In a series of conversations and interviews this month in Wheeling, voters said they feel like politicians aren’t responding to urgent, unaddressed problems in West Virginia.

This is part of Mountain State Spotlight’s ongoing effort to talk with residents in all of West Virginia’s 55 counties in the run-up to the 2024 election. We’re asking a simple question: What do you want to hear candidates talking about as they compete for your vote?

Earlier this year, Sarah Elbeshbishi visited the broader Northern Panhandle where residents said they want better roads, more jobs and solutions to the opioid epidemic. 

Here’s what people in Wheeling told us this month.

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As Mariah and Kenny Burnley were getting ready to have their second kid in 2020, they decided to open a Wheeling child care center. They knew that without child care, many parents can’t work. 

At first, the Ohio Valley Child Learning Center was financially stable.

There was lots of demand from parents. And pandemic-era funding supplemented the center’s budget.

Now, most of that funding has ended, and child care centers are feeling a financial squeeze. 

The Burnleys said private tuition payments, ones that some parents already struggle to afford, don’t cover the cost of keeping the lights on and paying staff. And some of the Center’s students qualify for low-income federal subsidies, which compensate child care centers with even less money. 

To reduce costs, the Burnleys are cutting back hours for already stretched-thin employees. Kenny had to step away from the center and get a new job, and Mariah hasn’t taken a paycheck for herself for the last two months.

“You can’t budget when there’s no money,” she said during a community roundtable hosted by Mountain State Spotlight at the Ohio County Public Library last week.

It’s a problem that’s set to become even more urgent. State funding for a child care subsidy program is set to run out at the end of the month, and the Burnleys said more centers will close if West Virginia lawmakers don’t address that financial gap.

“It’s nice to run on it for an election, but where’s the action?” Kenny asked.

Outside the library, security guard Charles Works described himself as “a big pro-gun activist.”

“I hunt, I fish,” he said. “That’s pretty much my relaxation time.”

But he’s invested in other local issues too, like Wheeling’s homeless population. Works said there seem to be more unhoused people because of addiction, and he’d like to see the city offer fewer services in hopes many would leave.

A recent state report on homelessness found that the majority of unhoused West Virginians are working, and more state resources are needed to combat the problem.

It’s something that’s hit close to home: When his daughter regularly smoked methamphetamine, Works recalls searching creek banks in the early hours of the morning to find her. She’s since been clean for several years, but he said he doesn’t understand why she gave up life at home to use drugs.

Works said that, recently, he feels like the cost of everyday items has gone up. “I hate grocery shopping anymore,” he said.

While he makes above the minimum wage, he would like to see it increased.

After grabbing a drink with his wife Jody near Wheeling’s Centre Market, Mike Usenick, a coal miner who retired after working 43 years underground, said his family is also feeling the squeeze of inflation.

“Groceries, fuel, all kinds of fuel, electric for your house, everything’s going up out of the price,” he said. “I don’t know how some people even pay for it.”

The Usenicks said they want to see politicians answer questions about whether they would listen to regular people and look out for the little guy.

After decades living in Wheeling, they’re encouraged by the ongoing downtown redevelopment project. Officials replaced aging underground infrastructure and are now redoing streets and sidewalks. A downtown hotel is also in the works.

“It doesn’t happen overnight, but what they’re doing is good,” said Jody, a part-time occupational therapist. Since her 31-year-old daughter died of colon cancer in 2018, Jody has also run a charity to support people in similar situations. 

The couple likes to travel to other small towns that are trying to attract tourists. As they think about the next generation — especially their young grandchildren in nearby St. Clairsville, Ohio — Jody said it’s good to see new businesses opening up to attract visitors and improve quality of life for residents.

“I hope it continues for the grandkids and all and and I hope they can stay in the area, you know?” she said. “I hope that there’s still a place for them here.”

But not everyone is excited about the Wheeling redevelopment. As he started to hang a left down an alley in his black pickup, lawyer Ted White said he worries that more tourists will make it more expensive to live in Wheeling and that the jobs at places like the planned hotel will be low-paying. 

He sees the $3 billion Nucor steel mill being constructed in Mason County as the type of economic development that West Virginia needs. The plant expects to employ 800 people when fully operational.

“That’s a real job,” he said. “That’s a steel job.”

A few blocks over, Nick Chancey paused his evening walk to talk about the upcoming election. The Ripley native and his wife moved to Wheeling about a year ago with their two young children for his job at the Catholic Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston.

He’s the director of the Diocese’s Office of Youth and Young Adult Discipleship and said he worries about today’s kids who’ve grown up during the opioid epidemic.

Around town, he sees kids being raised by their grandparents, not their own parents. And in the news, he reads about children being abused or going missing.

“The system is sort of failing them,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of deep problems here in the state.”

Growing up, he remembers a lot of people leaving their doors unlocked and being friendly. As the opioid epidemic is “rearing its ugly head,” he said he sees people scared by those who are homeless or addicted to drugs. 

West Virginia needs someone to address the underlying issues that have caused the opioid epidemic, Chancey said. But he’s disappointed by the hyperbole from politicians. 

“I often don’t feel like I’m really treated as an educated citizen,” he said. “I feel like I’m treated more as another vote.”

In Wheeling, residents are worried about children, inflation and jobs appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

“I’m not talking about, you know, behind the Walmart,” said Jennifer Garner, describing her visits to rural communities on behalf of Save the Children, the global charity that supports families in need. “I’m talking about the town behind the town behind the town, [folks] who can get to Walmart with a group of people maybe once a month because that’s how often they can afford gas.”

Garner, the veteran actress who most recently appeared in this summer’s Hollywood blockbuster Deadpool vs. Wolverine, grew up in Charleston, West Virginia. In previous campaigns, she’s raised funds for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. This year, she brought her star power to an August 6 “Rural Americans for Harris” Zoom call.

The two-hour online session, which drew over 2,000 participants and raised some $20,000, did not have the high profile of other affinity groups that have emerged in recent weeks to back Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for president. Initiatives like “Win with Black Women,” “Black Men for Harris,” “White Women Answer the Call” and “White Dudes for Harris” have attracted hundreds of thousands of supporters and added millions to campaign coffers.

But rural Democrats insist the party can’t afford to bypass their communities, which account for 15-to-20% of the U.S. electorate, or some 25 to 30 million voters. According to data from the Pew Research Center, Donald Trump won a whopping 59% of the vote in rural areas in 2016, and he did even better in 2020 with 65%. Joe Biden won in 2020 by flipping the script in the suburbs. Trump narrowly defeated Hillary Clinton among suburban voters in 2016; Biden won them by an 11-point margin in 2020.

Opportunity knocks

Still, there are rich opportunities outside of cities and suburbs—for instance, leaders like Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, one of the organizers of the “Rural Americans” call. Her husband is a cattle rancher and she’s delighted with the choice of Tim Walz; he grew up in rural Nebraska and taught high school in Mankato, a small city in Minnesota. But Democrats first have to break what she calls “the cycle of mutual neglect.”

“We neglect to invest in rural America,” says Kleeb. “So [rural Americans] don’t hear our message, they don’t see our faces, they don’t know our platform. So they don’t vote for us—so we don’t invest in rural America.”

Walz was scheduled to headline Tuesday’s event but was named as Harris’s running mate that same day and made his first public appearance as the Democratic vice-presidential nominee with Harris at a rally in Philadelphia. In his stead was Peggy Flanagan, Minnesota’s Lieutenant Governor, a member of the White Eart Band of Ojibwe, who could take over for Walz as the state’s governor if he is elected in November.

