Don West: a legend remembered

I think of Don West (1906-1992) as a Primal Ancestor of Appalachian hellraisers. I feel very fortunate to have had the chance to get to know him and to have received his “blessing” during his last days.

I first became aware of West when I haunted a used bookstore in Huntington’s approximation of Skid Row, now long demolished. It was one of those magical places where something unexpected could be found on any visit.

On one trip, I came across a shelf of softbound books and pamphlets by an outfit called Appalachian Movement Press. Some had titles like “Paint Creek Miner” or “Songs of Freedom” and told stories of the mine wars, while others might document absentee corporate ownership.

Also to be found there were works of mountain poetry and essays by West. It didn’t take much browsing to realize this was not John Boy Walton stuff.

West’s poetry was a bit like Langston Hughes, whose writings helped nudge me in my life’s direction. Like the great African American poet with whom he had some politics in common, West wrote for and about people who don’t ordinarily read poetry. He was unashamedly partisan, declaring that “Poetry and other creative efforts should be levers, weapons to be used in the people’s struggle for understanding, human rights, and decency.”

A native of north Georgia, West told the neglected story of the mountaineers’ long tradition of struggle. He had no use for the “Gone With the Wind” school of southern history. Instead, he wrote of long-forgotten anti-slavery Appalachians who took up the fight while William Lloyd Garrison was still a child, of poor whites helping runaway slaves along the underground railroad, of courageous southern Unionists who fought the Civil War in their own backyards.

Long before it became fashionable, West fought the passive hillbilly stereotype by pointing to mountain labor’s traditions of struggle and solidarity. I think he—along with people like filmmaker John Sayles (“Matewan”) and author Denise Giardina (“Storming Heaven’)—helped the region recover from the historical amnesia that censored the history of the mine wars and other labor struggles for generations of West Virginians.

But West was more like a literary character than a man of letters. When it came to his adventures, it was hard to say where to draw the line between biography and mythology.  Like a left-wing Jay Gatsby, he seemed to have continually and consciously created his own legend. And he did it well.

It went something like this: in high school, he got in trouble for protesting the racist film “Birth of a Nation.” In college, expelled and reinstated for leading a student strike. Agitating for a union in “Bloody Harlan” County, Kentucky. Organizing workers in publics works projects in the New Deal era. Fighting for civil rights since the 1920s. Recruiting volunteers to fight fascism in Spain.

He had known kangaroo courts and jail cells; beatings by company thugs; Ku Klux Klan terrorism; and government inquisitions. But it never seemed to occur to him to give up the battle.

West was a co-founder with Myles Horton of the Highlander Folk School in 1932, now known as the Highlander Research and Education Center, which played a huge role in the history of the civil rights and southern labor movement.

He soon parted company with Horton but went on to found the Appalachian South Folklife Center in Pipestem in the 1960s. (My kids in the mid-1990s used to refer to it as “the Dorklife Center.”) It never rivaled the Highlander, but it did influence a number of Appalachian young people in southern West Virginia. West helped bring some of the political culture of an earlier era to those who were otherwise influenced by that of the 1960s, which in my book wasn’t a bad thing.

I have come to believe that people like Horton and West helped create an Appalachian “lineage” of social action.

I finally got to meet him in 1988, thanks in part to my friend Yvonne Farley, who had a longtime connection with West.  I had gone to a festival there and was interviewing him for the state magazine Goldenseal.  When we were alone, we had a short Zen-like dialogue which was to have a great deal of influence on my later work.

I asked, not too originally, “What is to be done?”

West answered, “Education.”

I said, “Okay.”

I have come to believe that people like Horton and West helped create an Appalachian “lineage” of social action which is based primarily on popular education, understood as dialogue, relationship building and problem posing, that is a bit different from the more issue-based community organizing model of Saul Alinsky.

A similar approach evolved simultaneously in Latin America and elsewhere based on the work of the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. That shouldn’t be surprising, since many people have compared our region to the so-called Third World. Freire said that “Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people—they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.”

I stayed in touch with West and was able to spend more time with him when, in his last act of political theater, he decided to move back to Cabin Creek to end his days. It was the site of a bitter episode of the West Virginia mine wars in the early 20th century that inspired the writing of “Solidarity Forever,” the international anthem of the labor movement.

