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shirlleycoyle · 4 years

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The Fight for Greener Neighborhoods Is a Matter of Life or Death

When Mychal Johnson speaks at schools in the South Bronx, where he lives, there’s one question he always asks the students: Do you know where there’s water near here? Not water to drink, but water to see, to smell, to experience?

Johnson, a founding member of the local advocacy coalition South Bronx Unite, which focuses on the South Bronx neighborhoods of Mott Haven and Port Morris, says the children usually have no idea. But here’s the thing: The South Bronx is a peninsula with rivers on three sides. So, why don’t the kids know that? Because before getting anywhere near that water, they’d have to contend with a tangle of intersecting freeways first.

Not only would kids seeking the fresh river air need to cross the highways, they would also be forced to deal with the trucks traveling to and from them. The South Bronx waterfront is a major food distribution hub with thousands of diesel trucks going in and out of it every day. The trucks pollute the air to some of the highest levels in any city in the country, and the warehouses they frequent double as unsafe areas for pedestrians and cyclists seeking a little nature. But the Bronx River itself, which was once called an “open sewer” by a city commission, is now a National Parks Service-recognized water trail with kayaking and abundant wildlife. So what could be valuable public greenspace is, instead, an impermeable industrial barrier.

Partially because of all the industrial activity, the South Bronx has the highest amount of air pollution in the city, according to the New York City community health profile. It also has among the highest rates of obesity, diabetes, and hypertension in New York. Mott Haven, in particular, has been nicknamed “Asthma Alley” for having the highest rate of youth asthma in the country.

Johnson has long been trying to convince city officials that those conditions need to change. In 2012, South Bronx Unite, alongside other residents and community groups, sued the city in an attempt to block the grocery delivery company FreshDirect from receiving $127.8 million in taxpayer subsidies to open a hub in the South Bronx, which would add some thousand diesel trucks to the daily load the neighborhood already carried. As Johnson told the New York Times in 2013, he hoped that site could be used as waterfront green space instead. “It would be devastating,” he said at the time, if the FreshDirect deal went through. “We would have lost an opportunity to truly create something to increase the quality of life in our community.” But the lawsuit was unsuccessful.

Now, as coronavirus has swept the world, the Bronx is proving to be one of the hardest hit parts of New York City, itself one of the hardest hit cities in the world.

There is a growing body of research that suggests exposure to air pollution is linked to higher coronavirus death rates. Earlier this month, researchers from Harvard’s School of Public Health drew a direct line between air pollution and coronavirus fatalities. They found that only a small increase in a type of air pollution commonly found in tailpipe emissions is associated with a 15 percent increase in coronavirus death rates. Another study by a researcher from the Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Germany looked at satellite data to compare nitrogen dioxide levels (a pollutant primarily from vehicle exhaust) in Italy, Spain, France and Germany with their respective COVID-19 death rates. On the regional level, the study found a strong correlation between air pollution and higher death rates. “These results indicate that the long-term exposure to this pollutant may be one of the most important contributors to fatality caused by the COVID-19 virus in these regions,” the study concluded, “and maybe across the whole world.”

While COVID-19 fatality rates are not yet available by zip code in New York, of New York City’s five boroughs, the Bronx as a whole has the highest infection rate: 1,962 per 100,000 people, according to the New York City Department of Health as of April 18. And the zip code containing Mott Haven and Port Morris has a similar infection rate.

Johnson said the coronavirus crisis, and seeing what the virus has done to his neighborhood due to its heightened risk from pre-existing conditions, is reinforcing what he’s long been fighting for. “I think there’s a new sense of urgency,” he told me over the phone after making his son lunch. “Green space and access to recreational activities is vital to health.”

Researchers are still studying what makes some populations more susceptible to coronavirus than others, and no one is suggesting air pollution causes coronavirus infections or deaths. But we already know coronavirus has infected communities of color at higher rates—the South Bronx is 97 percent Black and Hispanic—and that the virus is twice as deadly for Black and Hispanic New Yorkers than white ones. These sobering statistics reflect existing health disparities between communities of color and white neighborhoods. They also reflect that Black and lower-income neighborhoods are more likely to be polluted.