During the Zoom session, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat and chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, who is retiring this year, pointed to her party’s record of accomplishments for rural America. She ticked off increased broadband access, funds to support rural hospitals and nursing homes, and “the largest investment in rural electricity since the New Deal,” to back renewable energy projects.

The Trump-Vance campaign did not respond to an email query from Barn Raiser for information about Republican priorities for rural America. The GOP platform, approved at the party’s July convention, includes “Protect American Workers and Farmers from Unfair Trade” as a chapter heading—but the bullet points beneath make no mention of either farmers or rural communities.

Voting for values

By itself, a list of policy priorities or legislative accomplishments is not likely to move the needle for rural voters, says Dan Shea, professor of government at Colby College in Maine. He is the co-author, with fellow Colby faculty member Nicholas Jacobs, of The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America. The book is based on a 200-question survey completed by more than 10,000 rural residents, the largest and most detailed research ever conducted among this population.

Rural residents, he says, are looking for empathy from political leaders, and a sense of shared values. “A common assumption,” Shea says, “is that rural communities are withering away, a wasteland of alienation. We find the opposite: Rural Americans are proud of their communities. They are connected and they want to stay in the community.”

Rural communities, he says, are typically more integrated than suburbs or cities, with well-to-do families living nearby those who are less well off, often attending the same schools and churches. As a result, although rural residents have a strong belief in hard work and self-reliance, they are also highly attuned to how well—or how badly—their community is doing as a whole.

Over the past decades, rural families have suffered severe economic shocks, first from the farm crisis of the 1970s and 1980s, then from manufacturing job loss connected to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and unrestricted imports from China. As more family farms disappeared, rural factory jobs became an important source of income—until they weren’t.

“In many communities,” Shea observes, “there was just one factory, and it defined the identity of the town.” When that plant closed “NAFTA ghost towns” were left behind.

Even prior to the collapse of rural manufacturing, beginning with Ronald Reagan’s sweeping victory in 1980, the prairie populists who could once win over the heartland electorate began to lose steam. Democratic senators like Idaho’s Frank Church, Iowa’s John Culver and South Dakota’s George McGovern lost their seats, and rural voters are now “overwhelmingly conservative.”

His students are shocked, says Shea, when he tells them that probably the most liberal Democratic presidential nominee ever—McGovern—was from South Dakota.

“My best guess,” he says, “is that the worry and anxiety that all Americans have about the future is dramatically heightened in rural parts. Rural Americans are anxious for something different.” He’s not surprised to see the Harris-Walz ticket focused on a forward-looking message. “It’s by design they’re saying, ‘We’re not going back.’ “

Neighbor-to-neighbor

Several speakers on the “Rural Americans for Harris” Zoom event warmly remembered time-tested values of mutual support that are still a source of strength for rural communities. Jennifer Garner recalled how her mother, a schoolteacher, was often not around when she came home from school.

“I would go right down the street to Marge,” she said, “and I would know that she would have a key for me. And Mrs. Moore would have a snack for me, and I knew I was taken care of in my community.”

Trae Crowder, a comedian from Celina, Tennessee, and co-author of The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin’ Dixie Outta the Dark,” remembered what happened after the death of his father 10 years ago. “I had two babies, and I was living paycheck to paycheck,” he said. “After the funeral is over, I go back to the office to check how am I going make these payments. And the guy goes, ‘Oh you don’t owe us anything. Everybody in town chipped in … so it’s covered.’ ”

Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, a Democrat who represents northern New Mexico in Congress, talked about the irrigation channels—acequias—that are vital to farmers in her district. The acequias “make sure that the snow that falls on the mountains in the winter can flow down to nourish our fields in the summer.”

Shared ownership of a vital resource, she explained, is a unique feature of this centuries-old system “The farmers each own a little share of the water,” she said, “and we protect and take care of those ditches together because without them we would not survive.”

“The acequias are older than America,” said Fernandez, “but there is something American about them, that shared belief and commitment to something that’s bigger than each of us.”

Tough losses, tough fights ahead

Several speakers acknowledged that running for office as a Democrat in rural communities—and in states with a significant rural population—isn’t easy.

Brandon Presley, who is the cousin of Elvis Presley, nearly pulled off an upset during a run for Mississippi governor in 2023, winning 47% of the vote. Mandela Barnes lost a U.S. Senate race in Wisconsin in 2022 by just 26,000 votes. Anderson Clayton, chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, pointed out that Biden lost North Carolina by 74,000 votes—“42 votes for every precinct in every county in the state of North Carolina.”

Rural Democrats are also focused on the need to run candidates in as many races as possible. One goal is to erase GOP supermajorities in all-red state legislatures, which allows the party to write its most extreme policy planks into law. And in swing states, said Ezra Levin, a co-founder of the pro-democracy activist group Indivisible, down ballot races can make a big difference.

“I know some of you are thinking, hey Ezra I’m in the heart of Trump country we can’t elect a dog catcher,” he said. “That might be true. You might not be able to elect a dog catcher. But you sure as hell can run a dog catcher; you sure as hell can get votes out for that dog catcher, and get votes out for the state rep, state senator, U.S. rep, city council person.”

“You can get votes out for those candidates. They might win, they might not win. But regardless they’re going to get votes out for themselves and the top of the ticket for Harris for Walz, for Democrats running statewide. We need those votes.”

“When I ran [for state legislator] in 2022, 40% of the seats in Missouri were uncontested,” says Jess Piper, a teacher with a large social media following, and currently chair of Blue Missouri. “Because of all the work we’ve been doing, 18% of the seats are going uncontested. So we are making progress.”

“I was running in a district that hadn’t elected a Democrat in 32 years,” Piper said. “Because I was raising money, that Republican had to stay in his district. I forced him to talk about abortion bans and the fact that we don’t have shoulders on our roads and that 30 percent of the schools in Missouri are on a four-day week. I forced him to talk about that when he was wanting to talk about Hunter Biden’s laptop.”

“The road to democracy,” Piper said, “is going right through rural America.”

The post Can Tim Walz Help the Democrats Win Back Rural America? appeared first on Barn Raiser.

MYRTLE – On a cloudy Saturday in April 2016, a crowd gathered on a former Mingo County mountaintop. Hundreds of car enthusiasts and residents joined to celebrate completion of a new drag strip on a ridge flattened off by coal mining.

Local politicians showed up too, eager to promote a rare and long-awaited win in Southern West Virginia: an economic development project coming to fruition on a mountaintop removal mining site. They promised crowds would bring tourism and excitement, and show that this land, even damaged by mining, was still valuable.

“Once you mine the coal, you leave the water, the power, the sewer, then you can bring a plan in, just like we did on this racetrack,” said then-state Sen. Art Kirkendoll, a Democrat from adjacent Logan County.

Nearly a decade later, this community is still waiting. There has been false start after false start. Promoters are optimistic the drag strip will finally open this fall. But the story of its delays, its ups and downs, and the long road to getting this close paints a picture of the hurdles the residents face as they search for a post-coal economy.

Don Blankenship’s post-coal mining plan

This tale starts about 20 years ago, with Mingo County native Don Blankenship. The hard-nosed former CEO of Massey Energy thought if the county built a racetrack, tourists would come. 

Blankenship spent a year in federal prison, convicted of conspiring to violate mine safety standards at the Upper Big Branch Mine, where 29 workers died in an April 2010 explosion.

