corporate America, and we're just bringing it down here to you for you to try on miniature. And it doesn't actually liberate anybody. It doesn't actually empower anyone. I don't know.

It teaches them a lesson. That hard work. Work hard enough. If you work hard. Bootstraps. I'm sorry, I totally took it. Is it a program for the out-of-work minors? No, it's... I'm impressed. I'm took it. Is it a program for the out-of-work minors? No, it's...

I'm impressed then. It's some company called App Harvest. I just wonder if they are using the quintessential rule of three and multiplying every job by three and that's the number we're getting. You might as well divide

any job number you hear around here by three. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. It's the silicon hauler. It's this kind of thing. It's a prison. You know what I'm saying? It's always a big idea and there's always a group of individuals that sort of

like... Why are y'all laughing? Is that big? No, it's perfect. We're with you. It's not. we can't think of a egalitarian society. It's always got to be, well, with the rise, if the tide's rising, then all the boats rise with it. Right, right, right, right, right. I mean, I think this is a necessary, it's a necessary idea that we have to kill.

I mean, like literally, if we're talking about empowerment and if we're talking about collective liberation, we have to dispense of this idea that progress and empowerment is going to be brought to us from the one big idea. Yeah, from the one big idea, the prison or the tech company or the Silicon Holler or whatever. Literally, everything we go to,

everything you read talks about like your economy is not going to be successful if it's diverse and small like you have to make smaller positions you have to do more more have more variety and smaller workforces in each one of those and then literally every single thing i've ever been a part of we walk away we're like how do we make that mass like how do we hire more like how do we make that to scale to scale right right i'm sure someone was like a greenhouse would be amazing and could provide like 10 good jobs and they're like 120 we can do it and like we just can't keep it and so then it's just another big mass building that will i hope it does well but it will probably sit empty. Well, also the other, and you know,

I'm no economist, but I play one on the internet from time to time. I'm not an economist, but I'm an optimist. I'm an optimist. In the words of George Bush. Oh, Lord. But we can come up with every cute little thing to do to diversify the economy.

But if wages remain stagnant, it's all for naught. I say this all the time when I'm out stumping whatever local office I'm running for all the time. If you could create 500 fucking jobs,

you could have 100% employment in Letcher County, but if everybody's getting paid $700 a quarter, you're just creating 30,000 poor people. Yeah, back on the note of the one big idea. I'm sorry. Me and Matt Carter have always had this joke that to create jobs, we're going to write a grant

to haul a bunch of concrete up to High Rock and then fill in every single crack and make it smooth as a baby's ass. High Rock, just smooth as an ass. Just like High Rock. Just smooth as an egg. Just like over decades. That's how we're

creating jobs. But it kind of gets that ridiculous sometimes I feel like. Like the sort of myth of the one big idea. But the thing is that a lot of these people mean well, like they're not like malicious. They're not trying to exploit people. But again, though, it's just.

What the hell? As a back row Baptist, they tell me it's paved with good intentions. Well, I'm just like I'm thinking a lot about like like today I was supposed to talk to somebody about like the narrative of the brain drain of Appalachia, which dear God, if I have to give one more interview about that, I'm going to scream. Like, it's exactly like we are creating like these positions and these jobs that

people don't want to do. We're making them low wage so they can barely afford to do them. And then we're like, well, we don't understand why you don't want to stay here. Right. Or if you do stay here, then like we put you forward constantly as the bright, shining example.

And to the point where you just feel tokenized. Like. Exactly. And you continue to use this brain drain so that and this narrative about all of our brightest minds leaving young people being our biggest export. And so the young people who are here are just like well what the fuck who the fuck am i what the fuck am i doing over here exactly what i think is is what the effect of that and it's it's just like this tfa article that was going around this week you know the guy goes in the classroom and he asked this loaded

ass question it's like how many y'all can see your life for yourself in hazard and like of course no fucking hands go up because every kid whether whether you're from Hazard or fucking Huntington Beach, has a contentious relationship with the place they grew up in. And they knew what he was getting at. They're not fucking stupid. He didn't go in there to a bunch of doe-eyed fucking babies. They knew what the fuck he was getting at, and they probably raised their damn hands to get him to shut the fuck up and leave. Right, right, right, right, right. But it's just like...

