Poverty Initiative Participates in Youth Immersion in West Virginia
Jess Chadwick, alumna of Union Theological Seminary ('07) and a leader from the very beginning of the founding of the Poverty Initiative at UTS, currently lives in Iowa and serves as an associate pastor at First Baptist Church of Greater Des Moines. From Sunday, June 13 through Friday, June 18, Jessica led her church youth group in a mission/immersion trip to West Virginia . Having attended Alderson Broaddus College in Phillipi , WV for her undergraduate degree, Jess has had a longstanding connection to the state of West Virginia . She helped to organize, during her time as a student at Union , the Poverty Initiative January immersion trips to Central Appalachia (2006, 2007) and later the Poverty Scholar Leadership School (2009). Colleen and I were involved, alongside Jess, in all of the Poverty Initiative's trips to West Virginia, and for this reason, Jess asked us to join her and her church youth group this summer as they spent a week traveling through the state and meeting and working with religious and community leaders. On this trip, Colleen and I had our 22 month old son, Myles, to take part in the journey.
On Saturday, June 12, a group of eleven youth (7 boys and 4 girls) ranging between the ages of 12 and 17 years old, two adult lay leaders, and Jess drove from Des Moines, IA to South Bend, IN, where they stayed overnight at the church of a former associate pastor to the First Baptist Church of Greater Des Moines. They attended services Sunday morning and then traveled to West Virginia .
Leading into the trip, Jess started a series of bible studies and educational pieces developed at the Poverty Initiative, preparing her students with a framework to think about their experiences in West Virginia . She had her youth group examine "Four Theories of Poverty", an exercise we often use at P.I. Briefly, the Four Theories are as follows: 1.) poverty as accident (people are poor due to circumstances like natural disasters, occasional dips in the economy, some malfunction in an otherwise functioning society; 2.) poverty as culture (people are poor because of a set of behaviors they learn from their family/community); 3.) poverty as fate or as mandated by God and scripture (people are poor because "the poor will be with you always" or because they are sinners being punished by God; 4.) poverty as structure (people are poor because of a set of systemic relationships - economic, political, social.) Over the course of the week, the students were asked to continue to revisit these theories, consider what theory comes closest to how they think about poverty, and consider which theory each community or religious group seemed to hold as primary.
On Sunday, Colleen, Myles, and I drove from New York City down to Morgantown , WV where we met up with the Jess and her group, and continued on together to Phillipi , WV . We stayed at Alderson Broaddus College that night.
On Monday, we met briefly with World Vision's Appalachian Mission Services, which are headquartered in Phillipi. World Vision referred us to a small ministry in a tiny unincorporated town in southern Barbour County called Weaverville. There we worked with a man named Raymond who was leading the community in the construction of a multi-purpose community center that they had named the " Ark ". The center was advanced in its construction and the work was mostly focused on finishing the interior. It was being built off of the back of an old church called the Weaver Church of the Nazarene. The pastor of this small country church, who had served several decades there, had just passed away the prior week to our visit.
Weaverville hardly constituted a village. It was more of a scattering of homes tucked back in a holler. But Raymond told us the history of the community. At one point, around the turn of the last century, there were 3,000 people residing in Weaverville. They had a railroad station and a special train line constructed to access the remote location. A century ago, this holler was the prime producer of coke for Andrew Carnegie's steel manufacturing up in Pittsburgh . When eventually the accessible coal seams were exhausted, the company dismantled much of the town, and took the buildings away to new locations. Weaverville since then has been the remnants of that settlement.
Raymond put us all to work, clearing out scraps of lumber and drywall, and sweeping up the sawdust from the most recent construction work, helping to prepare for the next phase of construction. While we worked, Raymond shared his knowledgeable about the history of the community as well as the current challenges the people face here. In fact, his main concern seemed to be about the youth of the area, and this community center was being designed especially with their needs in mind - providing a place for exercise, fun, and education. His connection to World Vision was mostly tied to their ability to refer him volunteers. His community operated independently for the most part.
On Tuesday, we traveled to Charleston to meet with Larry Gibson, Keeper of the Mountain. In the morning, Larry was taking part in a press conference held on the state capitol grounds. Several area activists focused on the issue of mountain top removal gathered to announce their National Day of Action to be held in September in Washington , DC as part of the "Dirty Lie" campaign targeted on the coal industries promotion of so-called "clean coal".
The press conference took place next to a replica of the Liberty Bell in part installed on the capitol grounds by the coal industry. We paused for a moment to consider the biblical scripture cast on the bell – “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof Lev XXV X”. We took time to reflect on this iconic symbol of the democratic principles raised up in American political culture, a symbol that got its name (“Liberty Bell”) from the Abolitionist Movement. We read the full passage from Leviticus 25:10 – the passage that outlines the Year of Jubilee, where liberty is inexorably tied to access to the basic means of subsistence, namely the land, and is meant for “all inhabitants thereof.” Students had a brief opportunity to tour the controversial West Virginia State Cultural Center on the capitol grounds. The center outlines West Virginia history and culture and has come under fire for its allegedly unbalanced portrayal of coal mining (in favor of the coal operators as opposed to miners and their families.)