Green space is an important part of that disparity. It’s hardly just the South Bronx, or merely neighborhoods in New York, that are realizing the consequences of not having more green space. In America’s 100 largest cities, about one-third of residents live further than a ten minute walk from a park, according to a 2017 study by The Trust for Public Land.

“It’s my observation as a person that has spent my entire career working in parks and public spaces that parks have never been more used or more appreciated by people at any time in American history than right now,” said Adrian Benepe, the senior vice president for The Trust for Public Land and former New York City Parks commissioner. “It’s an extraordinary moment of affirmation for their importance.”

Even before coronavirus called attention to green space, a large body of research has found that access to nature is more than just nice to have. It’s foundational to physical and mental health. There are all kinds of studies that prove nature’s benefits, including improved cardiovascular health, lower obesity rates, reducing heat effects, fewer symptoms of depression, and lower self-reported and biologically measured levels of stress. Humans have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to need the outdoors to set our circadian rhythm, relax us, get exercise, and generally enjoy fresh air.

“Basically, nature is not an amenity,” Professor Marc Berman, who heads the Environmental Neuroscience Lab at the University of Chicago, told Motherboard. “It’s a necessity.”

But while we can all agree that parks are good, what’s tough is getting city governments to actually prioritize them and recognize their benefits enough to invest in them.

Running and maintaining parks accounts for a rounding error in most city budgets. New York City, for example, dedicates just half a percent of its annual budget to its parks. As a result, the parks that do exist face maintenance backlogs totalling almost $600 million, according to a 2018 report from the Center for an Urban Future. And that’s to say nothing of getting new parks built, a process that often takes years or even decades of grassroots advocacy.

One reason for this discrepancy is that parks are not considered “essential” city services, a technical term that triggers emergency funding mechanisms in times of crisis. This technical distinction is also a revealing one: Our city governments, quite literally, do not consider parks essential.

Still, some neighborhoods have tree-lined streets and a good number of small parks, while others, like the South Bronx, don’t. “The inequities that you see are largely a result of the failure to plan,” Benepe said. “And a failure to plan is endemic in most cities.” Cities and suburbs grow at the behest of developers and real estate interests with little regard for the public spaces necessary to maintain a high quality of life. Over time, the homes near quality green space generally become more valuable (studies that evaluate park benefits adjust for these socioeconomic factors), which pushes lower income households to park-sparse areas, who then have to advocate for years or even decades to get quality green space in neighborhoods that have already been developed.

“The virus is highlighting a lot of cracks in society,” said Berman. “This is a crack.”

The South Bronx has one park that’s actually green: St. Mary’s Park. It’s about 26 acres with a lawn and ample tree cover. But with some 90,000 residents in the South Bronx, it can get quite crowded, especially now that everyone is seeking its expanses for some fresh air and exercise during the shelter-in-place order.

Until recently, South Bronxites would have had to get on the bus or subway to find another open green space. That changed in the fall of 2015, when the city opened the Randall’s Island Connector, the first path between the South Bronx and the 600-plus acre island park in the East River that sits between Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens. It’s still at least a 25 minute walk from the more populous areas of the South Bronx through the very industrial areas diesel trucks frequent. But it makes Randall’s Island accessible enough for Johnson and his son.

“Randalls Island has been a real gem for getting him out,” Johnson said, “being able to kick a soccer ball, be away from people. There’s enough space.” They go about once a week when the weather is nice.

The Randall’s Island Connector didn’t get built by accident. It took years of advocacy work from Johnson and other local groups to convert the lower half of an Amtrak bridge for pedestrian and bicycle use. This fits with the history of how parks get built and amenities improved, not just in New York, but in the country as a whole.

Historically, large urban parks have been created where land was available, Benepe of the Trust for Public Land said. “And it all depends on: was there a civic leader who fought for the creation of parks?” In the Bronx, that person was journalist John Mullaly, who played a critical role in setting aside almost a quarter of the Bronx’s land for park space—including the area that eventually became St. Mary’s Park. But most of that space is in the northern half of the Bronx, which had not yet been developed. “That pattern,” Benepe said, “is really replicated in cities across the country.”