But he remains popular with some in Mingo County who see him as a benefactor behind community projects. His racetrack idea resonated.

Blankenship joined forces with the late Mike Whitt, a respected former long-time director of the Mingo County Redevelopment Authority, to get more than $2 million in grant money to get the project off the ground.

Since then, dozens of people have tried to help to get the track up and running. But racing fans who’ve followed this journey have seen the project met with hurdles at every turn.

Mountaintop removal sites were supposed to be developed. Flattened land was intended to be turned into things like industrial sites, public parks, schools and residential communities. But state and federal regulators for years allowed coal operators to level the hills, looking the other way and not enforcing post-mining development mandates of environmental laws.

And the story of the Mingo racetrack illustrates the struggles that local leaders, developers and citizens are left to overcome:  a maze of red tape, government loans that are hard to pay back, confusing instructions from public agencies, clashing agendas of public officials and a lack of help where local resources are in short supply.

“In the big picture, we didn’t transition fast enough from a coal economy to a tourist economy,” Blankenship said. “We had the connections, but we couldn’t get it put together, because the political environment just doesn’t allow you to move quick enough.”

‘Playing in the dirt’

Not far from the drag strip along the Logan-Mingo county line, ATV riders speed around curves on the rugged Hatfield-McCoy Trails, bringing tourism dollars to the area. 

As coal jobs have declined, investors have built ATV rider lodging on former strip mines and new restaurants have opened up for riders. But while it’s made progress, the effort hasn’t yet lived up to lofty economic promises. And there are still signs of economic distress and population decline, driven by the continuing decline of coal.

Terry Sammons, who’s worked on economic development in the county for decades, believes tourism will need to be an essential component of economic growth for years to come. 

“When I was a child, no one came here,” Sammons said. “They always were leaving, and now it’s just so refreshing to see people recognize the beauty of West Virginia and embrace it.”

A former board member of the Mingo County Redevelopment Authority and now an adviser to it, he noted that years ago, the county enacted a plan in preparation for the decline of coal.

Sammons rattled off examples of local efforts: the Coalfield Development nonprofit is training locals to construct lodging, and mined land is being used for farm animals and growing crops.

Blankenship remembers the Hatfield-McCoy Trails project was increasingly bringing visitors to the area when Massey workers started carving out an oval dirt track on the mine site in the Myrtle area, several miles from Delbarton. He’d learned about dirt track racing from his son, a fan of the sport. 

“I saw a link between the trail system and dirt track racing, because it seemed that people that enjoyed the outdoors and enjoyed, so to speak, playing in the dirt, were also fans of dirt track racing,” Blankenship said.

He said he and Mingo County officials approached federal and state economic development officials, and they received about $1 million for the project from then-Gov. Bob Wise’s administration and $1.2 million in funds from the U.S. Economic Development Administration.

Blankenship had big plans for the grand opening.  His son was going to race Nascar driver Kyle Petty on opening day. The Goodyear blimp was going to be there. The World of Outlaws racing series was interested. 

“I had the connections at that time, with the Pettys and with the people in NASCAR and everywhere else that I could have been a big influence,” Blankenship said.

Funding was spent on track utilities, according to county officials.

But there was a major hurdle. By 2008, Joe Manchin was governor, and he decided to make local officials pay back state funding, which had previously been described as a grant. 

 “He just said he didn’t think it was a priority for the state,” Blankenship said. Manchin, now a U.S. Senator, did not respond to questions about that decision sent to his press office.

When Donnie Bishop heard about Manchin’s decision, he and a friend gathered and brought 20,000 signatures to the West Virginia Capitol in Charleston to ask Manchin to forgive the loan, but he said Manchin told them Mingo County needed public water and sewer more than a racetrack.

The project remained a priority for Mingo County. But promoters of the track were still searching for someone to improve the facility.

At the same time, CONSOL Energy wanted to mine coal from an adjacent site. But, under pressure because of significant water quality damage from mountaintop removal, federal regulators were making it hard for companies to get permits to bury waste rock and dirt — the material that used to be the mountains — in nearby valleys, burying streams.

Locals who were bigger fans of drag racing also pushed for a drag strip instead of a dirt track.

So CONSOL struck a deal with county officials. The coal giant would build the track, if it could first dump its waste rock and dirt from the adjacent mine onto the racetrack property.

Bill Runyon, a former superintendent for CONSOL Energy and also a member of the Mingo County Redevelopment Authority board, estimated the deal preserved about 100 mining jobs.

Runyon noted that someone could have then leased the property from the county and operated it years ago. “Nobody would take the bull by the horns and do it,” he said.

But the deal set the project back, and it meant that CONSOL ended up covering over infrastructure, including water and sewer lines, that officials said public money had paid to install in the initial dirt track.

A straight track with twists and turns

Once the track was built, county officials needed someone to add other necessities like restrooms and concession stands, and then promote the races and operate the facility.

In 2018, Pete Scalzo and Tom Wilson, business associates who were in the racing business in Florida, decided to take on the challenge. County officials leased the property to Green Cove, Scalzo’s company.

Green Cove agreed to pay for lighting, a scoreboard, safety equipment, utility construction and spectator insurance, and hold events by the second year of its lease.

But before the work was complete, Wilson and Scalzo’s partnership ended. Wilson continued the project, but he said he couldn’t meet all of the lease requirements. For instance, the lease said he had to install all of his own infrastructure and hold multiple events.  He had to use temporary generators, and build fencing and bleachers.

Wilson also says he didn’t realize he was expected to pay the state’s $1 million loan back within seven years.

 Even though Consol had made road upgrades, the state Department of Transportation spent $700,000 on re-paving, guardrails and drainage to meet state highways requirements. 

Eyes on the road

By 2022, Wilson and public officials finally held what they called a “soft opening.” Thousands of racing fans backed up traffic to watch about 250 dragsters race. 

Bishop and other local racing fans had been saying for years that the racetrack would bring people and much-needed revenue to the area.

Two years later, Bishop believes county officials asked too much of track developers. The county should have had infrastructure ready to go.

But he still sees promise. He said the venue would also give ATV riders and locals, especially youth, an evening activity.

In May, Gov. Jim Justice removed a major hurdle, forgiving the $1 million Economic Development Authority loan. A month later, with that loan no longer looming over the project, county officials announced the new owners bought the property for $200,000.  Since they purchased the property, instead of leasing it, the new owners are freed from some of the restrictions that hampered earlier developers.

On a cloudy July day, those new owners — father-and-son team Doug and Justin Kirk and brother-in-law Ronnie Herald – met at the track and talked about the work yet to be done. 

Doug Kirk gestured one direction and talked about the need to weed-eat, then to a section of the field where they might have county fairs behind the bleachers.  Spectators would see the racing dragsters, and in the background the gray remnants of what used to be the mountain. 

In years to come at the newly-named 304 Motorsports Park, they want to construct courses for other kinds of races, like mud bogs and motocross. 

For now, they say they’ll stick to drag racing. They hope to hold events by September. But there are more challenges coming. There are bumps on the track, where ground on the former mine has settled. Getting there is going to take even more of an investment.

“We’re staring at a million dollars,” Justin Kirk said.

 But as a light rain started to fall, Doug Kirk was confident. The past, he said, is “water under the bridge.”

 “Let’s go.”

