Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 8: Angry A Lot In Public (w/ special guest: Sarah Jones)

Episode Date: May 5, 2017

In Episode 8, we talk with Sarah Jones (@onesarahjones) of the New Republic about her recent piece (co-authored by Laura Reston) entitled "Appalachia Needs Big Government." We also talk about how Appalachia went red, the war on coal, and more.

That guy's out of his mind. I did too. That's all I could think about. What a mess. Just a total mess. An absolute mess. Hello? Sarah?

Hey. Hi, this is Terrence. Hi. So is Terrence. Hi. So sorry about that. We're a three-piece now on this end, so. I made it. We may be able to squeeze a show out of this. Yeah, we have one more person that will be here momentarily.

But we can get rolling. Yeah, we might as well get started. And so it probably helps, since you can't see us, for us to just introduce ourselves and hopefully you can associate our voices with our names. I'm Terrence. Tom. Tanya. Hey.

Nice to meet y'all. Yeah, right, right. Yeah, for sure. Right. Now, Sarah, correct me if I'm wrong, you're from Mouth of Wilson? I'm not far from that. I'm from Washington County, Virginia. Okay, okay.

For some reason I thought that I saw you put something from Mouth of Wilson up, which I thought you might have been the most famous person from there, but there's been like 300 NBA players come through there at some juncture. Yeah, that's a good point. I just like Grayson Highlands, so that's the picture. Yeah. It's like an hour from where I grew up now, more like 45 minutes maybe. Right, right.

I don't know where Grayson Highlands is. Is Damascus in Washington County or am I just totally? Yeah, that's where my grandfather lives, actually. Awesome. I rent bikes there. Yeah, it's great. I've been fly fishing there. It's real good.

You don't do no goddamn fly fishing. Well, I drank on the creek bank while somebody else did. Yeah, if I ever go off the grid, Damascus is where I want to go. It's a good place to do that. Yeah, it really is. He means when he goes off the grid. When, not if. It's not a question of if.

All right, so let's introduce our guest. Sarah, you write for the New Republic, correct? That's right, yeah. Okay, and so you cover Appalachia for the most part? I do. I do. I cover Appalachia. I cover also just generally poverty, politics, and I write sometimes about culture, too.

Yeah. I have a question. I feel like so many national outlets, so few national outlets have an Appalachian correspondent or whatever the hell. How did that come to be? Are you the first one or this is just what they do? Yeah. So it's like more of an unofficial beat. It's just something that I write about a lot because I'm from there and it's important to me.

that I write about a lot because I'm from there and it's important to me. But yeah, I don't know too many people who are even in media generally who are from Appalachia, let alone write about it on a regular basis. Yep. Yeah, we've noticed that. Yeah, I bet. Yeah. Yeah, so you're from here. You can probably imagine how hard it is,

how frustrating it is to see it get written about For example, like after the election Well, and it's still ongoing This sort of Trump country narrative In the liberal media It's pretty maddening to see So few voices from the region actually get Included in that conversation

Right, right And it seems like when they do It's somebody like J.D. Vance so few voices from the region actually get included in that conversation. Right, right. And it seems like when they do, it's somebody like J.D. Vance. Our favorite. Exactly. Not so much Baltimore. So I thought it would be a good, so yeah, so like we had this New York Times reporter that was here,

like was it two weeks ago, Tom? Yeah, Campbell Robertson, who's the, we had this New York Times reporter that was here, like, was it two weeks ago, Tom? Yeah, Campbell Robertson, who's the southern correspondent for the New York Times, which, according to you, is not your favorite publication today. Hey, I fucking hate the New York Times, Sarah, so bag on it all you want. We think Campbell's maybe one of the decent ones. But he asked the question, he asked, you know, what's missing from the national coverage of Appalachian. You know, he's from, like, Alabama, Montevallo, Alabama. And I thought it was interesting because, you know, he had enough, I guess, presence of mind to think, you know, he couldn't put his finger on it.

But he asked me that and that's kind of part of what I thought we might talk about today first person narrative to start with bringing in the experts yeah

I think that is a lot of it like I said a minute or so ago there aren't very many people at these big national, quote-unquote, prestigious outlets who are actually from central Appalachia, let alone greater Appalachia, let alone more impoverished areas of the deep south. So there's a real lack. I mean, there's a problem with newsroom diversity overall, and that extends to socioeconomic diversity too. And that's obvious, right? We can see it in the way that Appalachia is written about, and we can see it in the way that the South is written about, and we can see how easy it is for people to latch on to somebody like Vance, for example. I don't mean to set up just him as this exemplar of all that's terrible.

But when there aren't, when the media hasn't been putting out competing narratives, well, you see what happens. Yeah, I think what Appalachia really needs is its own Louise Minch. That's what we

really... That's what's missing. That was actually my response you stole my thunder then um one of the things like tanya and i were talking about earlier this week we were like what are we going to talk about with sarah and we wanted to talk about twitter but i was trying to explain to tanya who even louise minch is and then i was just going down this little rabbit hole. Like, I don't know. It's just so hard to explain to someone

who doesn't spend their entire fucking day on Twitter. Yeah, yeah. Try as I may, Twitter is not my space. You're better off. You're a better person for it. You really are. That's what we like so much about you on Twitter, Sarah, is that we, in a classic case of

real recognizing real, Trill recognizing Trill. Our, we fancy ourselves haters, and we see the best of us in you, and so. That is a high compliment. I am flattered. We salute you for that. We need to throw

our own player haters ball down here at some junction. Yeah. Yeah. We really do. So, yeah, so I think it'd probably be a good sort of segue to talk about some of the things you have written. Tanya did send me a link to something that you wrote today and I haven't had a chance to read it yet. It's just a real good blast of the New York Times on a perfect day because actually the New York Times

dropped an article today about Kentucky, about we might be the first state without an abortion clinic. And this woman who's actually been to Wattsburg a couple times named Cheryl, whatever the hell. I can't remember her last name. She actually called me. I spent an hour on the phone with this woman a few weeks ago. And then she completely cut East Kentucky out of the whole fucking story. We're not even in the story.

