Status Updates From The Injustice of Place: Unc...

How do we build not injustice, but justice into place? The legacies of centuries of extraction and subjugation must be addressed. From our analysis, we have derived six principles for action:
1. End separate and unequal schooling.
2. To end violence, spark mobility.
3. Invest in social infrastructure.
4. Root out corruption.
5. Make structural racism visible and confront it.
6. Bring the supply chains home.

The Crow Creek reservation in South Dakota ranks as the 4th most disadvantaged place on our index. In 1863, its population was exiled from the rich land of southwestern Minnesota when Gov.Alexander Ramsey expelled the Sioux after the bloody US-Dakota war. Native Americans died by the hundreds, some in the war but most to starvation after they were forcibly relocated onto land mostly in hospitable to human habitation.

The 1862 Homestead Act–benefiting white settlers–was passed just 3 years before General Sherman's special field order No. 15–with its 40 acres and a mule promise–and was overturned by President Andrew Johnson, devastating the prospects of most southern Blacks, who were desperate to establish homesteads of their own. They have never been compensated for that loss.
–Systemic racism in action

The places [of greatest advantage] made significant investments in schools, contributing to long histories of high graduation rates&college attendance. They have enjoyed the lowest rates of violent crime, income inequality,& public corruption. They're rich in social capital: residents are connected to one another through volunteerism, membership in civic organizations, and participation in other community activities.

One farmer has been holding out on giving his land over to fracking because he knows the 100+ people he employs would immediately be out of work. But it’s difficult to say no to all that money. The water-intensive process of fracking+an extended drought has led to a catastrophic drop in the water levels and the huge aquifers that once ensured to prosperity of the region.
–Stop fracking destroying the environment!

White Mississippians are stuck in the cycle of defeat and shame and defiance. We have to be forced to do what's right by the federal government, which makes us feel defeated. And then that leads to this place of shame–that just makes us more defiant. We are defensive and defending ourselves. We would rather lose than admit when we've ever been wrong.
–He is describing a a collective lack of emotional maturity.

Low wages, low taxes, and lack of state regulation virtually ensures that poverty wages will continue.

In the Cotton Belt, millions of acres of land are no longer cultivated; the land has been stripped of the rich topsoil accumulated over millennia by the rapacious planting of tobacco&cotton. This isn't new. When Frederick Olmsted traveled in 1850s reporting for the NYT, he wrote about passing many farms where the soil had been used up.

–We need to stop planting monocrops. Diversity is how we restore&enrich the land.

[Areas of mountaintop removal] have seen 1200 more deaths...Practices that degrade & poison the environment are literally killing people. In these areas, cancer & mortality from diseases of the heart, lungs, & kidneys are significantly elevated. Birth defects are much higher. The poorest Americans in the country are the ones paying the highest price for the environmental effects of resource extraction & degradation.

A study conducted by researchers at the Duke University School of Medicine found that communities located near hog farms had higher rates of mortality from any cause, higher infant mortality rates, and elevated levels of kidney disease, tuberculosis, and septicemia, even after controlling for other factors.

FEMA deemed 46% of applicants with income below $15,000 ineligible for help, compared to 10% of those making more than $70,000. White, more affluent homeowners were much more likely to receive aid...the very government agencies responsible for helping Americans recover from disasters are exacerbating pre-existing inequalities, not reducing them.

Denials of aid deepened distrust. People were traumatized from these storms. Traumatized. And FEMA came in riding on these white horses like they're going to save the world and almost every other person that went to them were denied...the amount of aid FEMA will provide is directly pegged to the market value of a home, part of why higher income families claim the bulk of the resources

Corruption is a seldom recognized form of exploitation in which an elite few are allowed to live off the spoils of public office and to preserve the status quo. Under these conditions, it is nearly impossible for a community to improve.

Reports of pain are sky high and Appalachia and several other rural regions, likely as a result of the history of physically demanding work in these locales...their disorders were often serious and debilitating.