Today, cities looking to expand park access face a problem. There simply isn’t much land left undeveloped to turn into parks. Other than displacing people and businesses, which can be costly and politically unpopular, cities have to get creative, as New York did with the High Line in Chelsea by turning an abandoned elevated railroad track into a linear park, or repurposing abandoned waterfronts or warehouses.

“Cities weren’t designed for people’s well-being in mind,” Berman observed. “And this is something that we’re trying to get more on the radar.” Maybe, he said, it’s time to start asking if we really need that avenue or highway to run through a given neighborhood.

According to Benepe, there’s really only one way for that conversation to start today: local activism. And those activists will need to fight harder than ever, because, in many cases, they won’t just be fighting for empty land to be put towards a purpose everyone likes—they will be demanding it be taken away from someone else.

For his part, Johnson said the new sense of urgency around his activism isn’t necessarily welcome. “You don’t want your advocacy to get more light because of negative consequences,” he said, referring to the toll coronavirus has taken on his community. But it reminds him what he is fighting for. “We definitely don’t want them to have lost their lives without any situation changing in the future.”

VICE is committed to ongoing coverage of the global climate crisis. Read all of our Earth Day 2020 coverage here, and more of our climate change coverage here .

The Fight for Greener Neighborhoods Is a Matter of Life or Death syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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delwray-blog · 6 years

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TAKE YOUR CHOICE SEPARATION OR MONGRELIZATION

The Jewish ‘One-Worlders’ Race-Mixing Intentions

By Col. Gordon "Jack" Mohr, Army US, Ret.

One of the major objectives of the New World Order is to create a homogenous race which can be more easily controlled than the white race, which is predominantly freedom-minded. They are particularly interested in the destruction of White Christian Civilization and are open in declaring their intentions. They know this will have to take place before they become successful in their bid for World Control, and only White Christianity stands between them and their objectives. So we become their most potent enemy.

We have the historic example of how while Christian South Africa, was destroyed by our Zionist controlled State Department in conjunction with the objectives of the anti-Christ United Nations. The conspiracy was upset with the manner in which South Africa classified their population by race. This leads us to wonder why, if they objected to this happening in South Africa, they are now proposing the same thing in our present census. Somewhere along the line, something is rotten and it isn't in Denmark.

Are the liberals trying to establish a system of apartheid, as it was called in South Africa, to further control America through a racial confrontation?

This question flies in the face of repeated declarations by President Clinton, which requires an end to all forms of segregation, and an end to all racial profiling. What do these New Worlders have up their sleeves, if racial questions are asked as they are in the present census?

The Census form asks racial questions in shocking detail, even on the short form, and tell the planned future of the United States and its now White Majority. Their plans are for America to become so racially intermixed that no one will be able to recognize us as the Republic which once existed and flourished. Already California has lost its White majority and is headed for Hispanic rule. In many areas, the English language is not the predominate tongue spoken and street signs, ballot forms, and public documents are now being printed in Spanish.

Jewish organizations have been vigorously attempting to end police racially profiling criminals, and are hindering their operations. They are keeping the truth concerning Black and Hispanic crimes from coming to the attention of the White majority. By clever media maneuvering, the responsibility for crime is always placed on White shoulders, when statistics are quite the opposite. It is this same group of International Zionists, who have threatened the end of White Christian Civilization, who are working towards this end by fostering racial hatred in this country.

Be forewarned! If this should happen, say goodbye to religious freedom in America and the institution of the World anti-God religion of the Internationalists. Many of us are aware that it was International Jewish bankers such as the Rothschild’s who financed the Communist Revolution in Russia and provided most of its leadership. They succeeded in killing off over 60 million of the Russian people, most of them Christians. Yet they have the chutzpah to harass us with their 'Holocaust' claims.

These same Internationalists who helped Hitler to power in Germany, made a deal with him to get the Jewish people out of Germany, not to kill them, as claimed. Today, Holocaust guilt is being constantly pounded down the throats of the American people, even in our schools and churches, while little is ever said about the complicity of the Jews in killing millions of Christians. Why is it that we have no Holocaust Museum for the hundreds of thousands of German women and children who were murdered by the Allies under International pressure at places such as Dresden?

The fact remains, that the Holocaust was manufactured by International Jewry to get Jews illegally into Palestine, and then milk the stupid goyim of billions of dollars by way of sympathy for the poor mistreated Jews.

