Appalachia Group exists because there came a point where I just couldn't take the mocking, derision and stereotyping of Appalachian folks that I was reading all too often on DU. Believe me, it still exists. People can take only so much of being beaten down and I wanted to provide a space where Appalachian folks could feel good about themselves, explore some history and amazing folks, women and men, who have come from the hills.
This is not to say that the hard issues such as poverty, substandard education, lack of health care and jobs, etc. aren't topics for discussion because they most certainly are. It's so easy for some to just dismiss Appalachians as a bunch of "inbred morons, trailer trash, ignorant racist banjo-picking outhouse dwellers" (yes, these are actual pejoratives from posts to DU) without having even the least shred of knowledge or understanding of the region and its people. There's a thread on GD right now that I'm simply not going to participate in because I refuse to engage that kind of class warfare any longer, especially on a progressive site.
As with any oppressed class, women & children find themselves at the bottom of the pecking order. 60% of this nation's poor are single moms and their children and in the poorest areas of this country, such as Appalachia, that figure can be even higher. Even so, many women find themselves as heads of households, caring not only for their children but husbands, parents and extended family.
Below is a link to a piece that was done several years ago by Dateline called "Friends and Neighbors: How Do You choose Between Paying Your Bills and Feeding your Kids?" Anne Curry interviewed some young women from Appalachian Ohio (my neck of the woods) and the piece can either be viewed or read as text. It's just a reminder that in the war on poverty, women and children need us the most. Women don't need the constant battering that they aren't good mothers, that they're no-good sluts, welfare queens, "inbred morons" et al ad infinitum. Misogyny oppresses and misogyny kills, poor women most of all.
About halfway through my first reading of this piece I had to pause because I just couldn't stop crying. I recognized that face of poverty. I remember as a child finding the neighbor boy eating out of our dog's bowl because he was so hungry, the bullied kids folks called "dirty faces" lapping up a dropped ice cream from the sidewalk, the itty bitty children with rickets and rotten teeth, a vast, grey sea of faces ashen from malnutrition. Some 50 years after LBJ declared his War on Poverty, little has changed for many in Appalachia.
As you read/view "Friends and Neighbors" I hope we all will remember that these women are our neighbors and sisters. When we fight for a union, for health care, to eradicate poverty, for education, for reproductive choice, we fight for ourselves and for them. They are the faces in the mirror.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/38382773/ns/dateline_nbc-america_now/t/friends-neighbors/#.U8_UP01OWM8
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