Wow. And she talked to, I know, at least three other people in East Kentucky she talked to. I just skimmed it. So, hell, I might be wrong about that. We might have to cut that out. But I definitely didn't see anyone I knew, and I definitely didn't see anything about East Kentucky or Appalachia. Right, yeah.

Well, that actually brings up a good point, Tanya, because one of the articles she did write, like, a year ago, and this is something I've noticed a lot in the national sort of media discourse on Appalachia, is that the articles that do get written about us, if they're not just like total, just right-wing, like defamatory, just, you know what I mean, like the J.D. Vance or even National Review type shit, you'll have like the New York Times liberal critique or like the Nick Kristoff type of critique where it just focuses on individual

actors in a community that are that are just trying to and so this woman Sheryl Sandberg had written an article about this protest that we had done at at this um at this event in Pikeville and all of us participated in it, but it only singled out these two individuals as part of the protest and made them seem like the sort of heroes in this event. And so a lot of national media, when they talk about Appalachia,

doesn't recognize... Organizing. Organizing. They never depict us as organizers. Like we're just out here frailing about. We just stumbled off a turnip truck and had a weird politic. Here we are, glowing examples. Like you can't be radicalized in East Kentucky.

It's horseshit. Right, yeah. I mean, my understanding is that most of the protesters who were in bicycle every weekend were from the area itself. Like they organized and had been organizing for weeks ahead of this oh yeah you're talking about the neo-nazis yeah yeah that was that's a whole another wad of hell but yeah that had been organized for months yeah yeah yeah who was the dude that was like there was something conspicuously absent from this and it was like

local people and it's just like did you watch the same live feed that you know what i'm saying right yeah one of the people that went to jail is actually from pikeball oh really yeah i didn't know that and then there was two people that went to jail and the other one was from west virginia so yeah none of it. Homegrown hero. Yeah. Well, the media coverage of that event has been pretty fucking insane in and of itself. But some enterprising journalist, hint, hint, if you know any, should write some sort of thesis on the whole thing. It's pretty fascinating. uh thesis on the whole thing it's a pretty fascinating with contained within it it is sort of a microcosm of of crises and like community responses to those crises i'm very curious to know what you what you do make the trips back down for are you on the wedding funeral

circuit it mainly just like the family circuit i do have tickets to see to get a rhythm and roots in bristol um awesome yeah yep yep um but it's it's really hard and i i don't think people realize like i mean it's such a larger problem that it's so expensive to get a flight in and out of rural areas to begin with but it's real hard to get back and forth and it's real hard um for my family to come up and like see me like even when i was based in dc for a while that was still difficult yeah no i mean the reason tanya is that i think we had this long conversation yesterday about how fucking insane it is to visit your hometown uh especially if it's in a rural place. And you become more and more disconnected from the people there,

and it can be a very hard experience to go back. Yeah, it's strange. I mean, I don't know what it was like for you guys, but, like, for me growing up, you know, I was really restless, and I wanted to see the rest of the country. I wanted to see the rest of the world. So, you know, I left Southwest Virginia to go to college and kind of split my time until I was older. And now, like, now that I've been out, like, for good for a few years and working, I feel like I've come to appreciate a lot more and wish that I could spend, like, a lot more time there than I get to now.

So we just had our fourth Trill Billy join us. Willa? Hey, nice to meet you. Yeah, nice to meet you too. All right. So we're talking about some of the things you've written. One of the, so one thing I really wanted to talk about a lot was this article you'd written like three, four weeks ago. You wrote it with somebody else. Um, but it was about, uh, government and the role of government in Appalachia. Yeah. And it's a very interesting time to talk about this because the Obama administration didn't really do shit

in terms of helping this region out, and the few things that it did do were incredibly like market driven right so you had like this promise zone thing and you had what is called like the power plus plan and you have something called like the reclaim act and all these things they sort of get at the like the sort of role of government in stimulating local economies but it's not like what they were doing with the war on poverty in the 60s. Right. So, I don't know. I just wanted to know if you had any insight into that.

Like, the fact that we are now sort of in this moment where, like, we know the Trump administration is not going to do shit in terms of, like, actually using government to address any of the problems here. So like, it's looking kind of dismal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's not, it's not encouraging. That's for sure. I feel like, and I think my colleague and I were arrested and we argued this in the piece, but like it was a big failing of the Democratic Party.

Like, there were a lot of failings in the region that we could talk about. That they didn't sort of message around this idea that government can be good and government can have a tangible benefit to people's lives. And, like, it's not actually, there's nothing wrong with being, quote, unquote, dependent on government. with being quote-unquote dependent on government. So as a result, you just don't have the sort of social welfare infrastructure that the region actually needs. And it's clear at this point, like corporations are largely really responsible for the situations Appalachia's in right now. I don't understand why anyone thinks more of that is exactly what the

area needs. At least government is actually accountable to voters in a certain sense. So it seems like that's the direction we need to be headed. Now, whether or not the Democratic Party recognizes that and is willing to kind of go in that direction, that more populist direction they have been going, that's not as clear to me me when do you think the switch happens there like you know like i grew up in whitesburg here and we were all new deal democrats until like maybe george bush's like second election somewhere thereabouts when do you think that that was sort of and i assume it's probably a lot the same for you where you were at. Yeah, I think that is actually about when the switch started to happen. When we were reporting this story, I started looking at electoral response results for specifically central Appalachia and the coal fields.

Because, you know, Reagan tried to backstab the regional commission just like Trump tried to do. And like what people from outside the area don't understand, I think, is that it was a pretty strong blue firewall, right? Like people were, as you said, these new geodemocrats. And then you can see it shrink and shrink and shrink. And then somewhere around George Bush's second term, it shrunk a lot. And by the time Obama was elected the first time, it was pretty much gone.