The purpose of the census is to eliminate the power base of the White community in America and replace it with a racial mixing which will end the biological existence of the White Race. The extent of Jewish leadership in pro-race-mixing propaganda can be seen in the following article, taken from the September 5, 1967 issue of Maclean's Magazine, and written by Rabbi Abraham L. Feinstein, a prominent Canadian rabbi:

"For small 'l'-liberals—and most Canadians fall into this category—one of the most nagging dilemmas of their creed is the gap between the preaching and practice of racial equality. This refusal to sanction the mixing of the races is the final bastion of racial hostility. Until we learn to fight our ingrown fears of sexual relations between races, the end of the race problems will not be in sight. Only when we no longer raise our eyebrows at the sight of a Negro holding hands with a White girl (a sickening sight!), will the West have begun to tear racial poison from its vitals. "This will mean a remodeling of the White psyche from inside out, for our fear of mixed marriages is deeply rooted. (It should be since God forbids it—Mohr.) Finally, there is the objection (perhaps this is the wrong word to apply to such an emotional problem) that some races are innately savage. According to this view and it is surprising how many earnest liberals half believe it—the chaos in the Congo and the mob violence in Harlem and Los Angeles, spring from a Black source. History shows, however, that regardless of their technical progress, no race has a monopoly on savageness. (However, "By their fruits shall ye know them"—and I know of no White country, where the people deliberately chop their neighbors to pieces, just for the fun of It.—Mohr). "I do not mean to suggest there are no racial differences, of course, there are. They differ in blood type distribution, in taste sensitivity, in hairiness, and perhaps in body smell. There are some areas of racial differences which seem to support the segregationist view, and on intelligence tests, Blacks, for the most part, perform less well than Whites. During the Second World War, the percentage of Blacks rejected on mental grounds was six times that of the White percentage. These are real disabilities and civil rights leaders are attempting to overcome them. "Certainly, the mixed couple will face a whole sea of troubles that couples of the same race never encounter. There is evidence that the barriers once imposed by society are beginning to crumble. Laws should be enforced, not to forbid the intermingling of bloods, but to encourage it. The only way we can have a FINAL SOLUTION to the race problem: is to create a mixture of races."

It is interesting to note that the Jewish leaders resent it when their people intermarry. The present census was set up to target foreign-born, with the ultimate plan that no area in America can ever be designated a White Bastion. They fear a new White Nation might be formed, very possibly in the Northwest, which could oppose their plans for world conquest. This could very possibly happen if racial pressure continues to mount. It may become necessary for White survival!

It is a well-known fact, that gun control is always a prelude to people control and has one objective, to get the means of protection out of the hands of patriots who might use them against a rogue government out of control. The Texas Supreme Court has already ruled that the only information the government can require you to answer on the census form is the number of people living at your address. This is as the Constitution requires.

The lower half of California has been literally taken over by Hispanics, who boast that it will soon be a Mexican country, AZATLAN, either through popular vote or by force of arms if necessary. This new country would take in five of our Southwestern states.

What Would Be the Results?

We can easily visualize what would happen if America is taken over primarily by Blacks, by looking at Africa. In every so-called Republic in Africa, the blacks there today are infinitely worse off in every respect, education, health care, housing, and freedom, under their presidents for life, than they were under the sometimes harsh rule of White colonialism. They were much safer then than they are now, under the Black dictators, that our State Department has turned into billionaires. (Idi Amin in Uganda is a prime example). The majority are Marxist oriented, and like Mugabe in Zimbabwe, are destroying their countries for a little monetary glory and power. They show very little interest in their own people and are bent on destroying the only people who have ever helped them, the Whites. It is a classic example of biting the hand that feeds you.

While missionary activity, for the most part, has been a lesson in frustration. A White missionary goes to this benighted land and works for forty years building a strong church. He often starts a seminary to educate native pastors. Then a political upheaval takes place that forces him to leave. He comes back a few years later to find his church still in operation, but with the local witch doctor as pastor. They still sing the old church hymns, but their worship is interlaced with heathen occultism until there are very few vestiges of Christianity left.