We traveled to Kayford Mountain, where Larry Gibson was born and raised, and where he carries on his struggle with the coal industry. His family home is nearly surrounded by mountain top removal sites, where the neighboring mountains that once towered over Kayford Mountain now have been obliterated from the face of the earth, leaving gaping craters behind. Refusing to sell his land, Larry has turned his mountain into a sort of school, offering all who come there a rare glimpse up close of the environmental devastation that mountain top removal creates. Larry is not overtly religious, although he is steeped in the Christian tradition that permeates where he lives. He works with many religious groups (for example, Christians for the Mountains), but he also is quick to point out that most religious institutions in the state receive a great deal of money from corporations like Massey Energy, a fact that often limits the potential for prophetic religious leadership on this issue. Our group spent the afternoon at Larry’s home learning about the issue and hearing about Larry’s experiences. Later we reflected on these experiences by way of a Bible study – the story of Naboth’s vineyard.
We returned to Charleston that evening and had dinner with the leaders from Direct Action Welfare Group, a statewide organization created by and run by poor welfare recipients. The Executive Director, Evelyn Dortch and her daughters, Beth and Cheyenne , who are leaders in Teen DAWG, a youth organization, talked about their work. Evelyn led in the founding of DAWG while she was trying to get through college under a state subsidized program, as a single mother. When the state program was cut, and it was no longer possible for her to continue her studies, she and several other mothers took action to restore the program. DAWG is secular, but most of its leaders are deeply influenced by their faith.
We departed that evening further south in the state to campgrounds near Fayetteville , WV . After two days of hard work and intense education, it was time for some fun. We stayed the night at a river rafting camp, and the next morning, the group (minus Myles and me) took to the rapids of the New River . Wednesday proved to be a great experience for the cohesion of the group, as the young people worked together to successfully navigate the challenging rapids. The breathtaking view of the New River Gorge Bridge was a highlight of the trip. Later in the afternoon, Pastor Amanda Gayle Reed joined us at the camp and guided us down to Welch, the county seat of McDowell County , WV .
McDowell County is in the heart of the Coal Fields, the richest store of coal in the entire state. In fact, McDowell leads the state counties in terms of coal extraction. At the same time, by most measures of poverty, it is the poorest country in the state. Poverty and wealth are tightly intertwined here. It happened that on the preceding weekend, the southern part of the state was hit with enough rain to cause severe flooding. McDowell County was badly hit, and we were arriving in the midst of FEMA investigators assessing the damage to determine whether to declare it a National Disaster area. There was plenty of work to be done for our group.
Rev. Amanda is pastor of the First United Methodist Church of Welch as well as the Court Street United Methodist Church , a primarily African American congregation. Over this past year, Pastor Amanda has led in the founding of the Isaiah Project, an organization consisting of several churches in the area, dedicated to developing their churches’ response to the poverty of their community in new ways. Amanda has only been in Welch for a couple of years. She is originally from the Charleston area. She entered into a situation where her own denomination’s local mission work had been torn apart from within due to strong ideological/theological differences. The minister who had formerly run the Methodist Mission split with a number of church members to form their own non-denominational church, taking a great deal of resources with them. He and his congregation continue to be a strong presence in the county, offering some of the most effective charities available to those in need.
The impetus for founding the Isaiah Project comes largely from the need to provide an alternative way to approach the poor. Currently there is little to no political or community organizing in the county among those most affected by poverty. The church’s responses are currently most exemplified by Amanda’s predecessor, whose ministry is openly hostile to any “empowerment” of the poor. Charity is offered only to those who agree to attend a certain number of church services. He actually requires that recipients of his services sign a contract. People are poor because they are sinners. Prosperity comes to those who go to his church. Pastor Amanda and a few other local pastors, along with several lay leaders do not agree with this approach, and intend to build a ministry based not on dependence and paternalism, but on mutually empowering work. The organization is new and their still trying to figure out what they specifically want to do.
It should be mentioned that Amanda is an alumna of the Poverty Initiative’s train-the-trainers immersion (January 2007). She was finishing her last year at Iliff School of Theology in Denver , and was seeking a placement back in her home state. She found out about our immersion and saw an opportunity to take a new look at her home. Last summer during our Leadership School , having only just recently taken the position in Welch, Amanda attended our program. She credits this experience as a major influence on the founding of the Isaiah Project.