And that's interesting to me. Like, I feel like there are a lot of different reasons for why that could be. It would mostly be, like, a lot of speculation on my part. I don't think welfare reform helped. Right. But I, like, you know, I don't have a smoking gun, and I wish I did. Yeah, I think it was, yeah, it's hard to pinpoint one thing. It was, I think welfare reform did play a large role in it.

I also think the war on coal, like that sort of messaging, played a huge role in that as well. I mean, at the office I work at, I found this newspaper article from, like, 2008 from our local newspaper, and there was, like, our op-ed section, and it was... They were talking about, like, well, we're not really sure what Obama means for coal. Like, that was a legitimate question in 2008.

Like, people weren't really sure where he stood on that issue and you know you can see to that by the time 2012 rolled around like the sort of friends of coal thing had congealed into this you know this administration is trying to kill it we a friend and I had this conversation the other day about like also like around war on coal and the narrative that happened around sorry this sounds like a very conspiracy theorist, like, in a dark room. That's the brand. That's the brand. Like, you know, I hate to say these words because it's so, but whatever.

You know, the Republicans really gained a lot in rural communities after 9-11. Like, they waved this flag they wrapped themselves in this banner and it was like this time it was like this moment where your everyday citizens suddenly became your hero because like firefighters and policemen were suddenly like the people on the front lines yeah and war on coal saw that yes they wrapped themselves in that banner too and it became like a martyrdom all of a sudden valorization yeah yeah and so like you know don blankenship starts wearing a flag shirt to every rally and and so like it it became like this thing and and it really did like

republicans sort of rallied around it and the country was sort of like on edge and it just built this whole narrative that we're still seeing play out now of, of the Republicans are who, you know, are just wanting to protect you and your, your little piece of whatever. They're patriots. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so the wrong call is really successful at kind of getting in on that moment. Tapping into that. Yeah. You're absolutely right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the-11 just did a lot to just...

If you look at the sort of anti-globalization movement and the fact that these huge protests had taken place in Seattle against the World Trade Organization, there was a legitimate growing anti-globalization movement in this country in, I think, 9-11, really. Yeah, I feel like Glenn Beck, to be on a radio show, like, 9-11 led to this. You're in your garage like Russ Cole on True Detective.

I promise I don't think about this all the time, but it was like we were just having this conversation of, what was the tide that changed all this like because we were talking about like how everyone sort of like went from fighting the coal companies to fighting for the coal companies and like what was that shift and I've always said like there was a shift around like taking the organizing history and just rebranding it a little bit in favor for coal companies and then I like the more I talked about I was like but it also like happened around this time in our country and like it just was like fuel to the fire that's absolutely right and i was thinking a lot about this too just how republicans in the last 15 conservatives in the last 15 or 20 years

have co-opted they've appropriated um well obviously we know how the alt-right and how a lot of far-right people have appropriated a lot of the language how the alt-right and how a lot of far-right people have appropriated a lot of the language to the left but just the color red throughout history has been this sort of revolutionary like it's meant to invoke the sort of revolutionary forever and like you know it was co-opted by the republicans you had red states you know it's just like you really i know it seems like a minute point but it is interesting it is real interesting i think i think you're all right and i think you know just by virtue being like a reactionary movement um conservatism was kind of really good at tapping into this fear

that people have this idea that you know they're under they're experiencing some sort of existential threat and it gets all wrapped up together. Oh, yeah. It's pretty terrifying, really. Yeah, yeah. Do y'all have anything? No, just to tack on what Willa was saying, too, you even sort of had a split in the coal industry.

I mean, maybe you can remember this one. I was a kid. Like, if you were working as a strip miner, like, that was like a dirty word. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, there was still that sense that, like, mechanization is going to kill these jobs,

and if you're supporting this, then you're going to eventually put us all out of business. And I wonder, I've been thinking about when was the point where if you attacked one facet of the industry, it was just sort of looked at as an affront to the whole thing. And we're all in this sort of together. And I can't really point that out, but the whole Friends of Cole thing was just tremendously successful. I mean, it was a campaign. It was a communications campaign that Friends of Cole started for sure.

A brilliant one. campaign that that friends of coal started for sure when i left for when i left for college in 2004 that i that was not a thing friends of coal was not in existence you never saw those stickers and i still heard stories about unionizing even though we were pretty far from it um i was still hearing tales of that and i certainly never heard anyone take up for a company. When I came back four years later, it was like the world had spun. A total 180. It made no fucking sense. And even my uncle was talking crazy shit like he still does because completely off his rocker. I was like, I don't know.

And, of course, I had come back from college. So smart. I knew it all after my five years at EKU. Papa. It's called mechanization. course I had come back from college so smart my family hated me when I got back from college they're like you know my dad my dad to this day will say you know you got to bring jobs back for the coal miners. I saw him moving equipment up the road the other day. That's my favorite sentence right now in eastern Kentucky. Post-Trump elections, I saw him moving equipment.

I've heard that. Sure is good to see those cars hauling coal. I was standing in the post office literally yesterday and heard those exact words. Every time I hear it, i'm just like oh dear but my dad like my dad i'm just like i'll constantly like dad you were the one who like snuck up on a strip mine and videoed it and sent it to the local news when i was little like you thought that it was wrong like you know like this weird shift happened of like you were fighting strip mining and now you don't care as long as

there's jobs and I I really don't know what that shift was either like it really did just completely change um yeah and it was great it was more gradual for my family because they did have quite a group of like liberal women in the family who were constantly talking and so it took a while for like the shift to happen in my family to be like, well, you know, as long as it's jobs. But it happened, like, regardless of the dialogue that was happening. Right. Yeah.

I blame the recession a bit for that, too. Because, I mean, I feel like Appalachia was already kind of in a recession before that. But after the Great Recession, it was just, like like the economy and jobs were all anyone was talking about anywhere. And I think it just made sort of the situation seem especially dire and especially stark. Yeah, and that's absolutely right. And it's like we talked about this on the show too. I think that no matter your politics,

witnessing literally nobody be held accountable for that, like no matter if you're a conservative or liberal or whatever, like just seeing that basic fact unfold in front of your eyes. Like you would have had a really hard time making that fit with your sort of personal moral framework of how the world is supposed to work. You fuck up, there are consequences. People saw that that didn't happen with that event. And I think that that really did cause disillusionment in a lot of ways. Yeah, totally. Yeah, there were a lot of local people that voted Obama first election, but they started to feel the pressure of the recession.

