Beyond Race: Obama's Green Opportunity

In the eyes of most pundits, the upcoming primaries in Appalachia -- including western Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Kentucky and West Virginia -- will most likely deal a blow to Sen. Barack Obama's ability to transcend the brewing racial quagmire in presidential politics. Didn't Sen. Hillary Clinton score a landslide victory among white voters in rural and Appalachian areas of Ohio? Conventional wisdom says Obama will never have a chance in "redneck" Appalachia, even among the Democrats.

Perhaps. But Appalachia could also provide Obama a historic opportunity to move beyond our racial politics with a truly new vision. Instead of offering worn out ideas for poverty relief, like Clinton, or succumbing to the anachronistic schemes of the dying coal lobby, Obama should shatter these artificial racial boundaries by proposing a New "Green" Deal to revamp the region and bridge a growing chasm between bitterly divided Democrats, and call for an end to mountaintop removal policies that have led to impoverishment and ruin in the coal fields.

Beyond race and rednecks, another dynamic is simmering as an undercurrent among blacks and whites in this struggling region: Obama's urban campaign and youthful environmental activists have failed to make any inroads with labor's last generation in the Rust and Energy Belts.

Truth is, Obama has a lot in more common with Appalachia than he knows, nor he is the only groundbreaking African American figure in the region's history. For starters, Black History Month founder Carter Woodson emerged out of the coal fields of West Virginia, as did Booker T. Washington, the most important African American spokesman of the 19th century. Pioneering black abolitionist Martin Delany walked out of West Virginia to alter Pittsburgh's destiny.

Woodson, Washington and Delany also understood one of the best kept secrets about Obama's adopted state of Illinois: Slavery was legal and incorporated into the state's constitution in 1818. Making an exception for the laborers in the salt wells in southern Illinois, which generated a considerable portion of the new state's tax revenues, the Illinois legislature -- and the American Congress -- willingly overlooked legal slavery in this so-called anti-slavery northern state. Slavery in the guise of indentured servitude and the kidnapping of free African Americans remained in the area until the 1850s.

Despite their glorious calls for emancipation, the Illinois legislature committed one of the most egregious acts in American political history: They declared the economic benefits of the salt (and future coal) industry outweighed the acts of inhumanity and destruction that supported this economy.

With all Democratic Party eyes now focused on the Big Coal state of Pennsylvania, Obama would be wise to ponder his state's darker history and its implications today for the Keystone state and its energy policies linked to the divisive coal industry in the wider Appalachian region.

Woodson and Washington also had first hand experience with the worst kept secret about Obama's state: A vast coal bed stretched across those salt reserves in the hilly and forested region of southern Illinois with its own cursed wealth.

While Obama likes to declare that he comes from a coal state, as if somehow identifying with rural Appalachia, he rarely mentions the fact that the shortsighted economic interests of the coal industry have subjected the bottom tier of Illinois to nearly two centuries of economic helter skelter, racial conflicts and environmental ruin.

"The rape of Appalachia," Harry Caudill wrote decades ago in his classic text on stripmining and poverty, Night Comes to the Cumberlands, "got its practice in Illinois."

Caudill was referring to the first commercial stripmine in eastern Illinois in the 1860s. By the 1920s, plundered for their coal and unable to compete with the non-union labor in Kentucky and West Virginia, the southern Illinois coal towns had turned into deforested and eroded wastelands, and were depicted by one government report as a "picture, almost unrelieved, of utter economic devastation." Southern Illinois lay claim to the highest infant mortality rates in the nation.

Today, stripmining in the central Appalachia coalfields is producing the same results. More than 470 mountains and their adjacent communities have been leveled, despoiled, and economically ruined since Barack Obama first moved to Illinois. The massive machinery and explosives involved in mountaintop removal and strip-mining have gutted the labor movement and dramatically reduced jobs in West Virginia, Kentucky, and western Pennsylvania.

Instead of falling back on his failed Ohio message for the illusory concept of "clean coal," which offers no real sense of job security or regional understanding of that industry's job-stripping mechanization, Obama needs to recognize that it's indeed time to release Appalachia from its stranglehold by King Coal and the region's default economy of low-paying service jobs. He needs to summon the courage of another Illinois presidential candidate: Abraham Lincoln.

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present," Lincoln told Congress in 1862. "The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

Disenthralling himself from the rhetoric of change, Obama has a wonderful chance to rise to the occasion, transcend issues of race, and stop one of the most immoral crimes against nature and our society today: He needs to call for an end to the destructive policies of mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia, demand passage of the Clean Water Protection Act (HR 2169), which has 129 co-sponsors and bi-partisan support across the coal states, and launch a new "Green Deal" to rebuild the region.

Coal miners, more than the Obama activists on the urban campuses, understand one reality: There will be no bonafide movement against global warming until there is a genuine Green Deal to phase out King Coal over the next generation. Until that day, though, job-desperate coal mining communities will be forever at odds with the environmental wing of the Democratic Party.

Like a true uniter, Obama could bring together the ailing mining and mill communities, white and black, with urban environmentalists -- all needed players for a Democratic victory -- for a new vision of economic diversity based on renewable energy initiatives.