After 20 years of red tape, business dealings and broken promises, a Mingo County drag racing strip may finally open appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

Many young Appalachians, regardless of later political affiliation, can recall the childhood moments they learned how free they were to voice their own thoughts about contentious topics with family members. Julia Pritt, 24, originally from Hurricane, West Virginia, recalled her excitement the week gay marriage was legalized in June 2015. Pritt and her mother were driving to visit her mamaw and extended family that summer. “We were talking about it in the car,” she said. “And I remember, she told me not to bring it up when we got there.” 

Pritt did experience strong objection to gay marriage from some of her extended family. However, before the Supreme Court opinion had come down, Pritt had a different conversation with Mamaw, the family matriarch. “I remember my mamaw saying, ‘I never understood why that’s such an issue for people because that’s love. And that’s beautiful.’” Pritt remembered how her grandmother had spoken about gay marriage when she herself came out as bisexual: “I felt comfortable to have an explicit conversation with her even though it was really hard and scary.”

Within the national media, stories about adults who feel their children have shut them out over political or social issues are common. But for some young adults, there is eagerness to start those discussions, especially about issues that directly impact them, like poverty, workers’ rights and gender. Sometimes, that can be difficult.

When Grace Davis, now 20, was 17 and living with her devout Catholic grandparents in Hurricane, she was reading articles about abortion, which she was aware her grandparents opposed under any circumstances. But she was compelled to tell her grandfather how she felt: “we shouldn’t ban it, because even though they’re banning it, they’re really not. They’re just — like, I had to explain to him that they’re banning it being done safely.” With a “seventeen-year-old explaining things to a seventy-something-year-old man,” she said, the conversation got “a little heated.”

Others echoed Davis’ experience. Levi Cyrus, 23, a registered Independent who described himself as “open minded,” takes issue with his family’s belief that “[Trump is] the best option for everybody” and voiced his own thoughts. “That conversation didn’t go over well,” he said. Now he sometimes avoids talking politics: “I don’t like being put in the middle of things.”

Cyrus said he believes people of all generations are too focused on issues of identity rather than putting resources towards issues that affect everyone, such as policing, homelessness and schools. He says his experience as a customer service representative has taught him that “everybody wants the same thing…living somewhere where you don’t have to worry about your next meal.” 

Media and the political moment have super-charged conversations 

Many of those who spoke to 100 Days in Appalachia noted that political discussions had become harder to have over time, and some attributed this difficulty to Fox News, the Trump presidency or social media. 

Reid, a 22-year-old librarian in eastern Kentucky, asked his last name be withheld to protect his privacy. He said has noticed a change in the way older Appalachians learn information. “I find especially with older people that I work with, not just my relatives…they don’t know how to sort misinformation because they have, at least a decade ago, decided that this was a trusted source. They haven’t re-decided if it’s still a trusted source now.” Pritt mentioned that a lack of broadband internet in rural areas means many older Appalachians may be relying only on cable TV for information, with no chance to evaluate different sources online.

One study from Harvard Kennedy School’s Misinformation Review found that the “prior exposure effect” — a phenomenon in which the more a person sees a claim made, the more accurate they think it is — is stronger in older adults. This may create outrage over a handful of flashpoint issues. 

Reid, who is transgender, explained that while trans issues are important to his everyday life — “my ability to access health care, and my ability to attend my friends’ weddings and to see people and to have a community and to exist” — his family members are stuck on his identity as a point of debate. 

“It doesn’t matter what conversation I’m in, even if I don’t bring it up, I tend to have the adults in my life, especially my relatives, bringing it up for me,” he said. Not only are arguments over “why trans people exist” dehumanizing, said Reid, they dominate conversation and exhaust him. “Not to look at the concepts with sort of rose colored glasses,” he said with a pained laugh, “but I think I’d like to be able to go to a cookout and not get berated.”

Some young people find alternative partners for conversation and information outside of their parents or grandparents. For Grace Davis, it was a campus pastor who was willing to have an expansive conversation about abortion. Still, she says, she doesn’t know “if I would have those types of conversations with like, anybody older than me, without…reading the room.” When talking to members of older generations, she censures herself: “‘Is this actually a good idea to think these thoughts out loud?’” 

Intergenerational communication is a two-way street 

Reaching out for conversation happens in reverse, too, with some older adults trying to stay involved with the young people in their lives. Julia’s mother, Dreama Buck, 54, recalled her approach to talking about politics with her children. In 2010, Buck went back to school to become a college English teacher and brought the classroom discussion techniques home. “As I was processing critical thinking and research skills, I was sharing those with them and really instilled in them that you can argue whatever you want to argue, but you better bring the receipts,” she said. 

These days, Buck chats often with her kids’ friends, who are typically open to discussing political and social issues with her. Buck also prioritizes asking clarifying questions “when I feel like I don’t know enough about what they’re talking about, or if maybe I disagree.”

She said that while, in her view, older adults might be more likely to be closed-minded, she’s seen the tendency across generations and believes social media algorithms contribute to that. Buck attributed this attitude to “an unwillingness or maybe just a lack of awareness that things that are outside [one’s] experience can be true.” 

Chris Bailey, 36, is the campus minister who has become a conversation partner for Davis. He enjoys conversations with college students in his ministry group because they are “still open to experience.” 

“There’s a lot more work that has to be done to deconstruct and get at the heart of a real deep talk with someone who’s more certain of their beliefs,” Bailey said. He explained that being willing to learn about each other, and developing a “relational foundation,” is key to intergenerational conversations.

Hovering over much discussion of intergenerational conflict is the assumption that young people are too quick to pull away from older relatives over “differences of opinion.” Several young people expressed that a difference of political opinion, when it concerns identity issues or civil rights, can cross the line into personal disrespect. For young people who “feel unsafe around someone or feel degraded to such a degree that their humanity is being taken from them, that’s not a relationship that [they] need to pursue,” Bailey said.

Young Appalachians emphasized their longing to have conversations with older generations that have shared goals of understanding and listening with curiosity, habits they are working to develop, too.

Alex Monday, 24, a lifelong West Virginian, found she was unable to have “polite discussions” with most family members growing up. When she was young, she felt she was “the only person to defend me at any point. So I became a fierce defender.” She credits therapy with helping her have complex conversations as an adult: “communication errors happen all the time, you’re going to hurt your friends’ feelings…that’s always going to happen in any relationship, regardless of everything. It’s having the resolve to sit and talk about it [that’s important].” 

Monday is still learning, and knows perception isn’t foolproof. She recalled a moment recently where she was at the mall and saw two men wearing t-shirts with pro-gun slogans and trucker hats — she assumed they had nothing in common with her. 

“And then they put their hands in each others’ back pockets, and then they kissed, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I was so wrong about you.’” 

Originally from Virginia, Hannah Wilson-Black is an environmental writer and 2023 Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellow based in Huntington, West Virginia. Her work has appeared in Grist, Terrain.org, and The Daily Yonder. She is at work on a novel about a disgraced coal baron.

The post Young Appalachians Want Better Intergenerational Political Conversations appeared first on 100 Days in Appalachia.

Mountain State Spotlight is on a mission to reshape how the media covers elections. 

We believe that voters want election coverage that is less focused on press releases and polls and more on the questions that they have for candidates. 

Residents of West Virginia’s northern panhandle told us they want elected officials to tackle the region’s poor-quality roads, economic uncertainty and opioid epidemic.

Now, we want to speak with you. What do you want the candidates to be discussing as they ask for your vote? 

We want you to help guide Mountain State Spotlight’s election coverage.