Obama first election, but they started to feel the pressure of the recession. And whether or not, you know, whether or not people can make sense of that, it was happening before Obama took office or it was happening during his first four years. It didn't matter. It happened in his first four years. And it was like there was a switch. Like, you know, you were in office. You didn't save us. Like, we're going the other way and

it's just gotten more extreme as that's went on i also think though you know if your life has somehow become more precarious since 2008 and you were already like largely ignored forever and ever before that you know like how can you expect it you know, the other thing that bugs me about Obama is that, like, you know, I know he's blamed for this, like, you know, downfall of the coal industry and all this sort of thing. But if you're the president of the United States and there's a congressional district, Kentucky's fifth, which has been dead last in every quality of life measure for the last 40 years, 50 years, whatever. for the last 40 years, 50 years, whatever. Wouldn't it occur to you to make a visit and try to sort of mitigate some of this? You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And to just make the connection, the congressional district that's dead last is also the one that the congressman is your head of appropriation committee. It's like complete opposites, and no one's saying, wait a minute. Like you're ahead of all this money and your district is drowning.

So yeah, we're talking about Hal Rogers here, Sarah. I don't know if you ever heard that name before. I have, yeah. I'm sure she has. Go throw a new one at us. Thanks, Sarah. You never know. Don't let Terrence new one at you, Sarah. You never know.

You never know. Don't let Terrence mansplain to you, Sarah. Yeah, that's why we have two women on the show. They have to keep me. I have this terrible habit of... All right, well, so where I wanted to go with that is that what I do think, though, is new, and I haven't really seen this reported on a lot in the national media, is that I think this narrative of the Friends of Coal and obviously the narrative of the war on coal, like these things are, for all intents and purposes, they're pretty much dead in the water. And you are starting to see at the local level this total crisis of legitimacy that I think is sort of compounded by the end of this sort of Friends of Coal campaign, but also by the fact that coal's not coming back and also by the fact that all of our county governments are broke as fuck.

Right. Yeah. For the first time in a long time, us as local organizers, it's actually kind of optimistic in some ways. We don't have to go up against this sort of larger hegemonic idea of friends of coal, of this sort of big other, this big pervading cultural force in our lives, in our political organizing and all this. And that is pretty new, historically speaking, regionally speaking, historically speaking. Does that make any sense? Yeah, no, it does. And I think there are some other reasons to be optimistic, too. Like, first, you don't have to convince people to be angry right now. They're already angry. And, like, they're right.

Like, this is a bit of nuance that I think, like, a lot of my colleagues in media don't get, which is that, you know, people have a valid reason to be angry. They just don't always, you know, necessarily accurately diagnose the source of those problems. But that's where local organizers come in, and that's where, like, you know, places, like, institutions like the Democratic Party should have been there and helping steer this. But local organizers are stepping in where the party has failed. And I don't think any of us are under any illusions here. Trump is not going to be good for Appalachia, and inevitably there's going to be some disappointment. So local organizers are ready to address that when it happens. Yeah. Yeah. And it feels like our organizing, at least locally and in my eyes, is having to shift

to a more, like I even read something about this a few months ago that um you know we used to talk about the really big differences in service and organizing and how those are so different and here we really can't differentiate fuck whatever the fuck you are would you like me to mansplain to you how to say that no um anyway we can't we can't prioritize organizing that doesn't serve people and we can't be serving people without organizing them like these two things have to be married like people need infrastructure people are not making any money they are losing access to their health care um the list is long and people are suffering hard as fuck um and it and it it is sad to see the democratic party talk in literal garbage like literally everything they say is so astronomically out of touch it's

almost hard to imagine that they could possibly be this completely fucking off the charts right yeah yeah um yeah it kind of seems like we need a new party or something like i don't i i mean to me like in in rural areas you almost don't even have two parties you just have different versions of one party really yeah there's they're not really fighting you know if they if they when you put their stances up against each other they all align just a different moderate like one's more moderate one's more conservative like but they're not they're not opposite opposing each other they're right very similar yeah like on on a national level sure you might have two parties but i don't think you have two parties locally.

No, our representative publicly said she voted for Trump. All of them did. Who's a Democrat? She's a Democrat. You couldn't get elected unless you said it. She also said she was against abortion. Right. She also buys us beers on Saturday night. I don't know.

I don't know what to think anymore. She also buys us beers on Saturday night. I don't know. I don't know what to think anymore. At the time, I remember being, like, upset. But now, like, I look back, like, during the election, during the Trump stuff, I was so angry about it. But I went, you know, you go and you vote for these people anyway because you realize, like, they're not going to get elected unless they say that stuff. Yeah.

And there's no alternative. Yeah. yeah if you want anyone who's gonna semi be on your side you have to like you have to like swallow a lot of pride at the voting poll that day because there's just no one else up to to vote for right yeah today there's actually a local mayor's race happening in jackson mississippi where people had somebody to vote for that's something yeah yeah um i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna butcher his name real bad um maybe you know his name sarah but it's uh lumumba i think right is he the democratic socialist candidate there yeah yeah and his dad was actually held that office um and passed away in office and he ran on that special election and lost.

But he's been organizing ever since, and with, I think, Freedom Road Socialist Organization has been there on the ground supporting that. And they're actually— In the DSA, probably. I don't know. I have no idea. But the election is today, so we'll know something within hours, I'd say. Yeah, that one is super exciting. And I know DSA just got someone on a city council down in Georgia, too.

Khalid Tamal, I think his name is pronounced. I might be butchering that, too. Yeah. But that was exciting to see. Yeah, yeah. Me and Tom tried to convince Tanya to help us start a local DSA, but she said, I don't know how I feel about that. So I'm going to shame her on my podcast.