West wrote about it at the end of what I think was his best poem:

There was a yesterday of hurt and hope
and solidarity
when a virgin Union’s inspiration
stirred mountain men and women
to heroic feats.
Born on Cabin Creek,
“Solidarity Forever”
went on to stir lowly hearts in all parts of the land.
And there may be a tomorrow
On Cabin Creek
a clean tomorrow,
child of hope and hurt and solidarity.
May it be so.

(Note: I wrote this piece, adapted from a memoir in progress, for Doug Imbrogno's newish online multimedia "magazine" WestVirginiaVille. It's worth checking out. The occasion was the airing on WV Public Broadcasting of a new documentary on West titled "What Will You Do for Your Hills? The Legacy of Don West,” which unfortunately I couldn't watch because we don't get public TV on the farm for some reason.)

From the Front Porch to Parts Unknown

Apropos of nothing, meet Jeffrey and Maude Lebowski, new residents of Goat Rope Farm.

For the last three years, I've had the opportunity to rant on WV Public Broadcasting's weekly program/podcast The Front Porch. The premise was to bring together people with different worldviews to have civil discussions of current issues, sometimes with guests.

The program was the brainchild of outgoing WVBP's outgoing executive director Scott Finn, who is leaving to take a similar position on the mean streets of Vermont, where life is cheap and death lurks behind every maple syrup-making sugarhouse. Unfortunately, the program is probably ending with his departure as new leadership takes charge.

It was fun while it lasted. I hope they bring it or something like it back...or that we find a new venue. In any case, I'm grateful for the chance to try it. I also appreciate Laurie Lin and Jessi Troyan, who "appeared" on the program along with Scott. We had some interesting discussions.

In our last episode, we look back over the issues we discussed and debated and we also talked about the recently released episode of Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown, which featured West Virginia. 

For natives of the state, it's almost never a good thing when WV gets national media attention. Stereotypes, over-simplifications and poverty porn about. But I'd have to say that aside from a few minor criticisms about certain outliers, he and his crew got it right. The school featured, Mount View High School, is one of the schools my domestic partner teaches at and she knew kids well. I saw some friends as well. And I love McDowell County, which was where most of it was filmed.

I know some people had issues with it, but I think it could have been SOOOOO much worse.

I'd encourage people to take a look at the program--and I'd be interested in hearing what others think about it.

Whatever happened to gratitude?

You might think that President Trump, after receiving overwhelming support from West Virginia and much of Appalachia, would show the region a little love in his proposed federal budget.

That didn't happen. Instead, the president proposed massive cuts that would hit West Virginia and the Appalachian region harder than the rest of the country.

Among the programs on the chopping block are SNAP, which provides basic food security to over 340,000 West Virginians, about one in five. Many of those who receive these benefits are working people in low wage jobs - and these SNAP dollars are spent in local businesses, supporting thousands of jobs.

Then there's WIC, a nutrition assistance program that helps pregnant and nursing women as well as young children and over half of the nation's infants.

The highly successful Children's Health Insurance Program, which covers almost 35,000 West Virginia children, is also targeted. Thanks to CHIP, West Virginia has become a national leader in insuring children, with a coverage rate of around 97 percent. That could be undone.

There are also threats to low income energy assistance, disability benefits, Meals on Wheels for seniors, and temporary assistance to needy families.

One cut that seems particularly unsportsmanlike is the proposed elimination of the Appalachian Regional Commission, which has supported infrastructure and economic development projects in the region since its establishment in 1965.

You could almost view the other cuts as generic indifference to or contempt of disadvantaged people all over the nation, but the ARC hit seems like a deliberate and targeted slap in the face.

To his credit, Republican U.S. Rep. Evan Jenkins came out strong against the Trump budget in May. In his statement he said:

"While I appreciate the president's aim to cut wasteful spending, this budget goes too far in critical areas for West Virginia. The proposed cuts to our safety net programs, including Medicaid and SNAP, would hurt too many of our state's most vulnerable citizens, and I cannot support this budget proposal.

"The budget also proposes eliminating programs crucial to West Virginia's economic development and diversification - the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Economic Development Administration. We need to do more to attract new industries to our coalfields and invest in our infrastructure, and these two programs have a track record of success in West Virginia."

That's the good news.

The bad news is that the budget resolution passed by House Republicans does much of the same thing. The end result would be increasing hardship and poverty, growing inequality, weakened investments in our nation's future and a shift of costs to already hard-pressed states.

And the hidden agenda behind this kind of slash-and-burn approach to the federal budget is to provide yet more tax cuts for the rich, a zombie-like failed policy that keeps coming back from the dead.