Join reporters and editors from Mountain State Spotlight and other community members for a guided roundtable discussion about what issues are most important for you this election season.

What: Guided community roundtable discussion around election issues

When: Thursday, August 8, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Where: Ohio County Public Library 52 16th St, Wheeling

Refreshments will be provided.

About Mountain State Spotlight: Mountain State Spotlight is an independent, reader-supported newsroom covering West Virginia.

Funding for this event provided by the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation.

Meet us in person: Join reporters in Wheeling for a roundtable discussion about the 2024 election appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

PARKERSBURG — Right behind the bus stop on 10th and Market streets in Parkersburg is a beautiful apartment building. The Virginia Apartments has balconies that residents adorn with colorful flowers and plants. But next door, wild vines grow up the brick walls of an abandoned office building that’s been vacant since at least 2003.

Waiting for the bus with his son, John Parsons said he wished the city did more about vacant, abandoned and dilapidated buildings.

“I wish they would do more with these vacant buildings other than just tear them down,”  Parsons said, the contrast of the two buildings looming behind him as he waited for the bus.

With the help of money from a state grant program, Parkersburg has made progress, tearing down dozens of abandoned properties over the last 18 months.

But its need is far greater. And statewide, officials estimate another $150 million or more is needed to help communities like Parkersburg deal with dilapidated properties.

Parkersburg officials say their hope is that the vacant spaces are appealing to new local businesses. 

“Like most downtown communities, we do have empty spaces, lots and buildings,” said Amanda Stevens, the executive director of Downtown PKB, an organization that works to “enhance, revitalize and aesthetically improve downtown Parkersburg.”

 “The good news is that several downtown businesses are working on expansion and many of these empty spaces will hopefully soon have new life breathed into them,” she added.

Indeed, signs promoting a new development in a vacant lot where the Wood County Senior Citizens Center once stood can be seen clearly.

Like many communities across West Virginia, Parkersburg has been facing a problem with vacant, abandoned and dilapidated properties, and has been tearing down buildings for the past few years to address the blight issue. 

Last year, the city tore down an old locksmith building and two residential structures on 19th and Dudley streets as well as a former hotel on 7th Street, before the structures became bigger nuisances — of vagrancy, fires and drugs — to the community, according to news reports. The 7th Street site is now being considered as a potential location for a new fire station.

Ryan Barber, the development director for the city, said that state funding gave them the opportunity to address the safety and blight concerns the city had for years. The city used $650,000 in West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection money to tear down an estimated 50 to 75 structures in 18 months, according to Barber. 

But Barber said there’s a lot more work to be done. “It’s hard to say how many more will be needing demolition,” he said.

Statewide, phase one of the project cost almost $10 million for 26 communities to tear down an estimated 780 structures, according to a report to the Legislature. In phase two, another $20 million will go to 68 participants, which include cities and municipalities,to tear down over 1,000 structures, the report said.   

The report also said that once both phases of the program are completed, more than 80 communities and counties in West Virginia would have participated in demolishing over 2,000 structures.

But it warned, “much remains to be done” to fully address the issue: More than 8,000 residential and commercial structures need to be demolished, at a cost estimated by communities at nearly $150 million.

The City of Parkersburg once kept a registry, in which, for $100 a month, owners could list their properties. In return, the city would use the funds to demolish buildings.  

Andy Nestor, Parkersburg code chief, said that it took too much manpower to ensure the buildings were not only up to code, but vacant. 

Currently, there is a list kept by the city’s Urban Renewal Authority, where parcels of vacant land can be sought for purchase and potential redevelopment, but there is no list of vacant structures waiting to be torn down.

With a few hours walking around downtown Parkersburg, you can see what Nestor is talking about. 

Starting off on 7th Street you can spot businesses like an old diner, whose old dining stools sit covered in dust. Next, one door down from the diner, what seemed to be an antique store, has left behind their bric-a-brac collecting dust and cobwebs. 

Over on Market Street a dozen or more empty businesses, such as art galleries, tattoo shops and financial planning agencies also sit vacant. 

In contrast, a block west from the Virginia Apartments at 10th and Market Street sits the historic Julia-Ann Square District. Here, over 100 homes are well-maintained, despite being built between 1850 and 1910.  

But as the city continues to tear down structures, increasingly empty lots and paved parking replace residential homes and commercial spaces, leaving residents wishing that more be done to restore Parkersburg to its old glory. 

“We don’t need any more parking lots out here,” said Katrina Keller, who works at Atkinson Bonding on Avery Street. 

Keller is surrounded by vacant properties while she works. In a three block radius there are numerous vacant homes, business and empty grassy lots, and within a stone throw, there are at least four large parking lots. 

“I wish that they would actually revamp this area down here and bring it back to how it used to be,” she said. “People would come down here and stroll, with little shops and stuff.”

West Virginia communities got money to help tear down abandoned buildings. It wasn’t nearly enough appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

The number of white nationalist groups operating in Appalachia has increased, according to a recent report by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The rise coincides with a national surge of far-right, anti-government and anti-LGBTQ+ groups, which the SPLC warns could undermine democracy heading into the 2024 presidential election.

“With a historic election just months away, these groups are multiplying, mobilizing and making, and in some cases already implementing, plans to undo democracy,” Margaret Huang, SPLC’s president and CEO, said on a call with reporters following the release of the organization’s 2023 Year in Hate and Extremism Report.

In Appalachia, these groups include Active Clubs, the Patriot Front, White Lives Matter and the Ku Klux Klan. Here, most limit their activity to propaganda efforts, like dispersing fliers or displaying banners on highway overpasses, according to Kieran Doyle, the North American research manager for the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project.

As of June, ACLED, a non-governmental organization that collects global data on violent conflict and protest, has recorded five events in West Virginia involving white nationalist groups since November 2022, according to data compiled by Doyle.

The most recent event recorded was an April protest in downtown Charleston, the state capital, organized by the Patriot Front, which Doyle said is the most active white nationalist group in the state. The march was held on the same day as the YWCA hosted its “Race to End Racism” event; West Virginia Public Broadcasting reported that masked Patriot Front members wore matching khaki pants, hats and dark polo shirts and carried a sign that read “America is not for sale.”

Two of the other reported events were also in Kanawha County, where Charleston is located. Another event occurred in Cabell County in 2022. And in Brooke County, the leader of a neo-Nazi group was sentenced to more than six years in federal prison for threatening the jury and witnesses in the hate crimes trial of the man responsible for the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue mass shooting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Recent events tied to white nationalist and other hate groups have been reported in nearly every other state across Appalachia.

ACLED recorded nearly 60 events in Pennsylvania since January 2020, with Allegheny County — which includes Pittsburgh — ranked as one of the state’s most frequent sites of white nationalist group activity.

In Tennessee, ACLED data shows 70 white nationalist events. Knox County, in East Tennessee, has experienced the second-highest number of events in the state, Doyle said.

ACLED has also documented multiple instances of white nationalist group activity taking place in Southwestern Ohio, Eastern Kentucky, Western North Carolina, North Georgia and elsewhere across the region.

According to the SPLC’s report, this activity, coupled with “holy war” and “race war” rhetoric and the fear and disruption these groups sow, “foreshadow an attempt to exploit American democratic and electoral processes in 2024 to finally accomplish the goals of the insurrection — the suppression of multiracial, pluralistic democracy.”

Anti-LGBTQ+ groups are also on the rise, according to the SPLC report, with groups frequently targeting libraries, schools and drag shows. Last year, in Floyd County, Kentucky, a drag performance moved online after organizers received threats. A few months later, online threats were made against another Kentucky drag performance, this time in Montgomery County.

