People wait to ride a revolving swing at the Perry State Fair in New Lexington, Ohio, Friday, July 24, 2020. In the towns that speckle the Appalachian foothills of southeast Ohio, the pandemic has barely been felt. Coronavirus deaths and racial protests _ events that have defined 2020 nationwide _ are mostly just images on TV from a distant America.
For many here, it’s an increasingly foreign America that they explain with suspicion, anger and occasionally conspiracy theories. The result: At a time when the country is bitterly torn and crises are piling up faster than ever, the feeling of isolation in this corner of Ohio is more profound than ever.This story is part of the Looking For America project, produced with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
It seemed a good place to start a road trip across the country, as the most divisive election in decades is looming. These hills were then a patchwork of closed coal mines, undernourished children and houses without indoor plumbing. But applause surged through the thousands of people in the audience. They believed.Now, except for the county of Athens, where Ohio University nurtures a more liberal electorate, the region is fiercely Republican. And the idea that Washington can solve America’s problems is blasphemy.
The political ground of southeast Ohio began to shift decades ago, and the region was largely Republican by the 2012 elections. But in 2016, counties where Democrats once had sizable minorities swung hard to the right — part of a broader national wave of working-class regions that helped Trump take the White House.
Unemployment skyrocketed to highs of nearly 18 percent amid early virus shutdowns, doubling in some counties from March to April. While those rates have come down since, nearly every county in the region is still worse off than at the start of the year. Six months into the pandemic, businesses from used car lots to barbershops to organic farmers are battered.
We saw empty schools and boarded-up churches. Main Street in Shawnee, an old coal town that once boasted an opera house, a vaudeville theater, dozens of stores and plenty of taverns, is now one abandoned building after another. She shares a small subsidized condominium with the boys and her girlfriend. They were homeless for most of last year, living in a car, before a local social service agency found them the home they’ve crowded with decorations, from a poster of a stained-glass Jesus rescued from the garbage to a Winnie the Pooh snow globe.
This article is literally disgusting and infuriating. It dismisses the progress that has been made in 2020. My town had BLM protests, social protests, for the first time EVER. And quit trying to make poverty sexy. “Foraging in the woods...” Are you kidding me?
'neighbors think the pandemic is being used by Democrats to weaken President Donald Trump' Nope, zero sympathy. These people can fall off a mountain for all I care.
They need a big investing education
Another Cleatus safari. Hooray.
What the fuck would a trust fund kiddo with a cushy journalism degree and a comfortable cubicle inside columbus AP office know about life in Appalachian Ohio?
And remain part of Trump's Silent Majority for those who only read headlines.
LET'S NOT JOKE
🔥🚨🔥🚨🔥🚨🔥🚨🔥🚨🔥 MORE DEMOCRAT INSANITY 👇
I am originally from that area and if the ACA goes along with the Medicaid Expansion , it will not only be devastating, but will kill a lot of the Healthcare Jobs that so many back there rely on ! My old town is building a new Healthcare Center , it will go if the ACA goes !
You people that wrote this shit haven’t been to a small town or middle America since you had your gender reassignment surgery upon graduating Cornell school of journalism.
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