We spent most of Day Two on a bus, visiting groups funded by ACF in West Virginia and southwest Virginia. These included South Central Educational Development, which is a community center in Bluefield, West Virginia that grew out of an HIV Prevention project; Big Creek People in Action, which does organizing in McDowell County, West Virginia, the 5^th poorest county in America; and the Clinchco Center of the Appalachia Women’s Alliance in Clinchco, Virginia, a program that organizes low income women in this former “coal camp” (i.e. a “company town” built by a coal company to house workers in the mines: Clinchco has fallen on particularly hard times since the coal company departed, leaving a community with no sustainable economic base in its wake).

It’s hard to know even where to begin, but I will focus on the Appalachia Women’s Alliance, The Women’s Alliance is housed in its own little community center, a trailer bought for $2,000. Here’s an exterior view of the trailer.

Edna Gully is the staff person for the Alliance. She helps people who, as Viney (one of the members) put it in speaking to us, “have been taught their whole lives that we aren’t worth nothin’.” They are taught this lesson every day of their lives in places like their schools. Edna’s nephew recently got a C in one of his classes and went to the teacher to complain he thought the C was unfair and to ask why he got that grade. The teacher replied, “Well, C is for Coon; I guess I could have given you a B, for Baboon.” When Edna found out, she confronted the school board about the teacher’s behavior.

Edna got that teacher fired.  This is Edna, with Viney, in front of a community mural they created.

I couldn’t help thinking how many times folks like this get treated this way and, because they feel they are “nuthin’,” the behavior goes unchallenged and the lesson gets reinforced.

Another thing the Appalachia Women’s Alliance does is get people to register to vote and to then vote. As Cora Norris, one of the women in the group, put it “I never did vote before because it didn’t seem like them politicians ever cared about us and they never did a dern thing for us when they got in there.” But Edna helped convince Cora to vote or, more accurately, helped Cora realize that her voice mattered, that her opinions mattered, that she mattered.

Cora told us how, in a recent election, there was a ballot question on whether or not LGBT people should be allowed to adopt children. The poll worker – an official of the Commonwealth of Virginia – told her on the way in “Now be sure you vote yes on that question, so we can stop those gays and lesbians.” Cora, a sixty-something woman who has never lived anywhere by Clincho and I imagine has therefore had pretty limited interaction with LGBT people, went in and voted no on that question. And she told Edna what the poll worker had said.

Edna got that poll worker fired, too.

Thank God for Edna.

But what about all the places in Appalachia that don’t have an Edna? I shudder to think.

Posted by Kevin on Sunday, May 4th, 2008 at 11:32 pm.