But I digress. hands to get them to shut the fuck up and leave. Right, right, right, right. But it's just like, but it's so like, you know, if like, nobody wants to like raise their hand to that kid because nobody wants to be like, you know, the person that like never got out, you know what I mean? And that's just not, that's not just an Eastern Kentucky thing, that's an everywhere. Right. But I guarantee if he had like sat down with any

of those kids and said, if I gave you an unlimited bank account, what would you create in your bank account what would you create in your downtown or what would you create in your community they could tell you like five things that at night they've laid there in bed thinking i really wish this was here this place wouldn't be so bad yeah they could tell you those things but that's not the question you ask right you ask them can they see a future in the town they live in now and the answer is we're living here and sometimes we don't see it like it's you you can't it's hard to see you're just asking them to not imagine anything better like you're just asking them to stay in the same thing right right which kind of also goes to reinforce

like their like ingrained sense of self-doubt and like kind of like that sort of sheepishness they have about who they are you know what i mean like because the implication is you are not you are other yeah yeah yeah well the whole the fucking title of the whole article is stereotype right nicks the stereotypes it is this total assimilationist argument that like they can't just be who they are normal fucking teenagers right teenagers right worried about prom right and can we just exist in the fucking world yeah i'll never forget one time being in new york i was like 21 and we went up with the film and it was like one of the first times like i had that moment of someone being like you're uh like being othered about appalachia that's because mostly i hadn't traveled outside of Appalachia,

you know, like Tennessee, but we went and like, we were talking about our film and this woman in the audience was like, congratulations for being able to speak so well about this topic. And just like, I'm sure you all are such shining examples in your community. It was like bragging on us.

And Brittany was with me and Brittany was like, we're not like, like we're not like like we're not exceptions to our community like we're just a part of the community everyone else can talk to you about the same thing like it's not it's and that's that's whenever I read that article that's what I felt like these kids are not exceptions like they're great kids there's like tons more behind them they're not breaking stereotypes they're just kids right they're kids who want to like have a cool job when they grow up right yeah that's it yeah you're absolutely right but if you're teach for america uh to to get to that point you would have

to really question some of the sort of neoliberal underpinnings of every single one of our relationships and the power dynamics in communities and how we value human beings. And they're not going to do that because they're very corporatized. They are a corporation. They are a corporation. And the whole reason they're here is because of the stereotype. They want to save Apple Eye? That's literally, they have to lean on this frame because it's the whole reason they're needed here that's why we need them and we shouldn't

probably maybe i'm the token for any people out there who want to make the world a better place but come from a very privileged place of doing it it's it's just like i came here as a as a vista you know what i mean a sort of white savior or whatever. Did you wear the polo? Do I what? Did you wear the polo? I did have a polo. Hell yeah, I wore that shit at least once on Martin Luther King Day.

But, you know, I think there's a lot of people like that that might have, like, came here under those auspices, but that, like, even a lot of the TFA-ers, even some of the ones that were quoted in that article, I thought had, you know, good things to say, even though whoever wrote the article made them sound really shitty. But, you know, I think there's been plenty of people come through the ranks that we kind of adopted as our own. Yeah, I don't think the problem is ever the individual. No, no, absolutely not. No, I mean, I think, you know, as people who don't think the problem is ever the individual. No. No, absolutely not. No, I mean, I think, you know, as people who don't believe there needs to be a wall along the southern fucking border,

we believe migration is good and natural, human migration, animal migration. Like, I like, you know. You should be able to go wherever the fuck you want. No passports, baby. And Watsburg, yeah, no borders, no fucking states. Yeah, exactly. That's my own. Exactly.

