ReImagine Appalachia seeks federal money with strings attached
A coalition of progressive groups called ReImagine Appalachia knows there’s money headed to the region from Washington. And it has a message for members of Congress trying to hash out another stimulus package to mitigate the economic damage of the COVID-19 pandemic:
“The public investments needed in our region must come with strings attached,” the groups wrote in an inaugural eight-page framework released last week.
The strings that the group envisions would be hard for politicians to argue with: good union jobs, a secure future for coal workers, career opportunities for new workers.
Also unobjectionable are calls to put unemployed oil and gas drillers to work by plugging abandoned leaking wells, building new rail infrastructure, establishing local farms and modern manufacturing centers. Those, too, are part of ReImagine Appalachia’s blueprint, as are affordable high-speed internet, a modernized electrical grid, racial justice, raising the minimum wage and planting a bunch of new trees.
The vision is so broad and inoffensive that it’s hard to pin down where it might lead.
That’s also the point.
Its organizers aren’t looking to pit themselves against the industries traditionally seen as economic development drivers in this region (read: petrochemicals) — although some of the groups involved have individually argued against the build-out of plastics and fossil fuels, saying they are both environmentally harmful and economically unstable.
The ReImagine Appalachia umbrella wants workers from those industries on board — believing that the vision isn’t just better for the environment, but better for those workers, too. It represents climate goals in the shape of a job growth platform.
“We are in divisive times. The only people that benefit from this level of divisiveness are the top one percent,” Amanda Woodrum, an analyst with Policy Matters Ohio, said during a Zoom press conference recently. “The rest of us must work together to find our common ground and our common humanity.”
The ReImagine label and its mission stems from half a dozen efforts that began several years ago as a way to get grass-roots involvement in individual communities. Those include ReImagine Beaver County, ReImagine Butler County, ReImagine Turtle Creek, Indiana County Task Force, and a Better Vision for the Valley. A unifying force has been the support and funding of the League of Women Voters.
These grass-roots efforts were local by design. They were tailored to the specific problems and aspirations of their communities and, aside from Indiana County, where a sustainability plan was shepherded by the county commissioners, they mainly stayed away from government involvement. Joanne Martin, who helped organize ReImagine Beaver County, said there was an advantage to staying under the radar of official channels.
ReImagine Appalachia, on the
other hand, is a public splash aiming most of its energies at the top level of government under the heading: “New Deal that works for all of us.” In doing so, it’s tapping into a trend underway in Washington.
A number of bills circulating in Congress hearken back to that 1930s era when federal programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps put millions of people to work planting trees. The national parks and the interstate highway system are the result of federal investments to combat massive unemployment caused by the Great Depression.
Today, bills have been proposed that would revive the Civilian Conservation Corps, as well as invest heavily in transportation infrastructure, fund the reclamation of abandoned oil and gas wells and abandoned mines, and help coal workers. Those bills are likely to get rolled up into bigger funding packages, one of which is expected soon.
Looking back
This idea of looking to the post-Great Depression era is a fitting one for Appalachia, according to economist Stephen Herzenberg, who said it ushered in a period of four decades when wealth was more equitably shared between the working class and the very rich.
According to research by the Harrisburg-based Keystone Research Center, where Mr. Herzenberg is the executive director, incomes of the bottom 90% of people in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky tripled between 1940 and the late 1970s, while the share of income held by the top 10% first declined and then rose slowly.
Over the next 40-year period, working class earnings stayed flat or fell slightly, while the top 10% climbed to levels even higher than before the 1929 stock market crash.
“No wonder people are angry or apathetic about policies,” said Mr. Herzenberg, whose liberal think tank is part of the ReImagine Appalachia group.
In June, the ReImagine coalition had a listening session with labor leaders to get input and, presumably, buy-in from a contingent that has shown up in force to advocate for fossil fuel and petrochemical development, like the Royal
Dutch Shell ethane cracker plant being built in Potter Township, Beaver County.
Despite numerous references to building up labor protections and raising wages, ReImagine Appalachia did not have any labor unions among its dozens of signatories.
Some involved in the effort believe that’s because most people are still contrasting the chemical manufacturing jobs that pay, on average, more than $100,000 a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with those that might be created for solar installers, who earn around $45,000, according to the federal agency.
But these are the kinds of comparisons that Mr.
Herzenberg wants to get away from. It’s not about replacing one with the other.
“People have thought that addressing climate issues is bad for jobs. And that’s just backwards,” he said, although he himself did not realize that explicitly until a few years ago.
“We have to get that across to people. We need to build up a bigger story bank,” he said. “Working people and unions, the economic development community needs to be shown that there are already some projects going. And with the right policies, a lot more projects can happen.”