YouTube - Appalachia; A History of Planned Poverty »
Posted By Spadecaller 7 months, 3 weeks ago in News
"Tell It to the Banjo" is a backwoods bluegrass banjo hymn composed by Angel Jose Ruiz Perez, which provides the soundscape for this video about rural poverty in Appalachia.
The chronic poverty of Appalachia today is a story that originated with economic domination and racism.
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Spadecaller
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Spadecaller7 months, 3 weeks ago
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The chronic poverty of Appalachia is the outcome of economic domination and racism. In the 1930s, southern politicians prevented farm workers and domestic servants from qualifying for Social Security because they knew that the small Social Security check would support families and would change the labor market in the South. In the early days of coal mining, coal operators prevented workers from unionizing and demanding fair wages. In the face of bitter competition among the coal companies, operators controlled everything about workers' lives to keep their labor costs down. By preventing education and community participation the operators forced workers into submission. President Lyndon B. Johnsons War on Poverty instituted national legislation, but the dynamics of exploitation in Appalachia prevented distribution of its opportunities and benefits. To this day, impoverishment in Appalachia persists.
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chevydog7 months, 3 weeks ago
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Spade -- should point out that southern Appalachia was not the only place for labor wars. I grew up on the fringe of the eastern PA coal fields, and there was plenty of strife there. More a product of the time than of the place.
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To be prosperous, a place somehow has to attract money from outside itself. Otherwise you end up with a 'could be anywhere' place where the people live off of each other. I've seen this happen all too often--usually such places are run down and have a "used to be" mentality. Appacalachia has stuff that could bring money in from outside -- wood, coal, water (though not generally navigable), game. But the transport is poor, and there aren't many natural places for large cities to take root. And much of that stuff is for various reasons out of favor now. So the area is likely to stay poor. Though I'm not totally unsympathetic, this is why I have mixed emotions about environmental types who rail at the "damage" that mining will do to the area. Mining is one of the few plusses the area can exercise.
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not2needy7 months, 3 weeks ago
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Being from the area, i saw a lot, but i also missed a lot of it too. I didn't grow up in a holler or live in a shack with farm animals running around or in and out of the house, (my mother would have died).... When i go back there now, which is very seldom, i see things i guess i overlooked when i was younger.
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That said, there's nothing more beautiful than the mountains! I was almost 20 when i moved to Louisville, and the first thing i said was "where are the trees?" I still miss being surrounded by trees.
It's a shame what big coal mining businesses have done to the mountains. After cutting off the tops of the beautiful mountains, they brought in that awful kudzu to keep people from being covered by mud slides. Now the kudzu has just about taken over a lot of areas.-
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memestryker7 months, 3 weeks ago
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I have family who have lived there since before I was born, and I remember visiting them. Very tough area even today. They didn't live near the coal-mining, but the men left home and lived in bunks while they worked in the mines, sometimes hundreds of miles away, with only narrow roads leading in and out. The women and kids farmed, and my family was lucky, because they all finished school, and a few even made it to college through winning scholarships. But most didn't fare so well.
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DropkickaLib7 months, 3 weeks ago
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This article makes some generalizations about Appalachian poverty. If you examine large cities you would see equally impoverished and ill educated people in larger numbers.
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Actually, many in Appalachia were subsistence farmers prior to social programs which took away the economic independence that even the poor once had.-
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aceofspades17 months, 3 weeks ago
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"Actually, many in Appalachia were subsistence farmers prior to social programs which took away the economic independence that even the poor once had."
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Damn Right! - DropKick!!
The G-D government won't even let a poor man & his family starve in peace! -
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memestryker7 months, 3 weeks ago
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Local scholars in the area suggest that the advent of property tax contributed heavily to their demise. They could no longer just eke out a living and make it--they had to pay most of what they managed to take in to the government, and if their crops failed, they barely survived by gathering, hunting, and bartering. They ate a lot of weeds and game animals to survive.
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canadianrancher577 months, 3 weeks ago
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Sorry haven't viewed the video yet but to drop kicks comment about the independance of the poor, I would really like to know what independeance has to do when you are struggling to make a living and are always face by restrictions that are placed on you by government and the rest of society as how you can carry on your business. I am still what one might call independeant in my business but for this right it means that every year I am working for less and less, my sons would like to farm but a person needs a living to survive and when they come home to give it a try they soon realize that the lifestyle we once enjoyed is now a thing of the past . We are now being forced into poverty, whether it is planned or not I can't say but it sort of takes me back to when I read the novel Brave New World where there were those who lived in the fringe areas, to many of us out here there seems to be two societies, and it seems that it is a community of masters and slaves.
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If I seem a little bitter about things it comes from the realization that since 2003 my business has only held its own, expensies have been met every year but the living we need to survive has come from savings and it seems this year our living will have to come from borrowing against equity. When I look at all the farm sales this spring it seems that it is affecting both large and small operators. I think of the song "can't break the farmers back" and my reply to that is I wouldn't bet on it.
Being poor is something that one learns to live with, but having everything taken from you after working so many years hardly seems right regardless what type of system one lives under.
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GLee7 months, 3 weeks ago
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Born and raised in Harlan, Kentucky. I have seen 'both sides of the fences'. My father helped in building alot of the 'coal camps' in the hollars of Harlan County. My uncle was a coal operator. My Grandfather was Captain of the local State Police Post. My cousin ran a local hotel (drinking & gambling establishment) and some other cousins worked in the mines. I held worked in the lumber business as a youngster and knew I would have to leave Harlan County. I had family on both sides of the picket lines during strikes. Had friends shot crossing lines. Tough place to grow up. If you couldn't fight you were in BIG trouble. Tested everyday and it is still home.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t9V227meio=related -
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jovial7 months, 3 weeks ago
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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — The Obama administration's decision to hold coal mining permits to a high environmental standard has struck a note of economic fear in Appalachia, where mining — including the kind of mining that blows up mountaintops — has been a shield against hard times afflicting the rest of the nation.
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On Tuesday, the EPA announced it will take a closer look at 150 to 200 coal mine permit applications under review by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. EPA singled out two proposed surface mines in West Virginia and one in Kentucky as a start.
In a break from Bush administration policies, EPA is asserting its authority under the federal Clean Water Act to scrutinize plans to dump mine waste into streams and wetlands.
It appears that the coal mining industry is threatening that thousands of jobs will be cut if these regulations go through. This is causing politicans in those states (whom are deeply in the pockets of the coal industry) to try to water down the regulations.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5... -
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