Well, whatever. Yeah, no borders, no fucking states. Exactly. That's my own. Exactly. Whatever. But Wattsburg would be a really boring place if we didn't have this revolving door of personalities and skills and quirks. I mean, who would we make fun of? Senses of humor. Exactly. Who would we hit on downtown? I don't know. Yeah.

Right. Well, I think that you just gotta you just gotta be a socialist but what i what i really do mean though is that like if you're really trying to if you're really getting involved in involved in a program that is predicated on the idea of waging war on poverty or reforming education from this very corporate standpoint, you have to understand that... It can't be market solutions.

Yeah. You have to understand that the literal definition of your job precludes a sort of empowerment that is the only answer to liberation. There's a really great... Speaking of Teach for America, there's a really great Mindy Kaling quote in one of her books.

I'm going to quote Mindy Kaling. Yes. Where she like talks about Teach for America and how she just assumes they're all very eager and like to play Frisbee on the weekends. And so. In my experience with TFAs, that's been pretty true. Right.

The stereotype like kind of plays out in my head now whenever someone says they're TFA and like you play frisbee on the weekends. Ultimate frisbee. I think he literally did play sand volleyball with them on the weekends. It's true. Literally, yeah. Who are we to talk shit?

Hazard. It was probably full of cats, stray cats using that, by the way. There's sort of doubt in my mind that there's like lots of shit in that sand and we stepped on a lot of cat shit and cat pee the weird okay so the weird part about this though is that like you can sort of see tfa on the same spectrum as the vistas that came here during the war on poverty but it is a really weird thing to think about how like we once lived in a society that used to try to use government as this mechanism to fix problems with society, you know, fix poverty or whatever. And I guess the TFA thing is sort of predicated on the same

notion, but now it's totally comes from this very disgusting corporate mindset of like the erosion of public education and that um you sort of meet i don't know the the sort of standardized test model of like you know it's just it's just this the entire neoliberalization of the education system and you want to talk about something screwing up our economy i'll go on this rant is if you when you were in high school here what was one career you knew you could go to college for and come home and be a teacher? Teacher or a nurse. Or a nurse.

And it's still the same. And now, no. Teaching's not as secure because if you're going up against someone who's here for two years and the county doesn't have to pay their entire salary and they'll never have to worry about giving them tenure, you're not going to be hired as a local over that two-year person. They can pay them dirt.

And then if you do get a position, you get moved every year so they can make room for whatever new TVA. Well, there's the same thing. There are also nurses that travel and do the same thing at the hospitals, and they get paid way better than the actual nurses. I just learned about this, actually, recently. I'd say there's one caveat to that though. I speak because my ex-girlfriend

was in Teach for America. Several ex-girlfriends that weren't Teach for America. More than one. They were from the bourbon trail. Do you like the TFA VISTA circuit? But anyway, she had actually, she was in the Las Vegas

Corps and then came here and couldn't find a job. And so, but the, the, the refrain, she kept hearing all these job interviews, you know, from people that were around it. The people doing the hiring one tell her was that like, well, so-and-so superintendent's like daughter's getting ready to graduate from Alice in the Lake College. So they want to like, well, so she would get pink slipped like every semester or something like that i think you're right though i think that you know as tfa appalachia whatever got more established i think they said oh well we can get by with just a cost share and get a teacher for two years or whatever which you know i don't have a problem with if say like there's a shortage of spanish teachers or something like that well you since you mentioned this I work with one of the best teachers I have ever met in a nearby county

and the she works in one of the high schools in the probably the most rural part of the county and that high school next year is consolidating with another a newer big high school in the county and so she teaches spanish in her school and there's a teach for america spanish teacher at the other high school and they won't tell anyone who's getting hired until may because they don't want anyone to quit in the middle of the school year and so she doesn't even she's pretty sure that the tfa girl is going to get the job because she costs less and she's i mean because this teacher is like five within five years of retirement Thank you. Gjørens morg. Thank you. piano plays softly I mean, so, like, you have this set of problems.