A few years ago, when I lived on the Gulf Coast, I listened to the little Jewish evangelist Benny Hinn, as he bragged on TBN how his missionary efforts had Christianized twelve African nations. Less than a month later, his Rwanda Pentecostals were hacking their Tutu countrymen to pieces with their pangas, in spite of all liberal arguments to the contrary. One of the biggest lessons Whites must learn if we are to survive is that Blacks, in particular, do not have the same spiritual thought process as Whites. We are not the same! The difference in races can be explained Scripturally but it is not my purpose to go into that here.

Are we ready for scenes in our large urban areas, like those now taking place in Sierre Leone, where Black rebels are chopping the limbs off women and children, after first raping them? Every Black Country in Africa is under turmoil today, proving that when Whites left and handed Black countries over to natives on a silver platter they could not maintain modern civilization. The same is true of Hispanic countries such as Brazil, Mexico, and Central America.

The same people, who destroyed these nations, are trying to do the same thing with a homogenized America.

The British turned Rhodesia, one of the most modern and beautiful countries in Africa, back to the natives in 1980. Before Mugabe took over, he had his minions slaughter everyone who was opposed to him in usual Black African style and became President for Life. The white farmers who number less than 70,000 out of a total population of some 15 million, produced most of the agriculture produce of Southern Africa and fed most of its population. Today under Black Marxist rule, they cannot feed their own People, and Mugabe is killing or running off the only people who can and would help him. Today thousands of acres of productive farmland are lying idle, and dairy herds are being slaughtered for momentary barbecues. This, my Christian friends, is the Black heathen mentality at work and is what the Zionist One Worlders wish for America.

Many years ago, a very wise Southern politician wrote a book tided, "Take Your Choice—Separation or Mongrelization" He was demonized by the liberals as being a race hater when in reality he wished only happiness for this country.

He wrote, "If our highways and our railroads should be wrecked, we would rebuild them, if our cities should be destroyed, we could rebuild them bigger and better. Even if our Armed Forces should be destroyed, we would rear sons who would redeem our power. But if the blood of our White race should become corrupted (adulterated—Thou shalt NOT commit adultery—Mohr) and mingled with the blood of Africa, then this present great nation will be destroyed, as all hope for civilization would be impossible for a Negroid America."

If God had wanted all mankind to be one big amalgamated blob, no doubt He would have created us that way. He must have had a reason for separation of the races, and His Word indicates this. He has ordered His Israel people (that's not the Jews!), to remain separated, and keep their bloodlines pure and when we disobey this, we destroy ourselves.

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elizabethleslie7654 · 6 years

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White America Strikes Back

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It was easy for the media talking heads to dismiss Trump’s popularity among White voters as “racism” rather than addressing his tangible benefits to them. CNN’s Van Jones even went as far as to call the Trump victory a “whitelash” from White America in response to the last eight years under a Black President. However, this so-called whitelash can be credited to a specific voting bloc once known as “Reagan Democrats.” These voters were blue-collar whites, previously inclined to only vote Democrat (due to their association with labor unions as well as the long lasting rural support for FDR’s New Deal policies) and switched to Republicans when Reagan ran, pushing him ahead to his massive electoral victories.

These rural voters are primarily concentrated along the Great Lakes in the Rust Belt, but also occupy vast stretches of the Great Plains. In a post-election analysis, Nate Silver noted that, “by far Trump’s strongest demographic group, were disproportionately concentrated in swing states,” giving him an electoral advantage over Hillary Clinton.

Geographically, these were the regions hit hardest by the deindustrialization of Middle America. Many of these areas suffer extreme destitution, such as Appalachia, where the poverty rate is 19.7% (compared to the 15.6% of the country as a whole).

It should also be noted that Appalachia is 98.5% white.

Trump himself perfectly summed up the frustrations of these neglected voters:

“For too long, Americans have been forced to accept trade deals that put the interests of insiders and the Washington elite over the hard-working men and women of this country. As a result, blue-collar towns and cities have watched their factories close and good-paying jobs move overseas, while Americans face a mounting trade deficit and a devastated manufacturing base.”

