A group of Rappahannock County, Virginia, citizens decided their community needed a different kind of journalism. Instead of starting a new publication, they forged a partnership with the Rappahannock News. After five years on the job, the Foothills Forum looks at where they’ve been and where they’re going. Five years […]
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Living in the Washington, D.C., suburbs as someone born, raised and educated in Appalachia, while also working in what Brookings Institution’s Senior Fellow Jonathan Rauch calls the “knowledge industry,” I often feel out of place. This has been exacerbated in the era of President Trump, as all eyes suddenly turned […]
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It’s a common refrain of American voters: How can your party be so heartless? Democrats want to know how Republicans can support President Trump’s policy of separating babies from refugee families. Republicans want to know how Democrats can sanction abortion. But does either party really care more about compassion? In […]
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Rural communities are creative and resourceful when it comes to community development. They have to be. Foundations that avoid rural investment are missing opportunities for innovation and success. Eduardo Porter’s recent New York Times piece, “The Hard Truths of Trying to Save the Rural Economy,” is misguided and patronizing, even if his intention […]
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This piece was originally published in Scalawag, which amplifies the voices of activists, artists, and writers reckoning with the South. You can read the original here. Follow the Greenbrier River down from its headwaters at the north end of Pocahontas County, West Virginia, where the East and West Forks merge […]
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This essay is excerpted from 55 Strong: Inside the West Virginia Teachers’ Strike, published by Belt Publishing. The national media is obsessed with the idea of West Virginia as “Trump Country.” In countless interviews during and after the West Virginia teachers’ strike this past year, I was asked the question, “How […]
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