It's the same thing with the teachers and the nurses. And we know that education and health care is going to be the biggest employers in this area in future. I mean, for a long time. And so like you really always have been. Right. Well, and so but yeah, but yeah. been right well and so but yeah but yeah so for us to actually i don't know get at empowerment though it just seems to me that like what we actually need to be advocating for instead is like um teachers getting paid more and uh actual the same thing for nurses too for them to be able to i don't know if our nurses here are unionized or what, but it just seems like...

I think so. It seems like... They've striked before. It seems like there's some sort of tension there that's going on. Yeah, that's true. I'm not sure. I can't speak on it.

But whatever their union is, it's fucking up if they're letting traveling nurses come in getting paid higher than them. So it's just like we're not doing a good job at representing the workers here. You know what I mean? Like the, I don't know, and securing their sort of employment, securing higher wages for them, securing greater benefits for them. People are, so whenever I was getting my hair cut recently, there was a girl there who's a travel nurse.

And she was saying that she worked at Pikeville. She quit, became a travel nurse, and they send her back to Pikeville because Pikeville, she quit, became a travel nurse, and they send her back to Pikeville because Pikeville has a shortage. So she's working the same place and making, like, three times the amount she would make at Pikeville. Wow. And so people there were, like, some of the nurse staff was there, like, was angry that she was there.

And she's like, you can do this too. Like, it's a possibility. But I think, like, part of that whole ordeal is that you don't get benefits so like whatever extra money you're making you have to like you're like a contractor probably like yeah but it's it it did make me think like how many people are probably gonna switch from like yeah because you can be put in your own community as a traveling nurse right right well so uh yeah I don't know. We've established the, I don't know.

What else can we say about this? What else can you really say about this? Well, about who saves Appalachia, who gets to save Appalachia. I think something we have not touched on, and I don't know what the natural progression is here, but we talked a lot about trying to figure out the quality of life for people who get to stay, who are able to stay around and or who have to stay around or want to stay around or whatever the hell.

All the reasons there's a million reasons people come and go and whatever the hell they do. But who my particular favorite sect of people are the ones who move off. are the ones who move off um and then when they do come home or wherever they're at they are magnets for cameras and they cannot wait to land their pretty fucking faces in front of a camera to talk about what they got away from or yeah how they're just getting how they're just like building themselves up so they can go back and really make a difference. Yep. So far y'all out there struggling. The cavalry's coming.

Just hunker down, baby. Just hunker down, baby. Get through it. One day, somebody who's we'll be back. And we will we will. We will see our day. We will see our day.

That is so true. And so many people who leave here do it. So many people who leave here. The people that remain do all the heavy lifting. And then when the cameras show up, they're the first ones. Oh, yeah. They're the first ones. There's a girl that I follow. I won't say names, but there's somebody else oh yeah they're the first ones there's a girl that i follow i won't say names but there's a girl i follow and i'm pretty sure she just her goal is to become a

motivational speaker in life and she always like is like running this narrative online about how her life is parallel to dolly parton's and hey you should stop saying baby you're lying of east kentucky are her smoky mountains. And I can't stop watching it unfold because I'm like, she's breaking the stereotypes, guys. That's how you're saving us. With her vlog. Oh, shit.

Breaking the stereotypes. And that's a Muggs game. I mean, it's a Muggs game to try to adapt to the sort of larger cultural hegemony, to sort of like normative culture. I respect anybody who wants to start a mom blog. I'm there with you, but you can't start it. Talking about how you're failing at Dolly Parton.

You're breaking stereotypes. So I think the takeaways here then is that there's no one person or no one big idea that's going to save Appalachia. It's that you have to literally band together with your comrades and wage class struggle. But no, seriously. Socialist. No, but seriously, what I mean is like advocate for policies that literally fucking empower people and improve people's standards of living instead of yeah instead of like um tapping into the savior bullshit where um yeah you think that like or if like if you're doing the work don't use it as part of your brand right that's that's where like that's like all these like not just individuals but a lot of

these corporations or these magazine articles like they like, they're not telling the story because they want to better the community. They're telling the story to better their brand. Right. Raise fucking money. That's exactly right. That's why I really have, this is a little bit of a hot take, but I really hate philanthropy for this reason. for this reason. It's not that I'm against the Ronald McDonald House.