Jacob Glick, senior policy counsel at Georgetown Law School’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, said this type of anti-LGBTQ+ activity is closely related to anti-democratic extremism.

“I’m worried where that leads when you consider that some of these localities could then become flashpoints for national conflict as you enter the election,” Glick said. “You can see very easily how the local issues then balloon into national issues with the right call to action, as we approach sort of the ultimate moment of national conversation.”

Filling a void

While the number of active white nationalist groups reached a nationwide high last year, these groups haven’t coalesced under a central leadership or organized institutional structure like far-right extremist and anti-government militia movements the Proud Boys and Oathkeepers, according to the report.

Those large national networks, which strengthened following the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, have largely shattered amid public scrutiny and prosecutions following the violent uprising and insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Glick said. A void emerged as a result, with more empowered, localized groups with the same extremist ideologies stepping in to fill it.

“Splinter groups that are sometimes even more explicitly fascistic, neo-Nazi and white nationalist or white supremacist have popped up to take the place of some of these established militia networks or established Proud Boy networks, and in some cases, they’ve supplanted them,” Glick said. “In other cases, they’ve just sort of popped up in the absence of any other extended network.”

A lot of these groups are organizing under the banner of Active Clubs, decentralized white nationalist fight-club-style groups of young white men with chapters in most states in the region. Active Clubs have been described as “white supremacy 3.0” and a “standby militia.” In the last year, the group has grown to nearly 40 chapters nationwide, which are increasingly employing more violent tactics at the local level and specifically targeting LGBTQ+ events, according to the SPLC report.

The localized nature of these groups could magnify their impact and pose concerns for election security.

Last year, members of the Tennessee Active Club showed up to a forum to provide protection to a mayoral candidate who focused her campaign on targeting LGBTQ+ events. The mayoral candidate lost her bid, but Glick believes that dynamic could shift, with extremists, for example, taking it upon themselves to prevent voter fraud.

He added that it’s a danger that’s especially potent with county-level militias and groups like the constitutional sheriffs movement, an anti-government group that held a training in Appalachia last year, given there’s already a script for election fraud these groups are able to work from.

Today, Glick sees the same patterns that emboldened the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers in the lead up to January 6, being set in motion with this “open flirtation” between far-right groups and public officials exploiting community fears at local levels.

“We’re seeing that play out now in more localized contexts across the country, but the election is going to be the overarching narrative that immediately unites all of those fears into one package,” Glick said. “And that’s how many folks on the far right are talking about this election — in terms of an apocalyptic battle.”

Jacob Biba is a reporter covering democracy and election security for 100 Days in Appalachia. Support his work here.

The post The Number of White Nationalist Groups in Appalachia Is Rising — and the Surge Could Have Implications for Democracy appeared first on 100 Days in Appalachia.

HAMLIN — Cody Lambert edges off the gas on Route 3, east of Hamlin to point out where the Board of Education is building the new Duval Middle School. 

The old Duval Middle School had been shut down for a few years, after structural engineers deemed it unsafe. As Lambert recollects it, the school was literally cracking apart. 

Since then, kids have been going to the county school board building for instruction — and now they’re building a new $40 million school to serve pre-kindergarten to eighth grade. 

Not much changes in Lincoln. Take Duval’s mascot, the Yellow Jackets, for instance. Back in 1914, the school colors were yellow and black — but when the jerseys came, Lambert said they were orange black. 

“They just couldn’t call customer service,” Lambert said. “So they were like, ‘well, all right guys, the school colors are orange and black.’” 

And that’s the way it’s been for over 100 years. 

Back when he was a kid, Lambert, 33, said he recalls seeing a few more machine shops and auto body garages around the county, but for the most part, not much has changed.

Unlike its neighboring counties to the south, Lincoln has never experienced the population boom and subsequent bust seen during the coal rush of the 20th century. At its peak in the 1980s, Lincoln had about 24,000 people living there — today, it’s hovering around 20,000. 

Lambert was born and bred in Lincoln County. When popping into various stores and shops, he’s often called “Greg’s son.” His father, a football coach, is known countywide. And Lambert is making a name for himself, coaching a team in Logan County. 

But despite the strong family roots, even Lambert has had to move for greener pastures. 

“A lot of people from my generation have moved away and not necessarily to other states,” he said. “They’re just not living in Lincoln County. They’re moving to places like Charleston, Barboursville or Huntington. Myself included — I lived most of my post grad life in Huntington.” 

How to get people — particularly young people — to stay is one of the questions facing two candidates gunning for the 30th Delegate District in West Virginia, which covers almost the entirety of Lincoln County. 

For those who stay in the county, the job prospects are scant, unless they’re willing to drive — usually to a neighboring county. U.S. Census statistics show more than 60% of working people in Lincoln work outside the county. About 20% of them have to drive up to an hour for work. 

While the county did experience timber and gas booms through the years, the two largest employers in Lincoln County as of last year are the school board and an in-home care organization for seniors. 

Democratic candidate Britney Brogan, a school nurse, said she knows the struggle to stay all too well. 

“I went to Marshall for school, and I stayed in Huntington for a very long time,” she said. “But I missed it. It’s where I grew up. I was born and raised here.”

To Brogan, focusing on infrastructure and helping along small establishments is the key to recruiting businesses to Lincoln County. 

Over on the Republican side, Jeff Eldridge — who served as a Democrat in the house in the 2000s and the 2010s — said he wants to leverage the county’s natural resources to grow tourism and to beef up infrastructure. 

“In 20 years, hopefully with getting infrastructure and tourism up, we’ll get some companies to want to move to Lincoln County,” he said. 

When he was previously in the House, he also introduced legislation to create a tax incentive for people who wanted to retire to the county, but it didn’t gain traction. He said he’d look into something similar for young people if he were to come back.

Lydia Roberts, who graduated from Marshall University in 2021, is one of those people who came back home to Lincoln County. She said “roots are strong and important” in the county and a trek last summer on the Appalachian Trail only made her believe that more. 

“I never found a city, or a town or a state that I thought we couldn’t hold a candle to,” she said. “They had things that make their community better and we can have that. We have the people and the energy.” 

But it’s not without its problems, she said. For instance, when she got bit by a dog a few months ago, she had to drive to Teays Valley to get it checked out because the doctor’s office in Lincoln wasn’t fully staffed. Anywhere — work, grocery store, entertainment — is a drive. 

She’s not too optimistic about getting a large company to relocate to the county either. 

“We don’t have service and our roads suck,” she said. “Why would they come here when everyone is also leaving?” 

Lucas Ashworth, 34, sits in a booth at the M&R Restaurant, a diner between Hamlin and West Hamlin with his brother Jake and Cody Lambert. According to Ashworth, this booth is the same one where Lincoln County legend Chuck Yeager used to sit whenever he’d visit home. 

When Ashworth graduated high school, he signed the dotted line with Uncle Sam and went off to see the country. Now, he’s come back to Lincoln County and works as a funeral attendant.

“I decided this is the best place in the world for me,” he said. “There’s no better place. I can walk in here and I have to wave at everybody because I know everybody.” 

There’s not a stranger at this diner — in fact, the old owner used to change his and his brother’s diapers way back in the day. He knows the waitress by name, as well as the people eating behind him, beside him and the old timer sitting at the counter. 