Despite the presence of numerous swing-counties, the Rust Belt is generally avoided by Presidential candidates compared to other states with more electoral college votes; however, Trump actively pursued these states. It’s worth noting that Trump secured Ohio—commonly regarded as the “bellwether state”—where he won a whopping 30 counties by over 70% of the vote. He continued his plunder of the Rust Belt with wins in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Indiana. Managing to flip the entire Midwest red, Trump had remade the Republican Party as we know it. This came as no surprise to Trump himself, who declared on the campaign trail to Bloomberg News in 2016: “Five, ten years from now—different party. You’re going to have a worker’s party. A party of people that haven’t had a real wage increase in 18 years, that are angry.”

The Billionaire Populist

Despite the hype surrounding Obama’s “coalition of the ascendant,” the voters responsible for pushing him to victory lived in predominantly White counties. According to analysis by Dan Balz of the Washington Post, “Of the nearly 700 counties that twice sent Obama to the White House, a stunning one-third flipped to support Trump,” and he also won 194 out of the 207 counties that voted for Obama only once.

In his Washington Post article, Balz draws upon the research of Henry Olsen, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Olsen believes that the failure by GOP leadership to address the concern of the White working-class was a catalyst for Trump. Olsen writes, “they’ve been ignoring the economic pressures that have been placed on the native born, low-skilled person for the last 15-20 years,” adding, “Trump walks into this and says, ‘I’m an American first, I’m a conservative second… We need to give the people who have been shafted for the last 15 years a leg up.”

Basic electoral analysis supports these socioeconomic conclusions. According to data from FiveThirtyEight.com, the most reliable predictor of how a district would vote was White socioeconomic status.

The four quadrants of the graph are as follows: High-status/blue, high-status/red, low-status/blue, and low-status/red. Trump dominates his Republican competitors in each of these quadrants with the exception of high-status/blue counties, which tended to favor John Kasich (who I consider the absolute worst of the “principled conservatives”) or alternatively Marco Rubio. Additionally, high-status/red counties displayed strong support for Cruz and Rubio, but Trump still topped their popularity. Interestingly enough, the counties Trump performed best in were low-status/blue, followed by low-status/red counties. Thus It can be concluded that areas where Whites suffer socioeconomic status are the biggest hotness of Trump support, regardless of that area’s demonstrated partisanship.

In 2016, Pew Research Center examined the working-class Whites and their support for populism in both parties. The White working-class has made up a majority of both parties since at least 1992, when they comprised 67% of Republican voters. However, as the country became more educated, their numbers declined to 58% in 2015.

Trump’s dominance over Cruz can be largely credited to this low-education majority, but the decrease is also indicative of the country’s changing racial demographics. In 1992, Whites made up 84% of the population, compared to 72% in 2015. This should be alarming for Republicans, who have always relied on consistent support from White voters and will continue to rely on them in the foreseeable future.

Along with low-income, another data point proven to be a reliable indicator for Trump support was low-education. Nearly half of White voters with a high school diploma or less support Trump, as opposed to only 34% of college graduates and 27% of postgraduate degree holders.

The breakdown of socioeconomic data also offers further evidence that working-class Whites have struggled, noting that the percent change from 1992 to 2013 in average earnings for White men 25 years old or older have increased 19% for college graduates and decreased 3% for those without a college degree. While educated Whites are finding it easy to get ahead, working-class Whites have not had the same fortune.

Out of Touch Elites

In March 2016, Kevin Williamson wrote an article directing the establishment’s frustration with Trump at the American people voting for him. The article acknowledges a socioeconomic trend within the electorate that pollsters began noticing as more states cast their votes: Trump has massive support among working-class Whites and low-education voters. All of those factors have proven to be reliable indicators for support for Trump. The ivory-tower attitude of the National Review quickly concluded that this meant Trump voters are unintelligent and essentially low-brow.

In another article during the 2016 election, Kevin Williamson criticizes these Americans of the Rust Belt for sticking around their declining cities and lectures them on the responsibility of learning new skills so they may follow economic opportunity. He suggests they should “get out of the ghetto or the barrio, get an education, get a job, and start a new life and a new family in some more prosperous corner of the county or country.” If escaping these conditions were that easy, these voters would have done it already, genius. In fact, the ones with enough agency, skill, or luck are capable of doing so, as Williamson wrote in a 2014 article (which lacked the condescension of his later articles). However, breaking free from the cycle of poverty is easier said than done. For starters, these people can’t afford housing elsewhere. Getting out of a decaying rural community is stuck in a paradox: leaving requires money, but there are no jobs to earn the money (which you want to spend in order to get a job).