I think it's a great thing, but why are these billionaire corporate overlords asking me to tack a dollar onto my fucking Big Mac meal to go to the Ronald McDonald House when they need to come up out of pocket for that?

I mean, I still do it because I don't want the cashier to think I'm a fucking asshole. That's literally what I was going to say. But it pisses me off a little bit. Not necessarily the cashier, but the people in line behind you. You know they're fucking looking at you, burning fucking holes in your bag. I don't care.

I ain't giving a dollar to Ronald McDonald House. Probably about a cent of that goes to the house. I don't know what they even do. What do they do? Exactly. You don't know where that money's going. I'm a fucking schmuck. I'm a fucking schmuck.

The point here is there are, I mean, plenty of people are doing all the work to exist in a meaningful fucking way and and be good to each other people grow food and they just give it the fuck away yeah like it doesn't even have it looks a lot of different ways um and it's some of its nitty-gritty shit like all the people who had to stay out till 10 o'clock on monday night going at the fiscal court meeting trying to figure out why the hell our county is in such a bad deficit. And they're not there because they were going to be on the fucking government channel. They're there because they're mad as hell. They don't want their taxes to raise because they know they can't afford it.

And they know their neighbors can't afford it. And they know their mom can't afford it. And they know it's not a long term solution. And they also have no faith in how that money is going to get spent. No. They know that we should. They're the stewards of that money. They know that it ain't their how that money is going to get spent. No. They know that we should... In the stewards of that money. They know that it ain't their fault

that we're in this fucking deficit. It ain't. We didn't start this shit. Although, that was fucking hilarious that Judge Executive Ward fucking put up that thing that said,

now five years ago, I said that if we did this, the county wouldn't be in this situation. Don't get me started. He pulled a J.D. Vance and did a whole memoir talking about how fucking much he tried to do this this and this and he was stifled and even multiple of the magistrate we don't need to get done all this on this podcast but even multiple the magistrates were like how long you've been

elected judge 12 years you are the history of this county 12 years excellent wayne fleming impersonation man following following your goddamn sword though you know what i mean yeah you up admit to it and go on yeah i sent in a speaker piece and told him, if Jim Ward still believes that coal severance dollars are coming back to this county, we got bigger problems than a budget. I got a goddamn bridge to sail. We got bigger problems than a budget because we have a completely foolish, this person is incomplete.

Well, and that raises another good point, is that it's not the liberal saviors, it's not the philanthropists, it's not the fucking venture capitalists, and it's sure as hell not the fucking politicians either. No. It's like our collective power. For sure not.

That's the only thing, that's our only way out of this. And what do we have to lose? People haven't had a raise. Minimum wage has not raised in, what, 15 years or more? No, no, no. 20? If minimum wage had caught up with, if it had kept up with productivity since the late 60s, it'd be $19, $20 an hour right now.

Yeah, that's barely enough. We're talking about a fight for 15 that falls short. Yeah, it definitely falls short. Most people cannot rent an apartment, drive a car, catch a movie once a month, and keep their house full of groceries for $15 an hour. I think SPLC, Southern Poverty Law Center, said this is the first time in American history there's not a county in the United States where you can afford a one-bedroom apartment on minimum wage. And that's never been the case ever. minimum wage and that's never been the case ever and now they're saying that minimum wage needs to be at least like 1780 or something like that at least to make that a reality again i mean we're ten dollars an hour off from that five for 15 ain't even catching that yeah where there's even

a trajectory of where that's even possible so why even it's just like we're not getting anywhere we we are literally fighting for the right to use the fucking bathroom that is safe for us like we are so far away from being able to deal with these with this issue on a policy level that it's not even an option anymore well i think that's part of it i think that our leadership like me and terrence have talked about several times i think that they're falling into these sort of synthetic realities these fake worlds right, right? Even at the local level. They're fighting the culture wars because they don't want to engage in real solutions for problems.