We need you to talk her into it. But it is, okay, so the sort of explosion of, I do, like this is something that's just really pissed me off, especially because a bunch of Nazis came to town this past weekend and they get all these write lasting tradition uh alliances and it's just like if you the democratic socialists of america haven't even been mentioned in the boston globe but like 12 fucking white supremacists get together and get front page coverage on the boston globe it's fucking crazy yeah yeah i feel like a lot of people just don't know how to cover the alt-right at all um and like they like obviously it's real and it's a problem and i don't mean to like

underplay that at all that they do tend to like significantly overestimate their abilities yeah we validate them in a lot of ways right well i think i think it's because I think the far right is inherently not subversive to power. Like power doesn't view the far right as a threat to its power. It does view the far left as a threat to its power. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think that the media sort of, a lot of the media plays into that dynamic when it covers it. that dynamic when it covers it. Wasn't there just an article rolling up all the alt-right groups that they rolled in, like Choppo Trap House?

In alt-right? Yeah, yeah. They mentioned one sect of fatherhood. Was that Andrew Saltman, I think? Did that happen? I didn't know that. That was like this past week. Did this ring a bell, Sarah?

Yeah, I think it is in New York Magazine. Of course. He put Chapa Travis as an alt-right. No, he said it was alt-left, but... Oh. Yeah, it is that whole idea of there being an alt-left, which I don't, like, it's not a thing. Right. It's just

nowhere, you know, it's a smear, basically, so people don't have to listen to anyone who's on the left. Right. That's right. That's exactly right. Well, so have you ever heard of or read a book called They'll Cut Off Your Project by a guy named Hugh E. Perry?

I have heard of it. I have not read it yet. So it's actually pretty fascinating, and I think it's really good. So it's actually pretty fascinating, and I think it's really good. But I thought it sort of brought closure to this conversation in the sense that you wrote this article. You had this article calling for some big government solutions to some of the problems here. And in the 60s, the war on poverty was sort of that. But what it ran into and what this book sort of goes into detail explaining is it ran into the problem of local politics and local corruption. And I guess what I'm saying is that what I was mentioning earlier is like for the first time in a long time, like we're not we are up against those forces.

But those forces are sort of undergoing a total crisis of legitimacy. Like, people, I mean, I don't know if any mattress on our current county government level is going to get reelected because we're so fucking broke. And all of the counties around us are just going under left and right. It's pretty wild. And then here in Letcher County, the big Band-Aid that the feds are offering us

is a federal prison, which is the only one in the BOP pipeline right now, that a lot of these guys are sort of latching on to as sort of, you know, the one big thing that's going to save us. But, you know, these are the types of projects that go to rural areas, you know, where there's not a ton of political organization and there's super small tax bases and all these things. And so if not just incompetence and corruption,

we're up against those sorts of shitty crumbs that we get. But the reason I'm mentioning that is because I really would like to see media sort of tackle that issue. Everything's like a headline now, and so you blame the headlines or you blame the headlines or you blame the media or you blame you know it's never going to be the actual politicians faults on this level yeah as we have seen since how rogers and mitch mcconnell have both been in office longer than we've all been alive yeah yeah yeah and like just like even the way things have

been co-opted from this, from the whole Nazi rally. Like, the narrative that people are walking away with is not that there were Nazis in Pikeville, Kentucky. Like, it's this whole narrative that there was alt-left in eastern Kentucky. Like, I just think, like. Yeah, just rallying. Yeah, yeah. Like, I think people's fears get played on so easily that I don't think that – I don't know. I just don't think the blame goes back on the politicians enough.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and then, you know, of course, like, you know, we're talking about, you know, there's been no shortage of, like, federal money trickling into eastern Kentucky and Appalachia in general over the last 40, 50 years. to Eastern Kentucky and Appalachia in general over the last 40, 50 years, and then what ends up happening. Some local judge ends up on a boat called the SS Promo Zone. Has anyone ever had that intense...

SS Reclaim Act. That intense conversation with Earl Goal where he asks you why Eastern Kentucky is not pulled out of the red? Has anyone had that? No. I've been around other people who've had this conversation.

Earl Goal actually follows me on Twitter. We're friends on a few social media platforms. Is Earl Gould the head of the ARC? ARC, okay. I was like 24, maybe. I was young, and I met him at the ARC mixer they had. There's ARC mixers? Oh, yeah.

It was at their- Oh, fuck yeah. There's ARC mixers? Oh, yeah. It was at their... Oh, fuck yeah. You know, look, whenever they have their, like, regional commission in the fall, the night before, it's always, like, a little meet and greet banquet.

So someone had, like, introduced me to him because I was in a fellowship, and he goes, you know, we put all this money into the region to get it out of, like, these distress zones,

and you can see in Virginia how they've pulled themselves out of the distress red zones in West Virginia. But East Kentucky can't pull themselves out. Why do you think that is? I'm like, oh. Okay, Earl Goll, let me solve years of crosses problems in East Kentucky. Oh, this is a person that runs. It's really crazy that i don't know it's just really crazy that this is a pretty powerful person who runs a

an organization ostensibly dedicated to addressing poverty who runs a failing federal agency and just call it what it is and he can't i don't know this i think that's just incredibly tone deaf it was that's that's what that's what felt so surreal about it. It's like when you go to the doctor and you're like, I'm here. Something feels weird. And they're like, well, what do you think is wrong with you? Well, isn't it your job to tell me what? It's like this thing of like, aren't you supposed to sort of know why you're not pulling us out of the distressed area here?