Living in a small town with no jobs or opportunity, young White people are often doomed to remain stuck there since they lack the economic means to move to a more prosperous area. A single factory can support the livelihoods of an entire county, so when that factory gets shut down it has devastating effects. What other employers are there in the middle of nowhere? The less fortunate can only find seasonal work and suffer sporadic unemployment; for the lucky ones, there’s Walmart, McDonald’s, Tractor Supply Co., or maybe a small grocery store. Others are forced to search for work elsewhere—even if it means an hour and a half commute to healthier job markets closer to a large metropolitan area. Rural communities also frequently lack sufficient infrastructure, making long-distance commutes difficult, inconvenient, and costly. When trying to escape rural poverty, every step of the way is an uphill battle.

Williamson’s revulsion at these communities is blatant—he declares their way of life dead and in a distasteful metaphor literally compares their enthusiasm for Trump with the prescription medication addiction that plagues Middle America: “Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin.” Yes, he really wrote that! Williamson’s colleague at the National Review, David French, even went to far as to defend that gross analogy in his own elitist article, in which he blames rural Whites for their problems. The pedantic article lectures them on their “moral obligation to do their best” and scolds them for “barely trying.” His explanation for their lack of motivation? He writes: “And always — always — there was a sense of entitlement.”

Latent with the emotional bias of the primary season’s #NeverTrump era, it is hard to seriously analyze much of what National Review had to write about the White working-class. Their didactic articles read like the frantic mania of an ideology that knows it’s going extinct. The National Review reaffirms the consensus of the so-called principled conservatives: Trump would supposedly be a disastrous, erratic candidate who would further alienate minorities from the GOP, and the party must instead nominate a principled “adult in the room” touting a message inclusive to Hispanics while continuing to ignore White Americans.

Case Study: Ohio

To understand the Rust Belt voter, Ohio is a good place to start. In 2008 and 2012, Obama was boosted to victory by some of the most impoverished counties in northeastern Ohio. Much of northeastern Ohio had not voted Republican since 1984, but in 2016 these voters once again turned out for the GOP. Northeastern Ohio faces a heap of economic challenges, including unemployment, stagnant wages, and diminishing property values—all of which are below that of the state average for these metrics.

In Ohio, economic anxiety is not contained to the northeast. Isolated by a lack of infrastructure, other rural regions of the state have also suffered, such as in Ohio’s Appalachian corner, where 17.8% of families live in poverty, according to the most recent Ohio Poverty Report. While the country as a whole saw improvement after the recession, rural areas were left behind and continue to struggle with their economic recovery. “Poverty is the family tradition,” as Ohio native J.D. Vance wrote in his 2017 book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, which I cannot recommend enough.

Among the other issues plaguing these counties is the opioid epidemic, which has hit Ohio far worse than any other state in the country. Overdoses and broken homes have tragically become commonplace, with some counties in Appalachian Ohio suffering 80% or more of children removed from their homes in cases of parental drug abuse, according to the Public Children Services Association of Ohio. In the wake of the opioid crisis, methamphetamine use has seen a steep increase in several midwestern states, including Ohio. Despite these circumstances, crime does not run rampant throughout Appalachia, as Kevin Williamson noted in 2014:

“The Big White Ghetto is different from most other ghettos in one very important way: There’s not much violent crime here. There’s a bit of the usual enterprise one finds everywhere there are drugs and poor people…There’s a great deal of drug use, welfare fraud, and the like, but the overall crime rate throughout Appalachia is about two-thirds the national average, and the rate of violent crime is half the national average, according to the National Criminal Justice Reference Service.”

The bleak future rural Whites face is illustrated in the shocking mortality rates. According to a Wonkblog article referenced by Kevin Williamson:

“The life expectancies among non-college-educated White Americans have been plummeting in an almost unprecedented fashion… Trump counties had proportionally fewer people with college degrees. Trump counties had fewer people working. And the White people in Trump counties were likely to die younger. The causes of death were “increased rates of disease and ill health, increased drug overdose and abuse, and suicide.”

