West Virginians will sometimes refer to a lack of momentum or political will around the development of in-state industries other than plastics, chemicals, and scraping the bottom of the coal mine (literally; miners and mining equipment are starting to hit the rock at the bottom of coal seams, causing an increase in black lung disease due to miners breathing in miniscule rock shards). The question that motivates sustainable economic development people (and regular folks looking to the future) is: what if we tried something new? Or many new somethings, all at once? As one solar advocate told me, “the solar industry will be a drop in the bucket in terms of jobs, we know that. But the idea is to have a bucket so full of so many different drops that losing one industry doesn’t empty the bucket.”

But, as I’ve written about before, the thing about building a future out of the husks of empty factory warehouses is that no one has any reason to believe in it, on its face. Most of the people I interviewed across Central Appalachia this summer would probably agree that people cling to industries like coal (by which I mean not simply hosting the industry in their communities but the cultural identity of the industry as defining their regions, industry propaganda, etc.) because when you are in the middle of a very dark tunnel and you can see from whence you came but not quite where you’re going, it would be easier to back right out (and the coal barons who control WV government don’t want you moving through the tunnel). What keeps the cultural ghost of coal alive, other than coal interest groups (and their spinoffs or progeny in the form of local “coal pride” groups) whose stars will surely start to fade as well? Here’s where I actually think one has to get a little psychological—if you’ve ever heard the phrase “closing the cycle” in reference to anxiety, trauma, or grief, you might be familiar with the idea that in order to leave an experience in the past (not forgetting it, but no longer making it a cornerstone of identity) one has to fully process the pain of it, the effect it is currently having, and why it has no home in your future. Not that I think entire towns should be forced to sit in a large circle, hold hands, and divulge how they feel about the coal industry over bad coffee, but I wonder if there is an informal process of grief and rage that has, for many people, never completed its cycle.
Of course, I hesitate to say that post-industrial or post-fossil-fuel communities are just traumatized or mid-grief and that’s the “diagnosis” for the feeling of hopelessness when it comes to new industries, new developments, or new ideas that some folks have observed in their coalfield communities. Saying someone needs to “get over their trauma” when primarily they need unpolluted water, a dignified wage, and medical care they don’t have to drive to the nearest major city to get would be, to put it lightly, an insulting misidentification of the problem. But economic depression can cause literal depression—because money problems cause stress, but also because lost work, lost purpose, and lost community means loss of identity. When you lose identity, you stop making plans for the future. The purpose of being alive becomes one fuzzy void.
Think of friends or family members you may have who suddenly lost work – they may not all have plunged into poverty, but they probably showed signs of depression while experiencing the stigma and shiftlessness of unemployment in a country that is not overly sympathetic to the unemployed (not to mention those disabled by workplace injuries) on a policy or personal level. Most of the counties with the highest numbers of self-reported depressed adults nationwide arelocated in Appalachia, as well as the southern Mississippi Valley, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Washington. Depression is an economic problem. It can also translate into rage. I wonder what would happen if Jordan Klepper or Comedy Central’s various cleanshaven and smug correspondents did their semi-annual “I treated Trump supporters as a joke and not a dangerous voting bloc” videos with new questions for the rabid folks in line at Trump rallies. Like “Do you feel that your boss could fire or has fired you after a workplace injury without reason and you would have no affordable legal recourse or union protection?” or “Have you lost interest in the things you previously enjoyed? Do you feel that anyone would notice if you died?” Things would probably turn very disturbing very fast.
Despair is an economic problem, and economic problems are political problems. Once people begin to sense that they are the victims of something (e.g. the death of union power, the opioid epidemic, etc.), despair follows, and anger follows despair if those people are left to flounder. Many people don’t know that, even before Joe Manchin dropped out of the running, there was (and still is) a Democrat running for his senate seat. His name is Zach Shrewsbury and he’s a working-class ex-marine who is unbothered by the “socialist” label being thrown at him, predictably, by conservatives. Per this Guardian article: “'If caring about working-class people, caring about people having bodily autonomy, water rights, workers’ rights, makes you a socialist, then call me whatever you want. Doesn’t bother me,’ Shrewsbury said.” You haven’t heard of him because, at least as of a few days ago, Shrewsbury says no one from the state or national Democratic party has reached out to him. Reading between the lines: Democrats think West Virginia is a lost cause for them. They haven’t invested real money or time in the state for 20 years. They have no momentum; people flounder. People are angry, people are laid off, people have busted backs and busted cars. The combination of victim complex and conspiracy theory someone like Trump brings to the table starts to look like a welcoming therapist’s couch. Take this drug. Heal yourself. You’ll only feel a pinch.
This is all to say: I think having a designated space, time, and place for people to talk about the impacts, negative and positive, of their economic past is key to forging the future of a community. There’s a lot of pain there (and many dreams) that never gets exposed to air. Over the summer, I conducted an interview with an academic (who was born and raised in WV) that I didn’t end up using for any articles, but which has stuck with me. We were talking about the sense of pride that people still have in the coal economy and in the strong masculine image of the coal miner, who defies death every day to provide for his family. We talked about the bumper stickers on the backs of cars in Central Appalachia that proudly display the unofficial miners’ symbol: a skull with pickaxes crossed behind it. I asked why suffering (the long, inhumane hours underground; living with debilitating respiratory diseases; harsh quotas set by mine bosses) has become so romanticized here. She replied that pride in deep suffering is the reward you get for suffering, and becomes the way you explain why you are being made to suffer in the first place. Or as Joe Bageant once wrote, “If someone’s making you eat shit, you might as well bring your own fork.”
Complaining that you’re sick of eating said shit might start to sound like weakness to those raised in at atmosphere of what some fancy theorists call “petro-masculinity” (associating extraction industries with masculine dignity and renewable energy with feminine laziness). But I think people get to be angry about being left in the hole economically. I think people get to be angry and grieve while they work to build a different future too. Both must occur in tandem. It’s not whining, and I think as younger generations become more fluent in the language of emotional expression, that will become more widely understood.
On that note, the kids are everything. They will determine the future by definition. I’m helping organize a screening at work of the film King Coal, which is a sort of artistic documentary about moving beyond coal psychologically and economically in Central Appalachia. A colleague and I were talking about doing a screening for local elementary or middle schoolers and including some kind of craft afterward where they could visually represent their vision of the future in West Virginia. As my colleague put it, “I want to hear what they have to say, I want to hear what their dreams are!”
P.S. it wouldn’t let me caption that video, but I was digging the contrast between the massive coal train running near my office and someone’s car in the lot with a Marxist bumper sticker and another sticker that says “Real patriots brake for America’s only native marsupial.” That’s Huntington for you.