Ashworth coaches football for one of the local schools and his brother Jake coaches basketball. They sit at the booth along with Lambert and trade gridiron gossip and revel in the glory days when they played on the field. 

To Ashworth, the county needs people to stay who are willing to put in the work to “make it what it can be and what it used to be.” 

“The best thing the state can do is update the road system,” he said. 

That’s something both candidates in the race have hit upon. Brogan said she wants to see the community come out and support startups and small businesses. Eldridge, who said he had a somewhat nasty primary race, said he wants to see the county come together and “quit bad mouthing each other.” 

If there’s one thing uniting the country, it’s sports. As Lambee recalls it, things were a bit rocky when four high schools were consolidated into one. Some traditions were lost, like Hamlin High’s practice of guarding the Chuck Yeager statue to prevent a rival from putting their jersey on it. 

But it’s the type of county where the towns close down and the cars line the road for Friday night lights — the type of town Ashworth said one can live a good life in. 

Ashworth stands up and pays his bill — he’s got to take his kids swimming. The brothers say they plan to stay in Lincoln County. 

Lambert isn’t going to be staying for long. He’s got about another year, then he’ll be following his fiancée out of state. But he hopes to come back, maybe to retire.

In Lincoln County, some young folks have decided to stay. They want better jobs, roads and cell service appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

In a rare move last week, top aides to Gov. Jim Justice faced the press to respond to growing concerns over the death of a 14-year-old Boone County girl.

But while the press conference to talk about Kyneddi Miller’s death was unusual for the governor’s office, the tragic event is only the latest in a long string of red flags around West Virginia’s child welfare system. 

It was only last October when two Black teens were found locked in a Sissonville barn and another child – five years old – with visible signs of neglect – was found in the loft in that same home. The three children and another who wasn’t home at the time were removed, and their adoptive parents were charged with felony child neglect, human trafficking and civil rights violations based on race. And a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of West Virginia foster kids that alleges severe problems in the state system is nearing its five-year anniversary in large part because state officials continue to drag their feet. 

These reports of mistreatment of West Virginia’s most vulnerable kids have stretched through the last eight years of Justice’s tenure and under multiple iterations of a Legislature run by both Democrats and Republicans, but little has moved the needle.

How are foster care and Child Protective Services (CPS) connected?

Several of the most shocking recent cases don’t involve foster kids: Kyneddi was being cared for by her mother and two grandparents, and the children removed from the Sissonville home after alleged abuse were adopted, but not from West Virginia’s foster care system.

These two systems are intertwined and share many of the same challenges and staff members, which is why they’re often mentioned in the same breath.

Under the current Bureau for Social Services — part of the West Virginia Department of Human Services (DOHS) — there are a number of workers who could potentially both work to investigate allegations of child abuse and, if a child is removed from their home as a result, become the child’s foster care case manager. 

But for decades, West Virginia has had a shortage of these key social workers. At the end of 2022, a third of these positions were empty. In early 2023, the Justice administration announced pay raises for CPS workers, as well as the department’s youth services workers and adult protective services workers — with additional incentives for workers in the Eastern Panhandle to compete with neighboring states. 

While the state has made progress in filling some vacancies, Berkeley County Circuit Judge R. Steven Redding told lawmakers in October that the problems persist, and have led to a backlog of 400 referrals that CPS workers haven’t been able to investigate. And in a recent deposition as part of a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of West Virginia foster kids, a former state official testified about known deficiencies in the system, including the large number of child abuse referrals that fall through the cracks.

“Cases where referrals were screened out at the point of centralized intake with questions around whether or not that was or was not appropriate,” said Jeremiah Samples, a former deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Resources who now advises top lawmakers. “Situations where workers had a responsibility to — maybe it was an active case — a worker would have a responsibility to go out and check on a child, failed to do so, a tragedy occurs.”

What happened to Kyneddi Miller? 

In April, deputies found the body of 14-year-old Kyneddi Miller in a skeletal state in her Boone County home. The teenager lived with her mother and two grandparents and was homeschooled; investigators said she hadn’t eaten in months.

Since her tragic death, Kyneddi’s mother and grandparents have been criminally charged with child neglect resulting in death, a felony. In the weeks following the discovery of Kyneddi’s body, there have been competing narratives about whether the teen’s situation had previously been formally reported to CPS.

“The CPS folks, from what I understand, had no idea about this child,” Justice told reporters in a briefing on April 23. “No idea whatsoever.”

But two weeks later, Justice walked that back. 

“Will I stand behind what was said two weeks ago now that I know the information that I know today?” he asked on May 8. “No way.”

The month following Kyneddi’s death, there were competing accounts of who may have known about her situation. TV station WSAZ has reported anonymous tips alleging CPS had been contacted twice about the family — in 2009 and 2017. WSAZ also reported that Kyneddi’s plight was known to state troopers; a call log documented a trooper saying he was planning to make the referral to CPS in person. But while the TV station says the West Virginia State Police stands by that call log, DoHS released a statement saying “a comprehensive search of DoHS records suggest no referral was ever made.”

In last week’s press conference, Justice’s Chief of Staff Brian Abraham said the administration’s investigation into the incident concluded that the two previous referrals didn’t have anything to do with Kyneddi, and were unfounded. He said it seemed that state troopers had gone to the CPS office in person in 2023, but it was “informal contact” and they didn’t make an official referral: the troopers hadn’t found any signs of abuse or neglect, but found it odd that Kyneddi was so scared about COVID-19 that she wouldn’t leave the house.

“When the West Virginia State Police made contact with this girl at her residence … she was in good health, she was unharmed,” Abraham said.

Abraham further noted that although GPS data showed state troopers were physically present at a Boone County-area DoHS office, CPS agents did not remember speaking to them. Thus, moving forward, to avoid any confusion, law enforcement has been instructed to call the toll-free Centralized Intake for Abuse and Neglect number. 

This isn’t the only really awful child abuse case to come to light in West Virginia over the past year.

No, it’s not. Back in October 2023, social workers removed several children from a home in Sissonville, after neighbors reported they were doing manual labor and being forced to sleep in the barn. Prosecutors initially charged the kids’ adoptive parents with felony child neglect, but in May, a grand jury indictment included additional charges of human trafficking, using a minor child in forced labor and civil rights violations based on race.

One of the similarities between the Boone County case involving Kyneddi and these children in Sissonville is a lack of clarity around when CPS was alerted to the situation, and whether or not they acted. 

While in Kyneddi’s case DoHS officials maintain they did not have any formal child abuse referrals, records in the Sissonville case indicate that neighbors called CPS at least once about the children in August. But DoHS hasn’t provided any documentation showing whether they followed up on the referral, before Kanawha County Sheriff’s deputies removed the children more than a month later. 

Has the state agency in charge of foster care and CPS  been transparent?

No. 

Journalists and the public have struggled for years to get more information about the treatment of kids in state custody and the outcome of child abuse complaints. State agency lawyers argue that most of the information isn’t subject to the state’s open records law because West Virginia code has a provision for records involving juveniles to remain confidential except in a few narrow exceptions. State agency lawyers typically argue that law applies to any child welfare records, even when the identities of kids are redacted. 

Besides the specific examples in the Kyneddi Miller and Sissonville cases where state officials haven’t provided records detailing child abuse referrals or the agency’s response, there have been multiple filings in a massive class action lawsuit against the state that show other ways in which the agency has kept crucial information from the public and lawmakers.

