Obama neglects a bunch of Americans ... most of them rural

That is the gist of John Harwood's story in the New York Times today.   The piece, titled "Dissent Festers in States Obama Forgot," starts with North Dakota as an example of those states, calling it the antithesis of Obama's political base and goes onto list other similarly neglected (and mostly rural) states:  Montana, South Dakota, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Nebraska, Kentucky, Kansas, Wyoming, and Utah.  An excerpt from Harwood's report follows:

Mr. Obama’s near-complete absence from more than 25 percent of the states, from which he is politically estranged, is no surprise, in that it reflects routine cost-benefit calculations of the modern presidency. But in a country splintered by partisanship and race, it may also have consequences. 

America’s 21st-century politics, as underscored by the immigration debate now embroiling Congress, increasingly pits the preferences of a dwindling, Republican-leaning white majority against those of expanding, Democratic-leaning Hispanic and black minorities. Even some sympathetic observers fault Mr. Obama for not doing all he could to pull disparate elements of society closer.

By way of "sympathetic observors," Harwood quotes Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist who worked with Clinton and Gore:

Every president should make an attempt to bridge the divide.  It’s a tall order. I wouldn’t give him high marks.

The story notes that Brazile is an African-American.  And speaking of race, Harwood notes:  

The sense of disappointment some feel extends beyond inattention to staunch opponents. Mr. Obama has not, for instance, traveled as president to the overwhelmingly poor, black Mississippi Delta, either.

China's rural-to-urban migration accelerates, with a significant government push

The New York Times kicks off a series today titled, "China's Great Uprooting:  Moving 250 Million into Cities ."  One subhead is "Leaving the Land," and one promotional blurb follows:

Articles in this series look at how China's government-driven effort to push the population to towns and cities is reshaping a nation that for millenniums has been defined by its rural life.

And here's the lede:

China is pushing ahead with a sweeping plan to move 250 million rural residents into newly constructed towns and cities over the next dozen years — a transformative event that could set off a new wave of growth or saddle the country with problems for generations to come. 

The government, often by fiat, is replacing small rural homes with high-rises, paving over vast swaths of farmland and drastically altering the lives of rural dwellers.

Ian Johnson reports that the goal is to have 70% of the China's population--900 million people--living  in cities by 2025; currently, 50% live in cities.  The scale of the plan is so great that the number of new city dwellers in China will approach the total urban population of the United States.  Johnson articulates the fear that rural China is once again the site of social engineering, writing:

Across China, bulldozers are leveling villages that date to long-ago dynasties. Towers now sprout skyward from dusty plains and verdant hillsides.

Johnson quotes Tian Wei, a 43-year-old former wheat farmer in Hebei province.  Wei now works at a factory, as a night watchman:

It’s a new world for us in the city.  All my life I’ve worked with my hands in the fields; do I have the educational level to keep us with the city people?

The story features a number of other rich quotes from former farmers, whose pensions the Chinese government is financing as part of this shift.  

Johnson also puts this phenomenon in historical perspective, noting the sharp turn in Communist Party policy, which for decades insisted that "most peasants, even those working in cities, remain tied to their tiny plots of land to ensure political and economic stability." He notes that in the past several decades, the Party has "flip-flopped on peasants’ rights to use land: giving small plots to farm during 1950s land reform, collectivizing a few years later, restoring rights at the start of the reform era and now trying to obliterate small landholders."

Indeed, one of the fascinating things about this story is that recent stories out of China indicate that the government has continued to persecute those who make unauthorized rural-to-urban migrations.   Read more here.   Posts here and here highlight the problems associated with rural poverty in China.  Here's a post about unrest in rural China, and here's one from a few years ago about the challenges of urbanizing China.

Maine hermit who burgled neighbors' homes draws sympathy from some

Katharine Q. Seelye reported for the NYT from North Pond, Maine, on the public response to the arrest a few months ago of Christopher Knight, 47, who had been living in self-imposed exile in Maine Woods for 27 years. Knight has confessed to committing more than 1000 burglaries from the homes of area residents during that time.  He was caught red-handed this spring stealing bacon, coffee and marshmallows from a camp for the disabled.  Seelye reports:

[Neighbors] were unnerved that a local legend of a hermit-burglar had turned out to be true, that someone really had been lurking in the woods all this time watching them and studying their habits: when they would be home, when they would stock their freezers. 

But to some, he was a figure of sympathy, like Boo Radley, the recluse in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Like Boo, Mr. Knight was initially feared but came to be seen not as someone who was dangerous but as someone who needed to be protected.

* * *

He had lived in someone else’s woods, undetected under camouflage-colored tarps and completely off the grid; he paid no taxes, had no address and never used a cellphone.