The dangers of these disastrous cuts being fast-tracked through Congress are real. We need Congressman Jenkins and his colleagues to stay the course and continue to fight for a budget that reflects our needs and values.

(Note: this appeared as an op-ed in the Huntington Herald Dispatch on Sunday.)

Happy birthday, West Virginia

I've used this poem before to celebrate the day, but it still seems to fit:

Appalachia
By Muriel Miller Dressler
I am Appalachia. In my veins
Runs fierce mountain pride; the hill-fed streams
Of passion; and, stranger, you don’t know me!
You’ve analyzed my every move–you still
Go away shaking your head. I remain
Enigmatic. How can you find rapport with me–
You, who never stood in the bowels of hell,
Never felt a mountain shake and open its jaws
To partake of human sacrifice?
You, who never stood on a high mountain
Watching the sun unwind its spiral rays:
Who never searched the glens for wild flowers,
Never picked mayapples or black walnuts; never ran
Wildly through the woods in pure delight,
Nor dangled your feet in a lazy creek?
You, who never danced to wild sweet notes,
Outpouring of nimble-fingered fiddlers;
Who never just “sat a spell,” on a porch,
Chewing and whittling; or hearing in pastime
The deep-throated bay of chasing hounds
And hunters shouting with joy, “He’s treed!”
You, who never once carried a coffin
To a family plot high up on a ridge
Because mountain folk know it’s best to lie
Where breezes from the hills whisper, “You’re home”;
You, who never saw from the valley that graves on a hill
Bring easement of pain to those below?
I tell you, stranger, hill folk know
What life is all about; they don’t need pills
To tranquilize the sorrow and joy of living.
I am Appalachia: and, stranger,
Though you’ve studied me, you still don’t know.

There's this anyway

Times are hard in WV and especially in the coalfields. I wish the Obama administration had gotten onto the case a few years back, even for cynical political reasons. But there's this news anyway about some federal help for economic transition in Appalachia.

Then there's this: the Our Children Our Future campaign to end child poverty in WV just completed a pretty major voter drive. Here's a link to the story and the guide.

Finally, I guess it's not all bad news for coal miners (the ones who are working, anyway).

Another passing

West Virginia lost another good guy this week in the person of journalist Tom Miller, who died at the age of 78. Miller spent much of his career at the Huntington newspapers (there used to be two) and after his "retirement" he wrote a statehouse column called "Under the Dome" which was widely carried around the state.

Among his many accomplishments, aside from being a genuinely nice person, was the groundbreaking reporting series "Who Owns West Virginia?" in 1974. The short answer, by the way, is not West Virginians.

Millers findings were later echoed by the Appalachian Land Study in the 1980s. A few years back, my organization, the American Friends Service Committee, partnered with the WV Center on Budget and Policy to revisit the question in a report inspired by Miller's research and titled "Who Owns West Virginia in the 21st Century?"

Some things have changed since Miller's groundbreaking work, but the big things haven't. And the short answer to his question remains the same.

Thanks, Tom, for pointing the way. And for being a light shining in darkness all these years.

Elegy or requiem?

An unexpected big hit in the book world has been J.R. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, which is both a personal memoir and an attempt at diagnosing Appalachian ills. I think it succeeds very well in the former but not so much in the latter. The book was the subject of the latest Front Porch program/podcast. You can listen here. It's also on the menu in the latest Inside Appalachia.

Finally, thanks for the condolences from may people on the passing of Arpad the Magnificent. There's a big hole on the farm where a big white dog isn't.

The road not taken

The follow op-ed of mine ran in yesterday's Charleston Gazette-Mail. (An early draft ran here a while back.)

Lately I’ve been working on a research project about a perennial West Virginia topic: why our state is so poor. There’s been a lot of discussion about that lately in this political year.

But even though times are hard now, this region of the country has been known for poverty for a century or more. And many explanations have been given, some better, some worse.

I’ve been surprised to find that the most insightful — and prophetic — words on the subject are 132 years old. And they came from an official state Tax Commission, of all places.

The commission was charged with the mission to “collect and report whatever information will enable the Legislature to legislate intelligently and with safety upon the subjects calculated to advance the development of the State.”

And, amazingly, they actually did just that. Apparently, the practice of telling the powerful what they want to hear wasn’t yet in fashion.