Yeah, yeah. It's old culture, man. That's what Steve Bannon is. It's what Breitbart is. It's been a culture war with these people for 20, 30 fucking years now. No, that's exactly right. And the problem with waging a culture war

is that it's always a losing fucking battle unless you get in the White House, which is what Stephen Bannon figured out you have to fucking do. And then it's just going to continue to seesaw, right? Right. Because you're never going to have a consensus with culture stuff. Right. You have to actually. Well, you may one day.

You have to actually engage in the fucking very dirty process of politics and gaining power. That's the only way out of this. Right. It's our only way. But this it's our only but you have to do it collectively you can't fucking just yeah you can't buy into this like one person's gonna do this savior mentality you can't buy into i don't know you guys know what i'm talking about but it has to be a collective grassroots movement yeah one that creates a compelling vision of the future adam curtis's that's where like i'm always hung up is and i question this a lot is like the narratives that we tell of

appalachia like it seems to me like there are two like dangerous narratives and one is that we need saving and the other is that we are safe like like we are being saved. And I don't know that anyone tells any other narrative other than those two. And so it's like one comes from outside, one comes from inside and they both seem just as dangerous to me. Like, you know, like we're not being saved, but we also don't desperately need you to come in here and, and flex muscle i don't know what the other i don't know what the other narrative is to say that we need but both of those have like screwed us over right well one that um again one that like values your identity beyond your fucking um the score you get on a standardized test or one that values your identity beyond something that creates profit for other fucking people like one that is not rooted in this assimilationist idea that uh yeah you have to be saved or brought into the sort of larger economy i don't know how you

do that probably with podcasts like this well i think it's a start no it's a start but honestly policies is how you do it you literally improve people's meetings politics is the solution politics has always been the solution yeah but that sucks you know it's it's hard it's a struggle it's why it's called political struggle but hopefully we can fucking realize the revolutionary moment that we're in. I think, you know, I've been saying this for a while. And one of our friends recently said, OK, Tanya, we're on board with this. But you have to call it something else because that's boring as hell. And I was like, OK, fine. So it's participatory budgeting.

We have got to make sure that we are like literally everyone is that we're not casting votes for fucking people. We're casting votes for where the fuck our money is spent if we're if we want people if we want people to actually give a fuck then they're going to be able to cast their vote to say we need to prioritize in this annual budget a rec center our trash um our fucking these three bridges are falling down or whatever it is our schools our senior citizen centers like these are our fucking priorities not this person who says he has our best interests in mind because he doesn't because we know we already know that it's already been clear and we can call it pokemon go for all i give a fuck yeah i don't care what we call it wasn't me that said it was boring i think it was me i think it's literally me

just not got enough juice. You ever thought about Pokemon Go? Maybe I just didn't say it out loud. Exactly. See, everyone agrees. Pokemon Go. I'm fine with it. I've come to terms with it. We can call it whatever the hell we want.

All right. I think we've seriously, we've dismantled some sacred cows and have, yeah, no, we've made some serious headway into answering that question um no i think the it's like i said there's not an answer to it i mean like literally the answer is us being able to sort of put into words um or music or whatever the fuck our revolutionary imagination to create a vision of the future. That is creative enough

that we ain't seen it yet. It's creative enough that we haven't seen it yet but like The answer is we haven't figured it out yet so everybody back off your audience

and off the winning idea right now. So calm the fuck down for five minutes. Yeah, it's Nobody has any fucking clue. If you think you got this grandiose idea

that's just a cure-all, why don't you just sleep on it for a few days? Right. Ask a couple people. Completely bury the word stereotype. Yes. Just so you don't lose it. I have some questions, though,

about the first podcast. What is y'all's favorite feedback you've gotten from the first podcast? I had a friend tell me that they showed it to their J.D. Vance-loving professor who was using the book to in class.