Back to the situation in Welch after the flood, we were assigned to work on a couple of sites: the home of a retired school teacher, the woman next door to him, and then a young family further up the holler whose trailer was inundated. Due to a last minute decision the night before at the disaster relief coordinating meeting, the homes of the retired school teacher and his neighbor had been assigned to the previously mentioned minister. When we arrived with our work crew, we met with open hostility by this minister, who seemed very possessive of his “contracts” as he referred to them. He already had a group of college students working there. He showed contempt for Amanda. The youth group was exposed to a fascinating example of what one might call the politics of “doing good”. Incidentally, the retired school teacher was a member of Amanda’s congregation, with whom she was well-acquainted of this flood experience. The Red Cross shelter was located at the Presbyterian Church next door to her church, and she had been the only one able to oversee the set-up and running of the emergency shelter. Red Cross volunteers did not arrive in Welch for several days after the flood.
The majority of our group worked on the trailer up the holler. The young family who lived there was staying in the Red Cross shelter as well. We worked with Janet and her eldest son, Little Elmer (8 years old). Her two other children were with other relatives, and her husband, Elmer, was at work. On the night of the flood, the couple was asleep in the master bedroom and their three year old daughter was sleeping on some cushions on the floor. In the middle of the night, she crawled into their bed soaking wet. When Elmer stepped down on the floor, the water was above his ankle. The water would reach about a foot high inside their trailer, and they had to be rescued by boat. They had only acquired the trailer late last year, as a sort of informal settlement Elmer made with his employer. Elmer had fallen off of a truck on the job and crushed his elbow and broke his forearm in four places as a result. Rather than file for workers compensation, he agreed to receive one of his boss’s trailers as compensation. Other than their car which was totaled by the flood waters, the trailer was the only major asset this family had.
The youth, alongside Janet and Little Elmer, worked very hard throughout Thursday, clearing out nearly everything in the trailer and carrying to the side of the road for the National Guard to come and haul away. We removed the mud saturated carpet and tiles, and scrubbed the floor and base boards with bleach. Janet only could salvage a large garbage bag worth of items – pictures, keepsakes, etc. The people living in the trailer next door had given up on any clean up, and had decided to rest their hopes on a FEMA payout, providing FEMA declared a National Disaster. The family with whom we worked was committed to salvaging their home, despite the fact that their trailer was sustained even greater damage. How they could avoid the growth of hazardous mold inside their walls and below their floors was hard for the adults in our group to see. The heating ducts that run beneath the floor were jammed with mud. Nevertheless, other options for this family were not apparent. This was a day the youth will not soon forget, as they spent time getting to know a family who had lost what little they had – who nevertheless struggled to find ways to survive and provide for their children.
Exhausted from the day’s work, I assumed the youth would just want to go to bed. Over the week, we had learned about the long history of struggle for human dignity in the Mountain State . From John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry (which included former slaves and poor whites in unity) to the miners struggle to organize for more humane working and living conditions, West Virginia history tells the story of the people most affected taking leadership in changing the conditions of their suffering. There are examples of organizing across race lines, best represented in the miners’ struggle, where black, native-born white, and immigrant miners united to build a union. While staying in downtown Welch, we were a stone’s throw from the spot where Sheriff Sid Hatfield was gunned down in 1921 by Baldwin Felts detectives as retribution for his involvement at the incident in Matewan (located in neighboring Mingo County ). Sid had sided with miners and paid with his life. His martyrdom sparked the Battle of Blair Mountain, where the “Red Neck Army” demanded that their lives be valued more than a bunch of disposable tools. Anyone familiar with the movie Matewan may have some sense of this history. As it happened, we were traveling with a DVD copy of the film. Despite their fatigue, the youth group insisted on watching Matewan – and the majority of them stayed awake for the whole thing! The film dramatizes the challenge people face in organizing across racial and ethnic lines, in particular the way the poor are pitted against each other along these lines in order to prevent them from working together, and the role that religion plays in building movements seeking justice.
The next morning, our final day together, we gathered for a final reflection on the week. We revisited the Four Theories, discussing where we saw these theories being expressed. It was clear from the group’s experience, that we had encountered all four theories, sometimes aspects of multiple theories embodied in the same individual or group. Many of the youth expressed the view that the experience of the week has inspired them to reassess wealth and poverty back in Des Moines . It seems that the trip did not make poverty in Appalachian out to be something just particular to the place – something unrelated to other communities. After the morning reflection, Colleen, Myles and I parted ways with Jessica and her youth group. The week was a great success. I was continually forced to rethink my views of young people – in terms of what they’re capable of understanding and what they’re capable of doing. It was a great joy to be able to take part in this incredible journey.
The youth, with Colleen and Jess’ help, put together a blog to record their experiences.
John A. Wessel-McCoy
Project Organizer
The Poverty Initiative
at Union Theological Seminary
A New and Unsettling Force: Reigniting Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign - a Poverty Initiative original publication is 