The year 1884 was fairly early in West Virginia’s industrialization, but there was a great deal of economic activity and a feverish grab for land, minerals and other natural resources. The Commission had the foresight to recognize the difference between growth and real development. It warned of the dangers to the state if the ownership and control of wealth would pass to out-of-state interests:

“It is a mistake to suppose that this State is prospering as much as she ought to do. A State is prospering when, and only when, those who permanently reside within her limits are increasing in wealth; a state is prospering only when her citizens are accumulating property. A state is unprosperous when the wealth is being absorbed by a few individuals; a state is doubly unprosperous when the property is rapidly passing from her present population of home people into the hands of non-residents.”

(Golly, that would be terrible.)

The Commission cautioned that appearances could be deceptive. New economic activity could provide the illusion of progress, but economic growth isn’t necessarily the same as real development that benefits people who live here.

They put it this way: “If the entire enterprise is owned by non-residents, if all the profits belong to persons who reside abroad, if those who are permanently identified with the locality do not participate in the harvest, the State is going backwards.”

It even provided an example that could have come from today’s newspaper:

“… Some years ago a non-resident corporation opened a mine in the county of ***; all the coal in several hundred acres was taken out and when the treasure was exhausted the property was abandoned, and that locality is today poorer and worse off than it would have been if that coal had never been touched; that foreign corporation carried away the entire harvest and all the profit; the permanent or home wealth was diminished, not increased ...”

They went on to predict more:

“The history of this locality will be repeated in many places in this State, which are now pointed out, by thoughtless persons, as illustrations of our prosperity, and those who reflect see today what those who do not reflect will surely witness in the near future — Our State despoiled of her wealth and her resident population poor, helpless, and despondent.”

They even laid out exactly how the despoiling of the state happened then and still happens today:

“When Private Interest conflicts with Patriotism, Private Interest will prevail, and these agents have a private interest far greater than their concern for the public welfare. Besides this, the people have been educated to believe that our immediate development must be obtained at any cost and regardless of sacrifice …”

Once citizens could be induced to swallow that line of thinking, anyone who “would dare to raise a warning voice against this worse than reckless and worse than foolish sacrifice of our local wealth is not only ostracized from all participation in public affairs, but is actually excluded from all the accustomed avenues to the public ear.”

They warned that then, as now, schemes to enrich private interests at public expense would gain an easy hearing, while critical voices would be marginalized:

“Whatever information or argument will cajole the people into advancing the money making schemes of individuals is published in the papers, proclaimed on the hustings and advocated by men employed to manufacture public opinion. On the other hand every fact calculated to acquaint the people with the true condition of affairs is frequently carefully suppressed by influential journals and by those who are recognized as successful politicians.”

The final paragraphs are powerful predictions of the future and sad reminders of the road not taken.

“The wealth of this State is immense; the development of this wealth will earn vast private fortunes far beyond the dreams even of a modem Croesus; the question is, whether this vast wealth shall belong to persons who live here and who are permanently identified with the future of West Virginia, or whether it shall pass into the hands of persons who do not live here and who care nothing for our State except to pocket the treasures which lie buried in our hills?”

“If the people of West Virginia can be roused to an appreciation of the situation we ourselves will gather this harvest now ripe on the lands inherited from our ancestors; on the other hand, if the people are not roused to an understanding of the situation in less than ten years this vast wealth will have passed from our present population into the hands of non-residents, and West Virginia will be almost like Ireland and her history will be like that of Poland.”

It’s too bad this warning wasn’t heeded. We’re paying dearly for it now. Incredibly, some politicians are prescribing more of the same as a remedy for our current woes.

Is it over yet?

West Virginia's primary election is tomorrow (Tuesday, May 10). I don't know about you, but I'll be kind of glad when it's over. Maybe. Anyhow, here's a bonus section of The Front Porch with a focus on the state supreme court race.

Also, this column by E.J. Dionne has some interesting things to say about empathy and Appalachia. I think it's worth a look.

And speaking of wanting something to be over (in a good way), I'm dreading next week's special session of the legislature to deal with the budget. It promises to be a true goat rope.

Talking Appalachia

It's no secret that Appalachia in general and WV in particular are in a tough spot. The question is not only what to do about it but how to talk about it. The Topos Partnership, using the tools of ethnography, came up with a valuable guide for people who have to navigate these stormy seas.


AND WHILE WE'RE AT IT, here's a look at what won't help, i.e. cutting state taxes. This should have  been obvious a long time ago.

