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In Coal Country, Young Workers Seek a Sustainable Future
By Jonathan Blair - In These Times, March 8, 2023
This article, republished from the Daily Yonder, is part of a series of photo essays created for the American Creed “Citizen Power” multi-platform documentary initiative exploring American idealism and community leadership from a range of young adult perspectives.
Jonathan Blair lives, works, and studies at Alice Lloyd College, in Eastern Kentucky. He coordinates a work-study crew of about 60 people, mostly first-generation college students from rural Appalachia. Blair and two of his crew members — Jacob Frazier and Carlos Villanueva — document their connection to blue-collar work in and around the Appalachian coal industry, and they reflect on their hopes for the region.
Explore more of Jonathan Blair’s story here.
My grandfathers on both sides were coal miners. My father is a mechanic for one of the railroads that transport coal. Basically, ever since our family has been in these hills, the coal business has put food on our table, and that’s the case for most families in our region. Even if it’s not why they came here, it kind of became what they did, because that was what paid, and you’re going to do whatever it takes.
Survival is a big aspect of Appalachian culture. For a long time, coal meant survival, but there was never a sense of stability because the coal business is like a light switch: It’s either “on” or “off.” And when that switch was off, a lot of people, like my grandpa, would find manufacturing jobs elsewhere, in Ohio and other places. And whenever the coal business picked back up, they would come back, because this is home. Today, you look around and you can see the mountaintops have been removed to extract the coal from them, and much of the coal that was deep in the ground is gone. The coal business is a phantom, a shadow of what it used to be. We can’t rely on it coming back to what it once was.
Read the rest of the article here.
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