Blaming government benefits for breaking the spirit of the poor is just the latest guise in a long history of elites blaming Appalachian highlanders for the region's problems. In fact, most of the low-income people we spoke with told us they were desperate to do more than rely on a disability check. Even those with severe disabilities hope to have a job one day so they could contribute to society.

The state of mind in rural America is one of "good rich people" and "bad poor people"...[poverty] is defined as a moral failing. The moral narrative shields the elite from having to grapple with the grinding poverty in this poorest white-majority place in the nation, with the long history of extraction & exploitation, and with the very real corruption that is crippling the community & perpetuating the class divides.

Local offials relied on vote buying&voter intimidation to retain power, discriminatory hiring&firing to control voters,& bribes of food, moonshine,&cash...Control of local offices enables public servants to facilitate illicit moneymaking schemes–some of which risk their constituents' lives...including the willingness of elites to make common cause with criminals, bringing drugs&illegal painkillers into the country.

The infusion of 1.5 million of federal aid threatened the power of local politicians, who mounted an intimidation campaign to ensure that the populace voted for the political machine's representatives to serve on the board of the US Office of Economic Opportunity's Community Action Program, which was later defunded due to their persistent corruption and self-dealing.

For generations, central Appalachia's penchant for rampant political corruption has been a millstone around its neck, stunting economic growth and thus miring the region in disadvantage so deep that it has persisted even in the face of substantial federal aid...the key to control of the region was the twin pursuit of both political and economic power.

On the embezzlement of millions of taxpayer $ [by those in charge] of a federal block grant that was meant to fund the state's TANF, investigative journalist Wolfe said, "It’s mind-boggling to me...that the folks who rail against these social safety net programs...are often the same people who are making their careers at the government trough, privatizing these programs and getting cushy jobs for their [friends]. "

A lack of opportunity for intergenerational mobility in a place will itself spark violence. But violence can then hinder mobility. Taken together, these dynamics can trap communities in a structural cycle of violence, with impacts that cascade through time.

The high rate of violence in the Leflore County is a response to blocked opportunity. The sense that it is nearly impossible to get ahead, plus the lack of ability to defend oneself against white reprisals, means that the anger boiling up in the Black community has no outlet except against those who are similarly oppressed. That the white authorities don't care only further stokes the anger.

Across a broad array of diseases, central Appalachians die younger and more often than people in other parts of the country. The myriad health problems facing the region have been severe for many years. Even before the opioid epidemic, exposure to environmental toxins and limited access to healthcare are all challenges the region faced.

Big Timber and Big Coal provided much of the early social infrastructure in central Appalachia...As company towns closed in the early 1950s, much of the company-owned social infrastructure came crashing down in just a few years...destroyed all at once, like during a war.

Local activist and historian Warren Wright exclaimed, "We really honor our exploiters here, we mountain people do. Almost every town in the area is named for some bastard from outside the region who gutted it."

Political scientist Michael Zoorob and epidemiologist Jason Salemi have found that the density of non-profits and civic organizations, plus voting and other behaviors within a community, are indeed strongly tied to overdose death rates. When these spaces are lost, the civic safety net a healthy community forms to catch people when they fall is torn apart.

Social infrastructure–like public libraries & community centers that offer regular programming + churches and schools that provide space for recurring interaction–foster durable relationships. But when the social infrastructure gets degraded, people hunker down & stop frequenting public spaces. Social ties atrophy. Disorder & crime rise. Mistrust increases. Civic participation, such as volunteering & voting, fades.

The sickest region of all is central Appalachia. The most disproportionate cause of death is the sharp rise and mortality due to drug overdose over the past 30 years. The drug epidemic is the fallout from a modern-day extractive industry led by Big Pharma, due to the long-term decline of economic conditions, family physicians willing to prescribe OxyContin, prevalence of disability, and lack of social infrastructure.