Isn't that your job? But he's had that conversation with several people so i'm just always curious like or it's his job to ask some meaningful fucking questions that people might actually have like feel like they can give him some insight on you know and that make people feel a little bit like they're a part of some solutions that he's got going on he does that to to like make let people know how hard his job is yeah you know what i mean he's like doing that it's like a power play i went to one of these arc it was like one of their 50th um it was around their 50th and they were doing i'm pretty sure they are about 50 now right yeah this is like 1965 yeah a couple years ago i went to this

presentation they were doing to celebrate their 50th and they had hired this glossy ass corporate consultant firm to you know evaluate their work and create an executive summary of a large research pile shit and i swear to you most of what they claimed that they had done in 50 years was septic systems was get us indoor bathrooms. You can't tell a wet cat not hit a goddamn shitty creek. I know! The fact that their biggest 50 years of ARC funding

and leadership in the region of federal power in the region all they had to say for themselves was people can flush the toilet in their house now yeah i literally could not believe it yeah i i remember like in that conversation just be like i don't know like you give money to corrupt local government and it doesn't go further than that it bottlenecks in the kentucky state house i the money doesn't get to where it

needs to go it's all I can tell you. It's not designed in a way to actually empower anybody. Mostly because they're fucking terrified of politics. They are. They're absolutely fucking terrified. I can't blame them in some ways because they are on the chopping block.

I think what the solution calls for they are on the chopping block they are on the chopping block right but um but yeah no uh i think what what the solution calls for i was talking to top about this this weekend if i was a producer at uh hgtv i would i would i would pitch a show where like two strapping uh young remodelers go to various downtown businesses in central Appalachia and try to renovate buildings that have been falling apart. If you do that, I'm starting my mom blog and rotting your coattails. Mom blogs. That's my dream. Yeah. Willis showed me this crazy

I like I like the DIY economy that that is emerging Willa showed me this this page on Facebook where this woman

just shells clams all day and she's actually very personable she's got me and Willa were watching the video forever

if you're not watching somebody shuck oysters on your nights off you're doing it wrong. It is gambling for good Christian ladies. So if the government and politics and shit doesn't save us, it'll be like 3D printers and it'll be the DIY economy. Facebook Live's going to do it. This leads us to the real question for you, Sarah. Short of shucking oysters on Facebook Live,

how do we get Twitter famous? Tell us how to blow up on Twitter. Thondi just wants that blue checkmark. Yeah, she's angling for that blue checkmark. I mean, for me, it's just I'm angry a lot in public. Check. that blue check mark. I mean, for me, it's just I'm angry a lot in public. Chick. That needs to work.

Other than that, I'm going to throw out a full grocery cart across Food City tomorrow. I'll videotape you doing it. That's Doris. I'll wait until Doris ain't working Yeah Well That's all

I've exhausted all of my Oh no I have more questions Okay we'll go for it Willa will love this Often Willa and I Sarah fantasize about the dating scene In big cities And so I need to ask you this.

Willa, in fact, a couple years ago, this woman that I ended up at this vacation place with swore to me, argued with me, that her son, who lives in New York City, has a harder time dating than anyone in rural America because it's just oversaturated. Really? And I was like, please bitch, do not step to me. Anyway, Will and I often fantasize about being a part of big city northern dating scenes so that we can be exotic birds. Exotic birds. And we're curious if this exotic bird life that we've imagined is real and have

you found a niche in the new york dating scene do tell you know i've heard absolute horror stories from so many people about dating in new york like i've heard nothing good but i also haven't been single for years when i when i came to new york i was already with somebody and we started dating after we were at a protest in dc so you might want to try that okay oh no i've run the mac of this real here sissy that ain't gonna work i'm just convinced i want someone so far removed from what like my political or not not like i just don't want them to be political like i just want someone who's like a little bit naive actually yeah i just you know just be cute sweet and that's i think i'm good i don't want to i don't want to talk about it when i come

home yeah yeah yeah i have to yeah in that case you should just um go to a country who has entirely different politics you know you have totally different reference points you don't even know what to talk about i think i fantasize about it and then like the reality is like you've updated those guys and then you're like okay where's some substance yeah you're eventually just chalking it up to them being completely shallow yeah yeah it It's idiot. Can't process. No, there was, like, one guy that, like, we used to all crush on when I was, like, younger in Tennessee. And he was, like, he was super into wrestling in his backyard. And that's, like, all he cared about.

And we all were in love with him because we were, like, he's cute and there's nothing beyond that. And, like, you just have fun with him. But then, like, as it went on we were just like oh that's all that's all there is like gotta have something more than that he likes to rest on his backyard we're not there's really nothing below that surface there well sarah do you have friends from the region in new york that you hang with no actually i haven't. So I just moved to New York in October, which is part of it.

But, yeah, I haven't really met anyone who's also from the area, except from the editor of our magazine who's from West Virginia. But other than that, which is telling in and of itself, right, that you just, like, don't run into a lot of people in New York who aren't from, like, already from New York or already from a big city. And it is weird, and it feels, like, really alienating. Yeah, I just find that when we travel or we move places, we find each other. Yeah. I'm hoping.

I'm hoping that eventually, I don't know, maybe there will be some secret gathering eventually I don't know maybe there will be some secret gathering I don't know about yet and I'll find it or something but what about in DC is that where you lived before I lived in DC before this um which wasn't much better because when you say Virginia people just think Alexandria and that's definitely not the Virginia I'm from so yeah yeah Virginia is much like Kentucky. I mean, we're both Commonwealth, of course, but there's like four Kentuckys and four Virginias, you know? Yeah, yeah. Which is why

I always tell people, you know, it's Southwest Virginia and they never know what I'm talking about, but at the same time, if I don't specify, they'll think, like, I'm either from Chesapeake or from Arlington, and, like, neither is true. Oh, for real. Blacksburg, I've heard that referred to. It is weird.

In Kentucky, people in Louisville think Lexington is East Kentucky. It's just like, that's fucking crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Someone over the weekend was talking about I've heard that there's barn raves in East Kentucky because we were

making a joke about raves and I was like what and they're like yeah I've heard there's barn raves in East Kentucky and I was like where are these at and they're like Berea and I was like no no there's strip mine parties in East Kentucky we could have a barn

rave though now that you mentioned it hadn't really occurred to me before. But I mean like it's not a scene that's here guys. Be the scene you want to see Willa. Sarah did you get much pushback today about your

New York Times shade? Shockingly no. Or maybe like I've just muted them already and so I didn't see it. But I was expecting a lot more shade than I got. Maybe it's still coming. Well, the week is young.