North Pond is in in the Belgrade Lakes area of central Maine, part of Kennebec County, which includes Augusta.  

More on immigration and rural America

This time the story is out of Wyoming and it involves sheepherders.  Here's an excerpt from NPR's report, "Immigration Bill May Keep Wage Exemption for Foreign Herders," by Sara Hossaini.

Peruvian shepherds on guest worker visas tend thousands of sheep in Wyoming, but they only make about half of what agricultural workers elsewhere are paid. 

Under the U.S. Senate's newest immigration proposal, these guest workers would receive a special exemption from minimum wage rules. The proposal has stirred disagreements between ranch owners and workers' rights advocates.

The story notes that the farmers featured, the O'Tooles on the Colorado-Wyoming border, pay about $750/month to their foreign ranch hands, who are on H-2A guest worker visas.  The ranch hands' living and working conditions sound abysmal, even abusive.

Once again, we have a story noting that local folks in rural areas don't want these jobs:

"There's not a lot of inquiry from the local community," says [Heather Ondo, a former ranch inspector in Wyoming]. "Most people don't want to go to work seven days a week, for 24 hours a day, for $750 a month."

Other stories reporting this phenomenon are here and here.

Another story of rural development versus... well... nature

Here it is from NPR.  The dateline is San Antonio (not obviously rural), and the "nature "at issue are bats.  The lede follows:

The Bracken Bat Cave, just north of San Antonio, is as rural as it gets. You have to drive down a long, 2-mile rocky road to reach it. There's nothing nearby — no lights, no running water. The only thing you hear are the katydids.

The cave houses a massive bat colony, as it has for an estimated 10,000 years. Bat Conservation International, the group that oversees the Bracken Cave Reserve, wants it to stay secluded, but the area's rural nature could change if a local developer's plan moves forward.

How can you be "just north of San Antonio" and "as rural as it gets"?  Maybe you have to be there to understand.

Man who managed California orchards of Japanese Americans during WWII dies

The New York Times recently reported the May 23 death of Bob Fletcher, age 101.  Fletcher was an agriculture inspector for the state of California when several Japanese families forced into internment camps asked him to manage their fruit farms.  Here's an excerpt from William Yardley's story:

Near Sacramento, many of the Japanese who were relocated were farmers who had worked land around the town of Florin since at least the 1890s. Mr. Fletcher, who was single and in his early 30s at the time, knew many of them through his work inspecting fruit for the government. The farmers regarded him as honest, and he respected their operations.  

While Florin was a "town" then, it is now part of the Sacramento conurbation.  

My favorite line in the story is at the tail end.  It is from a 2010 interview, when the town of Florin was preparing to honor him.  Fletcher offered this self-deprecating perspective on what he had done during the war:

I don’t know about courage. It took a devil of a lot of work.

Rural Arkansas tells urban Arkansas to mind its own business

That's the gist of a resolution passed by a unanimous vote of the Newton County Quorum Court (equivalent to a Board of Supervisors) at its June 3, 2013 meeting. The Newton County resolution responded to resolution by the Fayetteville City Council, passed April 15, which "oppose[s] the permitting and operation of the concentrated hog farm along a major tributary of the Buffalo National River." The City Council indicated that its reason for weighing in was that the hog farm would hurt tourism in Fayetteville, as well as in Newton County.  Apparently, a protest demonstration and rally opposing the hog farm have occurred in Fayetteville.

The dueling resolutions, of course, refer to a controversial factory hog farm that just began operating in Mount Judea, Arkansas, which I have written about here, here, here and here.  That hog farm is in the watershed of the Buffalo National River, just a few miles upstream from the river which is a major draw for tourists to the Ozarks.  The Newton County resolution was proposed and pushed by farmer Tim Slape of Compton, who is quoted:

 What I'd like to ask the quorum court to do is consider drawing up a resolution that states we're against Bikes, Blues and Barbecue [an annual event in Fayetteville].  The reason is that the increase in motorcycle traffic that passes through Newton County puts an added stress on the county's law enforcement and first responders.   

We're going to have to fight back against these people.  If these boys lose that hog farm you can kiss your county good-bye. 

It's in your boys' hands.  We have to fight back.  These people need to know people live here.  

The resolution passed by the quorum court reads in part:

Whereas Newton County is dedicated to its environment, economics, and historical culture; and 

Whereas Newton County has historically depended on the timber industry and its family owned farms; and 

Whereas, a large multi-family owned hog farm having met or exceeded all state and federal regulations has been built providing much needed jobs and increasing the tax base for the county and schools, therefore helping to protect our environment, economic and historical culture. 

Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Quorum Court of Newton County, Arkansas; that

The Quorum Court of Newton County, Arkansas, adamantly opposes the interference in the livelihoods of these families by the City of Fayetteville and other entities.

Let me put these competing resolutions in spatial and economic perspective.  Fayetteville lies about 70 miles to the west of Newton County, both in the northwest Arkansas quadrant.  Both feature lovely rolling Boston Mountains, but that is pretty much where the similarities end.  Fayetteville is the county seat of metropolitan Washington County, Arkansas, part of the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers conurbation that is Arkansas's second of two SMSAs.  Fayetteville is also the home of the University of Arkansas, the land grant university.  It is fair to say that Fayetteville is pocket of liberalism in an otherwise quite conservative state.  It is also relatively affluent, though not quite as affluent as neighboring Benton County, home of Wal-Mart.  Washington County's median household income is $35,900, but that for Washington County is higher, at nearly $42,000.  This probably reflects the fact that Fayetteville has a large student population, which means its poverty rate is also higher than that of the surrounding county.  The median value of a home in Washington County is $153,700.

Newton County, on the other hand, is the state's least densely populated county, and it's entire population barely exceeds 8000. Its median household income is under $30,000, and the median home value is $76,400--just half of the Washington County figure.  Newton County is a persistent poverty county that relies greatly on ecotourism--but even more so on government employment.  It has 90 nonfarm establishments, and it issued one building permit in 2012.  The county has 636 farms with an average per farm market value of products sold (in 2007) at just below $30,000.

A poet of and with rural sensibilities

Tim Hennen's collection of poetry, Darkness Sticks to Everything, is reviewed in the New York Times today by Dana Jennings, who describes the new book, Hennen's sixth, as "an essential survey of his career."  Noting that it is the first of Hennen's book to be distributed nationally, Jennings compares the book to "a fine fishing hole only the locals knew."  Jennings quotes from Jim Harrison's introduction to the volume, which calls Hennen "a genius of the common touch."

Here's an excerpt from his poem, "Summer Night Air."

Night doesn’t fall
It rises
Out of low spots
Tree trunks
And the back
Of the old cow
I’m bringing home to milk.

The titles of and quotes from other poems in the collection (e.g., "Clouds Rise Like Fish," "The Heron with No Business Sense," "Cold in the Trees," "Sunlight after the Pig Yard Flood") suggest Hennen's rural origins, on a family farm in Morris, Minnesota. Born in 1942, Hennen spent his working life with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge in South Dakota.  Those experiences clearly inform his poetic perspective.

Calling Hennen an "American master" and a "word-farmer," Jennings writes of how Hennen sees rural America, what it has been and has become, beyond the nostalgia so often associated with it:

His poems often reflect who Americans still think they are — family farms, amber waves of grain and all that — although he knows, for the most part, they aren’t anymore. 

He knows that his heron with no business sense vanishes because “the swamp has become a supermarket overnight,” that “The hungry man from the woods/Feeds on loose change/Like a parking meter.”

Now, two versions of a compassionate eye on poor, rural Southerners

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, James Agee's "literary description of abject poverty in the South, accompanied by starkly haunting Walker Evans photographs" was published in 1941.  Now, we have an opportunity to read what was essentially an early draft of the book. You see, Fortune Magazine had sent Agee to Alabama in 1936 to chronicle the life of sharecroppers, but the story he wrote about that investigation was never published because "Agee squabbled with his editors over what he felt was the exploitation and trivialization of destitute American families."  Indeed, early in Famous Men, Agee "wrote that it was obscene for a commercial enterprise to 'pry intimately into the lives of an undefended and appalling damaged group of human beings.'" That magazine manuscript, never published by Fortune, was published yesterday as a book, "Cotton Tenants: Three Families."

Christine Haughney's story about Cotton Tenants appears in the New York Times this week under the headline, "A Paean to Forbearance (the Rough Draft)."  I like that headline's play on Agee's title (was "famous men" meant to convey irony?)--and his attitude toward his subject.  "Paean" means a song of triumph or praise, and "forbearance" means refraining from enforcement, patience or leniency.  Certainly, Agee counseled patience and leniency--as well as compassion and assistance-- toward those many would have seen simply as redeemable "white trash."  John Summers, who edited Cotton Farmers for publication, characterized the tone of the work as "a kind of romantic moral outrage at what he is seeing."

Agee's comments about the impropriety of a commercial enterprise prying into the lives of this defenseless milieu makes me wonder about the substance of the disagreement between Agee and Fortune.  What exactly had Fortune proposed to do with or to the story?