The lawsuit was filed in 2019 on behalf of current and former West Virginia foster kids. It argues the state has repeatedly failed to care for the kids its charged with protecting — including failing to make sure they end up in the most appropriate placement settings with the services they need. But after years of litigation, the lawyers representing these kids have struggled to get all of the information they’ve requested from state officials.  

In April, U.S. Magistrate Judge Cheryl Eifert sanctioned state lawyers and child welfare officials for withholding key documents from the plaintiffs’ attorneys and then destroying them, though she said there was no evidence the destruction was intentional. 

And just two weeks ago, former DHHR official Samples said in a sworn deposition that agency leaders had repeatedly pushed empty talking points rather than prioritizing concrete actions and transparency. He also said that he was aware that then-Secretary Bill Crouch had applied pressure on the foster care ombudsman to withhold some information and documents from lawmakers about problems in the system.

“The tone of the conversation was that it was a threat, to be very careful about conversations that she had with the Legislature and documents that she would release,” Samples said in the deposition. 

That ombudsman, Pamela Woodman-Kaehler, resigned shortly after the deposition became public.

At last week’s press conference, the Governor’s office asked state police and top officials with the Department of Human Services to gather information that could be shared publicly. Abraham repeatedly insisted that information was limited due to federal and state rules restricting what can be shared from a criminal investigation.

What kinds of action to improve child welfare are leaders promising at this point? 

This past legislative session came and went without meaningful action to address the very specific deficiencies brought to light by the foster care class action lawsuit. 

Lawmakers considered and advanced a handful of child welfare bills, including one to bar anyone with a pending child abuse or neglect investigation from homeschooling their kids — a measure known as Raylee’s Law — but of those, only a bill creating a foster parent information dashboard was signed into law. Lawmakers also indicated they want to add more transparency and oversight to the system; two measures that ultimately didn’t make it into law would have allowed the foster care ombudsman to view confidential CPS records and have let a legislative oversight commission hear reports of child injuries, deaths or other problems. But both bills also would have created additional secrecy, doing nothing to give the public more information about how the agency works.

After the press conference discussing the Kyneddi Miller case, some legislative leaders again promised actions to improve the state’s child welfare system.

West Virginia MetroNews described the comments from House Health Committee Chairwoman Amy Summers, R-Taylor, this way: “It is awful and I know we all want to blame someone and try to figure out what could have been done to save her, so I understand all of that” before finding herself at a loss for words and trailing off.

If you suspect you or someone you know is experiencing abuse or neglect, report your concerns to the Centralized Intake for Abuse and Neglect at 1-800-352-6513.

What you need to know about West Virginia’s child welfare crisis appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

It’s 6:30 p.m. on a Friday night in Boone, North Carolina, and a hush falls over the East Boone Listening Room.

“We spent many years trying to find a space like this in town,” says artist and songwriter Sarah DeShields. 

Boone, which is home to Appalachian State University, has plenty of small to mid-sized venues, but they tend to cater to the college crowd or tourists. Because these hot spots are designed more for drinking and socializing, the performers often end up getting drowned out by the noise. 

What DeShields says Boone was missing was a space for singer-songwriters to showcase their songs to an audience intent to listen. 

“So, we decided to just make it ourselves!” DeShields laughs.

All the chairs in the East Boone Listening Room are taken, and I’m not surprised. Every time I come to these listening events, the place is packed wall to wall. So, I find a little spot on the floor and settle in to listen to the other songwriters before it’s time to play my own set of three songs.

The listening room hosts concerts on the second Friday of each month and is housed in the Boone Studio Collective – a space typically used by photographers and other artistic professionals. On listening nights, the studio is transformed into a small, cozy venue. The events are free, but attendees are encouraged to donate directly to the artists via Venmo or PayPal.

“I think it’s actually a need. People need connection,” says Meris Gantt, another songwriter and creative consultant who helps curate the evenings along with DeShields and fellow artists Will Willis and Simon and Sydney Everett. 

After the pandemic, Gantt felt people were hungry for that human connection they couldn’t get online. In a way, the Listening Room has become a place where people can heal from both the vitriol and the isolation of the pandemic. It’s a space for an artist to share their deepest emotions free of judgment and free of noise.

When I think about the greatest challenge to my own artistic work, it is indeed noise, and I don’t just mean singing over the racket of a crowded bar – though I’ve done that more times than I care to count. Artists are increasingly competing with the noise of a global music marketplace. 

Online streaming platforms, while they have their advantages, have saturated the market with endless content. It’s hard for a songwriter to cut through the noise, much less get paid a fair wage for their creative labor.

But that’s another beautiful thing about the Listening Room. Songwriters from all over have played here, but for the most part, “we try to make it hyper-local,” Gantt says, thereby instilling the value of not only an in-person, embodied musical experience but also a local one.

Becoming “hyperlocal” is a concept that’s increasingly appealing to me, especially in a world that every day becomes more and more oriented towards the compelling but somewhat artificial connections and consumption that the internet provides. These days, I – and I believe many others – are less interested in what’s cutting edge globally and more interested in what my own community has to offer me.

This is what I’ve found at the East Boone Listening Room. I’ve found Appalachian folks singing songs about what it means to live and love and work and grow here in Boone, in Appalachia. 

I’ve heard songs about what it means for your religious beliefs to change when you live in a highly religious context. 

I’ve heard songs that wrestle with being a descendant of settlers on a land that once belonged to the Cherokee. 

I’ve heard songs about watching people die of addiction and about the experience of incarceration. 

I’ve heard songs about local floods and mountaineer ghosts who haunt the hills.

These are deeply Appalachian songs about deeply Appalachian struggles. But the genre is not limited to what people typically think of when they imagine Appalachian music. Certainly, some artists incorporate traditional Old Time musical instruments like a banjo or mandolin. But the diversity of sound is something the curators of the East Boone Listening Room take great pride in. If a tourist from “off the mountain” were to wander into the East Boone Listening Room in hopes of simply experiencing a stereotypical “down home” sound, they’d have to go elsewhere to get their hillbilly trope fix.

DeShields, who sometimes plays ambient electric guitar and sometimes plays a folksier acoustic guitar, writes music that is indeed genre-bending. She was born in Scotland and her songs are often inspired by her connection to the land, both in Scotland and her new home in North Carolina. These songs of Scottish migration evoke the rich and decidedly Appalachian tradition of mourning and celebrating the exchange of one unique topography for other. 

About her performance at the East Boone Listening Room, DeShields says, “People are still talking to me about what happened in them when they were listening to me sing. It felt very sacred to me. I felt known and seen in my community in a new way.”

When my time to play arrives, I approach the microphone feeling a bit intimidated. The room is absolutely quiet. All heads are up, no one is looking down at their phones. While you may see a few folks take quick photos of the performers, for the most part, devices are put away and people are fully present.

But as much as I feel unnerved, I feel emboldened, buoyed by the earnest attentiveness and eager reception of the listeners. Like DeShields, I too feel seen. There are my people. This is my community. It is a place where I can express my most complex thoughts and feelings and be understood. I can present myself rather than a perfect performance without having to shout over the noise or cut through the excesses of our modern-day world.

“We just want people to be humans here,” says Gantt. 

And be human is exactly what I am able to do at the East Boone Listening Room.

Amanda Held Opelt is a singer-songwriter and the author of A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in Rituals of Grief and Healing and the forthcoming Holy Unhappiness: God, Goodness, and the Myth of the Blessed Life. She writes about faith, grief, rituals and life in Southern Appalachia. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Boone, North Carolina.

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