By the time this airs on Friday, you'll be blown up. Oh, God. It's always how it goes. Yeah, we'll get you a job at Apple Shop if they burn too many bridges. Yeah, if they come at you too hard, we got you. Yeah, you can be Trill Billy number five.

I'm good with that. We need a shot in the arm. Enjoy our unfame. Right. We're basking in it here. Well, I do a radio show on friday mornings just like a community radio show that no one's listening to but i call it feminist fridays and play all female artists um and you should start you should start shouting out those uh leftist female twitter handles

on the community radio station yo at so this is so this is actually a good I brought up Feminist Friday last week when I got this weird message I was going to ask you about this Sarah does anyone ever ask you about feminism in the region has anyone ever no not really which is weird

now that I think about it because I get a lot of weird questions about the area and that's never been one of them. Yeah, I got this strange tech note. It was a Facebook message from a girl who had interned here briefly one summer, and I met her once. And it was this long message about, did I know of any rural feminists? Because her and her friend had went out to dinner and thought that there was a real need for rural feminism and and did they did i have any examples of one or should we start working on that messaged a feminist said do you know any feminists i like sent back the longest message explaining like how women have like

maintained communities and families and churches and organizations and uh stood on like union lines and then i like pointed out like you know what it was to be a single mom and then i like pointed out tanya's feminism friday show and she went back and was like, oh, I actually meant scholastically. What? And I was like, she meant like academic? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, yeah, the female professor that I put on that list.

Oh my God. I guess that's the only time that counts. Yeah, it really is. Guess you just better hit up Bell Hooks and hope for the best. I guess that was the first time I realized people outside of rural communities might not think there's feminism

in rural communities yeah I don't think they think that there's any progressive people at all they sort of just treat it as these benighted monoliths of people where people just don't know what they're talking about or where they're going I think one of the sort of impacts of the Hillary Clinton campaign

was this sort of association of feminism with sort of cosmopolitanism, sort of like urban liberal enlightenment, just like there's no way they, back in those hills, there's no way they're enlightened enough to know. Right, yeah. Yeah, like no one back home gives a shit about Lena Dunham that I know about. The vast majority of Americans don't even know who the fuck that is, probably. No one has a reason to recommend them, honestly.

It's not a bad thing. And like, you just, you're like, maybe they wouldn't even call themselves feminists. I know a lot of women back home necessarily, like, maybe don't understand, like, the academic theory, right? Or don't care about it. But why should they? Like, if they're living it out on a day-to-day basis. Yes.

And I actually said, I was like, a lot of women I know are feminists. They might not identify with that word exactly. And then when she wrote that back, I was like, and that's why those women don't identify with that word exactly. Like, it's fucking terrible. Yeah. Thank you for pointing that out yeah right yeah i always say that my i was raised by a single mom and all of her sisters and my mamaw and i say that i was raised by feminists but they never said that they didn't have that word but it's not fucking necessary yeah all right go ahead well speaking of lena dunham one of my favorite headlines ever was an opinion piece.

It might have been on HuffPost Women. That was like, I support, as a feminist, I support Lena Dunham's right to be shitty. I was like, I love that. Well, it probably explains why people like my mom, you know, who lives in a rural area, like voted for Trump, even though she did. She thought he was pretty reprehensible. Like there's no alternative. And if you don't identify as a feminist, but you live it, you know, and you see someone who's sort of feminism is this sort of like corporatized, like enlightened or whatever.

Commercial feminism. Yeah. Target commercial feminism. Like you're gonna you're that's not gonna resonate with you and you're gonna see it as condescending actually and yeah well we've been firing the questions at you sarah do you have any questions for us yeah sorry i have actually been talking we've like we've just been talking at you like yeah sarah sorry pay attention to us sir man i've i've so many questions i've been like i've been looking into like the

what went down in pike bowl which has like been really hard to do from a distance yeah if you're going to do it well um so i'm always interested to hear from like people who are actually in the area kind of how they viewed it and what they think you know let's say i'm going to go out and i'm going to talk to other people in media. Like, what do you want them to know about what went down? Well, I actually was there. I was at a wedding. Actually, I think every single person around this table was.

We were all at a wedding that day. Two of our best friends married each other on the day. So we were drunk and dancing. I did watch the live stream leading up. Like, I watched it all the way through. And it was so intense. And I had, like, I battled, like, with, like, this fear of it all week. And then also just been like, are we escalating this fear?

Like, are we, like, is this hysteria? But also, at the same time, feeling hysterical. But I don't know. Like, I think think it was just it was such a surreal moment like my dad had came in to my apartment and right as they were marching up and it was just like this really weird moment of like and he's 73 and i just looked at him and i was like did you ever think you would live to see this like did you ever think you would see a nazi rally in east kentucky well i think this is a really good point actually and i think that this is a huge consequence of the liberal media's portrayal of this area as like white homogenous racist trump country because like i think the neo-nazis see that and they respond to it and that's why they came in the first place they're like oh this is a white place they will be open to the sort of idea of like white supremacy as a

politic and like it's bullshit a lot of the people i talked to is like telling thomas hanging out with my friend kelly this weekend and she was just like so wait they they they are here because this is a like don't they understand that the majority of people didn't even vote for Trump here? You know what I mean? Like, but because the, like the media portrays it that way, the Nazis responded that.

And that's why they like, we have the liberal media to fucking blame for that. I think like, yeah, yeah. I do think that's fair. I do think like I've pointed out more than once to people, you know, that,

that very same fact that most people in central Appalachia,, probably in the South, I haven't looked at it more broadly, but I know for sure in Appalachia and, like, the coal counties, most people didn't vote, let alone vote for Donald Trump. Right. And they're not the reason Donald Trump is president, right? Right. They're not the ones who gave him a TV show to begin with. Right, exactly. And also to that point, it's not like he wasn't going to carry Kentucky and West Virginia and Tennessee anyway, you know what I mean?