Al Gore, like John Kerry, failed to recognize this great cultural divide between labor and environmentalists in Appalachia -- or the rest of the country for that matter. Democrats, in fact, remain in denial over one little bitter detail about the general elections in 2000 and 2004: Despite the state's overwhelming Democratic majority and elected officials, West Virginia has sided with the Republicans in the last two presidential races.

Let's be clear: This does not mean Obama needs to call for an end to coal, as we know it. He simply needs to stop the scandalous and overwhelmingly unpopular war of mountaintop removal in Appalachia and start the process of replacing an old industry and its displaced workforce with a new one based on renewable sources.

In a Lincoln moment for change, Obama could open up a new chapter for the region, by focusing his technologically savvy movement on developing a constructive Green Deal of renewable energy jobs, education and retraining, sustainable communities and reforestation to make Appalachia a model for the rest of the country.

This would not only help Appalachia. It just might save his campaign.

Comments

[mamamay]

These little towns, probably have only the archie bunker type citizens living there. I remember how angry Archie was at Edith, because things didn't go so right on the job. Where are the y oung people in these little towns? Hllary is not going to do anything different for these people than bush, Reagan, etc before them. We need some jobs there to utilize the youth. Old folks like myself, get set in their ways but let an Obama type come to town and we perk up. We need youth places, that will get the older folks out.. They can entertain, play ball, sing, put on skits, work at the grocery stores,(super size these to) Super markets Put in a skating rink and let the adults come out and watch. Have a home bake sale, Many old folks don't cook anymore , so have a recipe raffle,etc. Obama will encourage jobs, he will bring some kind of job indiginous to the town. All you have do is stop hating long enough to get a system going. Hillary just wants your vote,and another shot at the white house, she doesnt care about Penn. She hasnt the faintest what an older person could be like, enjoy, etc. folks vote for Obama and give him a chance to renew your town, your family fun, jobs, income and shelter. The obama type can rejuvenate you. You can have fun again on a dime. Vote Obama and be young again. Youll have lots to sing about.

[marysandra]

Appalachian people have hard lives and one can see great dignity in their eyes, but face it, they usually vote against their own economic best interests.­.With no evangelicals running, thankfully, this time, a Democrat may have a chance with them in the presidential vote. But it is unlikely, they will continue to vote their emotions, instead of their common sense. Sad, because these are probably some of our most commonsensical citiizens about other things. My guess, war hero trumps woman or black man, even though the outcome will be of no help to their situation. I have lived in Appalachia, it is a heartbreaking place.

[PaulLoeb]

To amplify the point, I just got some polls on MTR. In a 2007 poll, 65% of Americans oppose the Bush Administration's proposed rule "to ease environmental regulations to permit wider use of 'mountain top removal' (MTR) coal mining in the U.S," according to a national opinion survey conducted by Opinion Research Corporation for the www.700Mountains.org project of the nonprofit and nonpartisan Civil Society Institute (CSI) think tank.
http://www.700mountains.org/release091307.cfm

A 2004 West Virginia poll found the same response levels.
http://www.appalachian-center.org/poll_results/index.html

So given Clinton's statements this week pretty well giving an ok to Mountain Top Removal, saying
"You know, maybe there is a way to recover those mountaintops once they have been stripped of the coal," this is a prime issue for Obama to open up, not to mention the right thing to do morally.

Clinton's comments at
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/19/105837/690/142/479900

[eje153]

Do you really believe that Barack Obama will be able to put together a coalition of politicians to pass some of his idealisms. He wants to reduce the lobbyists influence in Washington, but lobbyists are the only way individuals can have their ideas heard in Washington. Also, the Republicans are just going to tear him apart because of his lack of experience, and his support of Black Clergy who preach racism againt whites. Anyone who preaches hatred against another human being should not be apart of our government. I just don't think it is the right time for Barack Obama. I believe he is a fine man but he needs to stop preaching. We don't need a preacher in the White House; we need a dooer. If he become the Democratic canidate I not sure how I will exercise my right to vote. Change is needed but I just not sure he is the the individual who can lead this nation away for Bushism.

[mamamay]

Obama is an american like many of us. He's like the little engine that could. Please give this engine a chance to perform for you. One wont know until he is tried. Speculations have caused many walls to fall, many banks to drain, and many ships to sink. We need to get past these remarks that the media keeps playing, just turn them off, and tune them out. Just vote with your head and heart. Old folks need to be told too. Now we need to get together and roll up our sleeves. Obama is the little engine, come aboard and lets make this process work. Folks need to show love, understanding and also, the need for the needs. Obama will bring sunshine to your communities by getting some decent jobs that the youth are interested in..How about young folks cleaning off the yards, and repairing things around folks home. Old people love for the youngsters to be around. young folks can be the handiperson for a day or two to assist folks with painting etc. Move that engine to the churches office buildings etc.. This is what Obama as president can do for these little towns as he moves this little engine along. Bring in the youth, bring back the stores, There is so much that Obama can do for these little towns of such little resources for a start. We just need to stop hating long enough to go vote for Obama and get this restoration started. Folks will be glad and rejuvenated for doing so.

[PaulLoeb]

Mountain Top Removal is devestating. I think the author is right, but the stress has to be put on major green investment that would replace coal, so people aren't under the hammer of supposed job loss.

Obama might do well to connect with Kentuckians For The Commonwealth, a major group working on these issues