Three for the road

These are interesting times in Appalachia. If you are up on the whole apocryphal Chinese proverb thing, you'll recognize that as not altogether a good thing.

Today, I'd like to share three items that reflect the interestingness of the times.

FIRST, here's one on young Appalachians moving ahead in a world beyond coal's domination.  Several of these guys are friends of mine.

SECOND, here's a look about the violent reshaping of Appalachia in recent years.

FINALLY, here's a little reality therapy about Hilary Clinton's alleged coal gaffe.

Worth a look

From the NY Times, here's an interesting analysis of the American political scene, including those high-poverty areas that have flipped in recent years.

How to speak hillbilly

Sorry about the slow posts lately. You can blame most of those on the recent storms that hit WV and KY hard and took out our phone and internet as they blew through. Anyhow, here's the latest Front Porch podcast from WV Public Broadcasting. This time it's a fun one, with the topic being Appalachian accents, with some lessons on the same delivered by yours truly. Remember: pen and pin sound exactly the same and don't drop your Rs!!!

Targeting workers and the poor

I was hoping that once WV's Republican-controlled legislature was out of session the attempted beatdown of working people would be on hold for a while. No such luck. Construction workers and local contractors once again have a bull's eye on their back with the state's prevailing wage law in jeopardy again.

Next up: drug testing welfare recipients.

OFF TOPIC, here's an interesting look at Appalachia's economic transition from a Kentucky perspective.

West Virginia: love it and/or leave it

Staying and going is once again the topic on this week's Front Porch podcast. This time we have WV native Anna Sale, who produces the hit Public Radio podcast Death, Sex and Money in NYC. This one is kind of fun.

It's about time

For a good while lately, people on my end of the spectrum have been calling on the federal government to step up and assist those parts of Appalachia going through tough times because of the decline of coal. It looks like that is starting to happen, although on a fairly small scale.

I also found it interesting that WV's new senator, who metaphorically could be said to be a high priestess of the "war on coal" cult, is critical of the program, although she doesn't quite come out against it. For mythology buffs out there, her comments seem downright Protean to me.

This pod's for you

Here's the  latest installment of WV Public Broadcasting's newish program The Front Porch, in which executive director Scott Finn moderates discussions on live issues between Charleston Daily Mail columnist Laurie Lin and yours truly. This one jumps all over the issue of race and racism. This program is now available on iTunes.

In the event of recurring boredom...

...here's another installment of The Front Porch, a new program on WV Public Radio which features discussions of live issues with people from different viewpoints. This time it is yours truly and Daily Mail columnist Laurie Lin again discussing the whole Appalachian outsider/insider issue with Scott Finn.

If that still won't do it, here's an op-ed on state tax reform and zombies (there is a connection) that ran this week as well.

One state over

It's been another long day and late night, but here's an interesting and optimistic look at a post-coal future for a corner of Appalachia in neighboring Kentucky.

Election Day Blues

My friend Ken Ward over at Coal Tattoo has some words of wisdom on this election day. He notes that while lots of politicians rattle on about the so-called "war on coal,"

The list of things that coalfield candidates don’t want to talk seriously about is long and important: Mine disasters, black lung disease, global climate change, the environmental and human health costs of mountaintop removal, and — probably most significantly — what Southern West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky will do for jobs and an economy as the region’s coal production continues to decline.

 In particular, candidates from both parties have tended to vie with one another on who can bash Obama the most. Ward blames the media as much as the campaigns for going along with oversimplified soundbites.

He nails it with his conclusion:

Because elections do matter. And regardless of who controls the U.S. Senate or the W.Va. House, coalfield residents will wake up on Wednesday facing the same set of serious challenges: Natural gas will still be cheap. The best coal reserves in Central Appalachia will still be mined out. Carbon dioxide in our planet’s atmosphere will still be climbing to levels we should all be afraid of. The coal-mining jobs that are left will will be too dangerous, putting workers at risk of dying suddenly in a roof fall or slowly from black lung.

When all the votes are counted, our region will still face too much drug abuse and too little education, too much pollution and not nearly enough quality health care, too many WARN notices and too few jobs — too much fear and far, far too little hope. And mostly all the election will have done with its endless television ads, sound bites and attacks is the one thing that coalfield residents can least afford: Torn us further apart, instead of bringing us closer together.

The whole piece is worth a look and has tons of links.