Furthermore, in 2017, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer also reported on this phenomena:

“The trend of rising premature death rates has been consistently worse in rural counties across the country, a pattern that’s borne out in Ohio. The 10 Ohio counties with the worst premature death rates include nine clustered in the southern tip of the state…These are also among the counties with the state’s highest drug overdose rates, according to the most recently reported data from the Ohio Department of Health.”

With life expectancies on the decline and premature deaths on the incline, these communities could just simply die out. But Kevin Williamson thinks that’s a good thing: “The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die.”

The sense of sheer hopelessness in these areas is no better summarized than by examining suicide rates, which skyrocket once you pass the city limits. Most shocking to me was a study conducted by The Ohio State University which found that from 1996 to 2010, the youth suicide rate in rural areas was double that of in urban areas. This heartbreaking statistic serves as sober reminder of their predicament.

Conclusion

The White working-class needs to find a home in the Republican Party. Their desperate pleas for help have fallen on deaf ears for far too long. Guy Molyneux articulated this frustration in a 2017 article:

“Non-college whites believe government has let them down, but most have no principled or ideological objections to government playing a strong role in the economy. Although just 20 percent trust the federal government, 50 percent also say it should take a more active role in solving the nation’s economic and social problems. Indeed, two-thirds (68 percent) say the federal government should do more to create jobs and improve wages, and majorities also say it should do more to improve K–12 education, to make college affordable, and to regulate banks and the financial sector.”

Republicans and Democrats have both shamefully turned their backs on voters trapped in rural poverty, and it needs to stop now. Rural voters have grown to distrust the government, as Molyneux writes:

“White working-class voters. Just 20 percent of them [white working-class voters] believe they can trust the federal government more than half of the time (a rather low bar). While 61 percent of white working-class voters have an unfavorable view of corporations, a stratospheric 93 percent have an unfavorable view of politicians.”

While Democrats promote some economic policies supported by many low-income voters—such as entitlement benefits—the growing popularity Affirmative Action and favoritism of nonwhites among Democrats has left behind underprivileged Whites. On the bright side, Americans are starting to wake up. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, “Republicans are significantly more likely to say whites, rather than blacks, experience a lot of discrimination in the U.S. today (43 percent vs. 27 percent, respectively).” Additionally, the Washington Post reported that “perceptions that whites are currently treated unfairly relative to minorities appeared to be an unusually strong predictor of support for Donald Trump in the general election.” This trend was also observed by Pew Research Center:

“This strain of white identity politics, which sees white people as the group in need of special protection, is relatively new. In 2005, 6 percent of both Republicans and Democrats thought white Americans experienced “a great deal” of discrimination, according to a Pew Research Center survey. In 2016, the share of Republicans had jumped to 18 percent, while Democrats ticked up only slightly to 9 percent. Forty-nine percent of Republicans — compared to just 29 percent of Democrats — said whites face at least “some” discrimination.”

This shift toward identity politics turned off many White voters the Democrats used to rely on. Energized by the possibility of the first Black president and the first woman president, the Democrats failed to notice they were closing the door on White voters. But the more consequential result of Democrats embracing multiculturalism has proven to be the rise of white identity politics.

While Democrats are to blame for ignoring White voters, Republicans are no less guilty in their continued betrayal of White voters. Empty promises are made by the GOP, which appeases the base by paying lip service to social issues. Yet, when we look at the “culture war,” one must wonder what have conservatives actually conserved? Even in the span of just the last ten years, gay marriage evolved from a fringe issue to tiptoe around into a new norm made so mainstream that bright rainbow spotlights were shined on the White House in celebration of the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court ruling. Republicans were too preoccupied with accommodating their donors in the financial sector to pay any attention to the most rapid cultural shift leftward since the 1960s. Older Americans are now living in a world vastly different than the one they remember growing up in. This alienation could only add to the mounting frustration of White voters.

The anger from these broken promises has drained any remaining hope from entire swaths of the country, such as in Ohio, Appalachia, and other rural areas of the Midwest. These voters have finally had enough. Instead of an urbane, wonkish candidate like Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan, the voters decisively chose Donald Trump. Only Trump had the enigmatic fiery bravado to galvanize exceedingly indignant Whites, and the message was received.

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