Haughney's NYT report does not use the word "rural," but both versions of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men were very much about rural America. Moundville, Alabama, the place Agee and Walker documented, straddles Hale and Tuscaloosa counties.  Moundville's current population is about 1,800.  Hale County has a population of just 15,388, but it is part of the Tuscaloosa Metropolitan area--which was no doubt not metropolitan when Agee and Walker were working there.  

Another interesting aspect of Haughney's story is her discussion of the reactions of the descendants of the three sharecropper families whose lives Agee documented.  Haughney reports, quoting Mort Jordan, a former journalist and filmmaker who produced a 1980s documentary about the families, "using their names sparingly":

The original subjects of “Famous Men,” Jordan said, “were embarrassed because it showed them living in squalor.” With time, he added, “what may have been embarrassment or a quandary had turned into a source of pride with some of them.” 

Irvin Fields, whose grandfather Bud Fields was featured in the book, said he didn’t mind that the names were now being published. 

“It makes me appreciate my relatives for bearing up under those circumstances and making me appreciate what I’ve got today,” Mr. Fields said in a telephone interview.

Jordan added, "there was not much protest because 'everybody knows who they are anyway.'"

Rural-urban tensions among those fueling unrest in Turkey

The unrest in Turkey that started late last week is attracting lots of international attention, and a story over the week-end in the New York Times caught my eye for its nod to the role that tensions between rural and urban play in the current situation.  Tim Arango reports not only tensions between secular and religious, and among different classes, but also of how these divisions sometimes align with with the rural-urban divide.  The secular elite, are put off by many of the grand building projects the Erdogan administration has undertaken "on the grounds of bad taste, a view imbued with a sense of social elitism."  

For many, it has also created a sense of resentment and loss — for longtime residents, urban intellectuals and many members of the underclasses who are being pushed from their homes so that upscale housing complexes and shopping malls can be built.

Arango quotes a professor of international relations at Sabanci University, Ersin Kalaycioglu.

I was born and raised here, and there is nothing from my youth that I can connect to anymore in this city.  Istanbul is seen as a place where you earn a living, where you get rich. It is a gold rush.

Kalaycioglu further complained that the city had “been invaded by Anatolian peasants” who were “uncultured.”

Other passages from Arango's story that highlight the role of rural-urban tensions follow:

The swiftly changing physical landscape of Istanbul symbolizes the competing themes that undergird modern Turkey — Islam versus secularism, rural versus urban. 

* * * 

[Erdogan's] rule has also nurtured a pious capitalist class, whose members have moved in large numbers from rural Anatolia to cities like Istanbul, deepening class divisions.

While rural-urban tensions have featured in unrest (growing pains?) in various countries in recent years (read more here, here, here, here and here), one difference with the Turkish situation seems to be that the rural-to-urban migrants are getting rich.  In China and Thailand, this does not seem to be the case; in those countries, the newcomers to urban areas leave their rural homes just hoping to survive and perhaps put their children on a more secure economic footing, to get them access to better educational opportunities.  The migrants seem barely to survive, in part because they don't enjoy all of the privileges of established urbanites.  It is their struggle to survive that ignites the controversy, not, as in Turkey, that the newcomers are too prosperous and are seen as having too much influence.  

Have rural workers gone soft?

This story in the Chicago Tribune, about the dairy industry's need for immigration reform, suggests they have.  Here's the lede for "Immigration Bill Pins Big Hopes on Dairy Cows" reported by Richard Cowan for Reuters:

From the technology and tourism industries to the fruit growers of California, there is something for almost everyone in the sprawling immigration legislation that the U.S. Senate will start debating this month. 

But for supporters of this controversial bill who are searching for a solid bloc of votes in the Senate, there might be no better way than through a provision embedded in the law that gives dairy farmers better access to foreign labor.

Dairy farmers, which have needs for year-round labor, have typically not seen much benefit from visa programs that cater to other ag producers' needs for seasonal labor.  The immigration bill recently passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, however, would authorize three-year visas, renewable for another three years.  Some think the bill might pass simply because Republican senators from big dairy states--from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania to Idaho--are likely support it due to dairy's importance to their state and local economies.  According to an industry survey, 62% of the U.S. milk supply came from farms using immigrant labor--most of it from Mexico--as of 2009.  

And here's a somewhat provocative quote that suggests rural folks are not as hard working as they once were (at least reputed to be) and therefore cannot be relied on to provide the needed labor:

For those staying in rural areas, fewer Americans now want to work on dairy farms "with their arms past the elbow in a heifer when she's giving birth at 3 a.m.," said Craig Regelbrugge, co-chairman of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform, a farm industry group.

I am reminded of this story from a few weeks ago, which similarly pitted harder working immigrant laborers against native, local labor, which was associated with greater expectations of fair wages, breaks and such.