What’s the Matter With Eastern Kentucky?

[JDPriestly]

3. Yes. Rural poverty is ignored.

But first, there is a tie between rural and urban poverty. The rural poor move to the city to try to get jobs. When they get jobs, very often they get low-level, low-pay jobs. Sometimes, they can't find work at all and are stuck in the city. Rural poverty moves into the urban statistics. But it is just displaced rural poverty.

In California, the farm workers, seasonal workers are sometimes among the poorest in our society. No doubt that is true in other areas in which seasonal workers are used and then dismissed.

I must say though that urban living, including rent, food, etc. tends to be more expensive than rural living. In that sense, in a rural setting the individual may have a better, healthier lifestyle with less money. So when rural poor move to a city, they may have a worse lifestyle. This hard on families especially children.

I have been shocked on my visits back to and through the rural Middle West at the deterioration of the economy. The empty storefronts, shops converted into bars, the small businesses that have disappeared or turned into "antique" shops strike my eye. Sometimes I drive miles and miles on side roads off the freeways before I find a place to stop and have a glass of water or juice. This has become worse I think over the past 10-15 years.

Rural poverty is a problem. But usually a family in rural America can somehow find land on which to put in a garden -- or can find inexpensive food and rent. That is not as true in urban America although community gardens in cities like Los Angeles are beginning to be popular.

Finding good, affordable health care is a huge problem in rural America. Much easier in the cities. Homeless shelters, to the extent we have them, are more likely to be found in cities than in rural America. So the desperately poor tend to move to a city.

My father worked for churches and nonprofits serving the poor in both urban and rural areas, and as an adult, I worked for some years in fund raising for a homeless project Because of that background I notice poverty and have observed the movement of poverty to the cities. In the 1950s we spoke of slums. Now, we take what we used to call slums for granted. We have become calloused toward poverty.

I'm sure that experts study poverty but their voices are not heard. Poverty is a troubling topic. That's probably because with our current employment law and our nearly nonexistent social safety net, most of us would rather think that poverty is a problem other people have. We could never become homeless or hungry. That's a fool's paradise. Any one of us could find ourselves out on the street with no place to go and no one to go to for help. I am reminded of a "homeless" man I met years ago. His wife had died, and he had suffered other similar events in his life. He just fell apart, started drinking and ended up on Skid Row in a big city. He was exceptional. He actually owned a house, and his former boss wanted him to come back to work. But in his emotional state, he could have easily lost his link to the decent lifestyle he had lost. Remember. It was grief that drove him into poverty.

Very often homeless people are where they are because of some trauma in their life. The loss of a job or a home, a divorce. The death of a loved one. Those are traumatic experiences. Mental illness is traumatic. The adult child of wealthy, caring parents may be assisted in getting treatment. But the adult child of a parent who is herself mentally ill or simply poor may not be so lucky. An adult child whose parent lives in tiny, subsidized housing may be forced out on the street by the terms of the parent's housing contract. That can apply in rural or urban America and would be easy to change.

Today in America it is very difficult for the children of the poor to escape the poverty trap. We often read of self-made men, self-made billionaires. But many of them started with something -- a family business, a good education, a skill they learned at home or in their community, a relationship with someone or some business or some school that boosted them, that encouraged them to excel. Steve Jobs comes to mind. His family was not wealthy, but he just happened to be in an area of the country in which an opportunity that fit his talents opened up to him. In rural America, how likely is that to happen. And Steve Job's experience is rare. It is not likely for most truly poor people, whether they live in the country or in a city. Their very poverty puts the great human relationships and experiences that can boost a person from poverty into at least the middle class may be out of reach.

All of us who enjoy even a modest degree of economic security should thank our parents and ancestors to whom we owe much of what we enjoy. It may just be a grandfather who lived a sober, well disciplined life or a mother who sacrificed to make sure we did well in school. But nobody, nobody, nobody makes it without owing someone at least a debt of gratitude. Sometimes our inheritance is not financial. Rather it can be spiritual strength or simply social expectations, or psychological resiliency or the fact that our parents talked to us a lot when we were infants. We must really remember with humility to judge not the poor that we be not judged for our arrogance and pride.

After posting this, I thought of one more important issue I want to raise: Race. While more white people may be poor than are people of other races. racial discrimination is a major factor in poverty. Most of the homeless people we served when I worked in the field many years ago were black males. I suspect there are many more older women, aged 50 + in the ranks of the very poor today. Poor mothers at least get some help although it is not much, but frankly, the homelessness among black males is what is most painful in our society. What a wast of talent and lives. And of course there is a link between poverty and the excessive imprisonment in our society especially of people of color.

I am just mentioning some of the factors that I think should be further considered in comparing pr studying rural and urban poverty.

Sorry for the rant and for the multiple edits and maybe grammatical and spelling mistakes. This is an emotional issue for me. I wish it were an emotional issue for every American. It certainly should be for every Democrat.

Middle and upper class people tend to live in communities of people in their financial bracket. They only rarely are confronted by the poverty around them. They are removed from it. Until the upper and middle classes see the poverty, whether rural or urban, that surrounds them, we will have no change. Most of us who have computers cannot imagine what it is to be poor in America.

I go every once in a while to a law library in my city. The computers are kept busy by people who are very low income, some maybe many possibly homeless. Usually, these library patrons are trying to deal on their own, with only the help of a librarian, with legal problems. That is just disastrous. I cannot imagine what it must be like for people in small towns who are very poor and need legal help. There is most likely no law library and no law librarian to help them out. Issues like child support, insurance fraud, employment discrimination (and other discrimination), product liability, landlord-tenant problems, etc. are likely to exacerbate poverty. How sad that we cannot insure that the poor have the same access to good lawyers as do our corporations.

I recall visiting a small town in Iowa during the 2008 campaign. My job was to go door to door in the local "trailer park." The overcrowding, disrepair and poverty attacked every one of my sense. There was the sight, the smell and the sound of poverty. Very troubling. I agree with the OP. Rural poverty does not get the attention it needs. Republicans in particular deny its existence. But it is very real. It is there. If you live in rural America, go where it is. witness it, and then speak out in your community about it.