Yeah. It's just like... Yeah. But voter turnout was extremely low. They keep saying that 80% of our county went to Trump, when in actuality, 80% of people in our county didn't vote at all. In fact, we were battling fucking forest fires on election day, and most people just... I mean, of course, i could go down the list of

reasons that it's extremely hard to even vote in the first place in kentucky we have one of the highest disenfranchised rates in this country but just that particular day you literally couldn't get out of your house we had smoke everywhere your scarves are on your face i mean it was so yeah and then the numbers his numbers were not from rural places. The big chunks of his numbers were not even in rural places. It's so fucked up. Yeah. What I do think is like interesting about the reason why they chose Pikeville or how they tried to like, they tried to sort of take the messaging of the war on coal and use it for their benefit.

And that was like everything that they posted was like white working families. We're here because no one cares about what's happening in your community. We're here because you need jobs. Like they'd really try to take that messaging and use it to their advantage. And it didn't work because I think they assumed that a mostly white community was like overtly racist. Not to say there's not racism here,

but that's exactly like the kind of racism we have in that we don't have a problem here is like the way people feel. But they're not going to come to your Nazi rally. They might be blind to what's happening,

but they're not going to come to your Nazi rally. They might passively support a maximum security prison yes that's how we're right it's systematic racism it's not overt nazi racism not well that sounds but whatever i know what you mean yeah it's like it i think they misconstrued what they could get away with or what they could organize with here. Yeah. Um, and so it was really, it was, it was just a pathetic rally.

It just looked pathetic. Yeah. It turns out Nazis are fucking terrible organizers. Who knew? People whose worldview is based on paranoia and, uh, hierarchy competition, selfishness.

It's. To, to get at your question, Sarah, I liked Terrence's take was that it's one of the most underreported stories of the first hundred days is that Nazis

are descending on rural communities. They're not homegrown. These people were from Indiana or some shit. Like not homegrown. These are like what do they call it when people drop in? I don't know. Fucking Carver Baggers or something? That's a good enough word.

Yeah. Let's go with it. The parachute. These are like parachute Nazis. Right, yeah. And J.D. Vance. I mean, they weren't. Matthew Heimbach, it's not even that he lives in Indiana now.

He's originally, if I'm remembering it correctly, and I'm pretty sure, and he's from Montgomery County, Maryland originally, which is one of the wealthiest counties in the entire country. Yep. Wow. So. Yep. That's funny.

I didn't even know that, but it makes sense. Yep. Yeah. That's fucking crazy. I think the only thing that was really sad that I think I took away from it is that there was so much fear around that rally, and then when Antifa got involved, there was so much fear around that rally. And then when Antifa got involved, there was so much fear around Antifa that it sort of like took away this moment to talk about racism in that suddenly we were just scared of everyone. And so it wasn't about the fact that they were anti-fascist.

It was that they used tactics that people in the community might not agree with. And so they were just, it was like a blanket fear. And there was no conversation beyond who that fear should probably be more around. Yeah. The local media coverage really seemed to reduce the whole thing down to two extremist organizations choosing our area as a battleground. Yeah. That's what they just like chalked it up to. Right. Yeah.

And that's how it looked like that's how it played out. Like, you know, like it looked like two groups of people just screaming at each other across the street. Yeah. But a lot of local people turned out for the march against the rally. But that wasn't really um recognized locally either yeah yeah yeah so so that happened so that happened last week uh but we really were drunk yeah we again we were at a wedding we were trashed at a wedding my favorite moment i will have to say is at the end when everybody was like going home and it was like all winding

down and one guy was just riled up and and so he decided that the police dog needed to be watered and so he just kept screaming water your dog water your dog and i was like curling my hair getting ready for the wedding and i was like oh shit I should water my dog before I go but like a little bit later like I saw several people online just like sort of like making the joke about that but I was like that's like the big quote people took away he was very passionate about it yeah right right well um so, yeah, no, we've got over an hour of conversation, of audio here. Any closing words? Any closing? Wow.

Always put me on the spot, y'all. Sorry, sorry. Yeah, I guess my closing thought about, I guess, if I had to say something about maybe media coverage of Appalachia generally, I hope it's going to get better. I hope that the most optimistic thing I have to say about any of it is now there's an opening that people actually want to hear about Appalachia, which is, I guess, a little bit better than it was before.

I feel like people are just completely ambivalent. So my hope is we're going to keep having chances to sort of tell our stories and national media about what it's like to be from these places and have family in these places and experiences in these places and hopefully expand the coverage outside, you know, Nazi rallies and hillbilly elegy. Hell yeah. Yep.

Well, thanks for joining us. Yes, Sarah. Good shit. Thanks for fucking with us. Yeah, thanks for fucking with us. Thanks for having me. Yeah. I know, yeah.

This episode in particular has to be bookended by some female artists you act like every single guest we've had on the show all our music has been dudes oh yeah you're just right all the music has been dudes good call good call Tanya

alright we'll do better alright alright alright alright alright Sarah well we'll let you go but thank you for joining us All right. We'll do better, all right? All right, all right, all right. All right, Sarah, well, we'll let you go, but thank you for joining us. Yeah, appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for the conversation.

It was great. Yeah, you too. Thanks. Bye. Bye. I remember wearing straight-leg Levi's flannel shirts Even when they weren't in style I remember singing with Roy Rogers at the movies When the West was really wild I was listening to the Opry

When all of my friends were digging Rock and rolling rhythm and blues I was country But country wasn't cool I remember circling the driveway Pulling up and turning down George Jones. I remember when no one was looking, I was putting peanuts in my coat. I took a lot of kidding, cause I never did fit in.

Now look at everybody trying to be what I was then I was country when country wasn't cool ooh I was country when country wasn't cool

I was country Country wasn't cool. I was country. Put my hat down to my boots. I still act and look the same. What you see ain't nothing new. I was country when country wasn't cool. Thank you. I was country when country was a new cool. Hey, I was country. Country was a new cool.

Yeah, I was country from my hat down to my boots. Thank you.