That is great. We've entered the fucking academy. We're canon now. I'm sure he found us completely irrelevant after I threatened to peg J.D. Vance. I thought it made it more relevant.

I'd say it solidified us. After I heard that and after it came out, I regretted it a little bit. So I'm going to slightly retract that. But here's the thing. I was talking to Tanya the other day on Saturday. And once the critiques start rolling in, I'm going to crumble because I'm fucking sensitive.

I'm going to be like, no, but that's not what we meant. They misunderstood us. I was worried about my Gay D. Vance joke really bad. I really was worried about that. Because I guess if you don't take it in the greater context, it kind of sounds like I was. Well, I'm just going to say right now,

anyone who has any complaints or critical feedback, send it straight to Terrence Ray. Yeah, send it straight to me. I'll take it all. I don't want none of it. He got me and Tanya hopped up on wine coolers and made us do this. Yeah, we're literally tied up in here if you can see the studio. The son of a bitch. God damn it.

I was literally, whenever you were talking, I was like, I am a straight-laced square. I am. And then I was like, how am a straight-laced square. I am. And then I was like, how do I get in the circles and situations that I get into? But here I am. No. Remember, Willa, we've always said, like, it's like Tanya always says. She's always just like, I wonder what normal people talk about. Like, we're not normies.

Yeah, direct all complaints to my Facebook. Did you all? Publicly. Publicly on my wall. Yeah. Don't get in his DMs. You don't see it. Those are backed up.

No, it's just such a barren wasteland that I've just deleted the app. I never checked the DMs. We'll be right back. Called up MC, did a song last week with my nigga Bambi Twistin' on some green spinach, and niggas still trippin' I ain't dead, I'm still in it This is for the bourbons and the Cadillacs With the 10s and the 12s poppin' in the back This is for the friends, call some Demps and Macs With the bands makin' deal, I need paper stacks

See, pocket full of dollars already stacked So I'm gangsta leaning sideways Today ain't Friday, pretend it is And today is my day Take it from Mr. Huntsville Grotter Cadillac and Suburban Driver Pussy Diver, Mr. Glock Beside when I'm riding, flossing down the block

Hollering my boys up in the third Got the latest word Swerve to the side of the curb Feelin' wanted me to serve I say, bitch, can't tell I'm off But I still give him five dollars To wipe my white walls Then I burst about the block

Dropped the top cause it was hot Hit the spot with the most hoes At the side show about the plot Hittin' donuts And you know I'm actin' A straight up menace catch me spinnin' You can tell I was there, cause I clouded smoke when I finished I seen 5-0, and they ain't even tryin' to sweat me

Think they be a nice knock, cause I got a 185 under hood And they know they can't catch me And if you see me chillin', you can stop me But I keep that Glock 40 up on the dash And never know who might not be And this brother, player Player, play on I can't hate you homie Player, player I can't hate you homie

Player, player I can't hate you homie Herbs and laks, mangas and bitches Money and weed to make life Is all I dream Paper chasing for the green I'm thuggin' on the scene Nigga, what you don't believe

Well check the credentials to tell ya A nigga's livin' presidential I'm on the level that you bustas would never feel Daughter, I ain't caught up in the game and get killed But reverse that shit and hit the studio and make a meal For real, I'm slingin' platinum shit until I'm old and ill Legati, I'ma make you feel what I say I got time to parlay

Chill off in the bay, smoke some hay I wouldn't have this shit no other way The made life, the game type, the living life This is for the bourbons in the Cadillacs With the 10s and the 12s bumpin' in the back This is for the players smokin' Hula-Max With the bins makin' ends, I mean the paper stacks This is for the bour smoking hula macks With the bins making ends, I mean the paper stacks This is for the bourbons in the Cadillacs With the 10s and the 12s open in the back This is for the players smoking hula macks With the bins making ends, I mean the paper stacks Play up, play on I can't hate you, homie You're rolling on chromate candy