This is not a normal post that you’ll see, and my goal is to not send one out like it very often at all.

That being said…

I’m working to expand No Elegy Needed by bringing on a paid freelance contributor (or multiple depending on budget) to extend the scope of what is covered, and who is writing it.

To do that, I am hoping some of you will consider upgrading your subscription to one of the very modest paid subscriber tiers.

Subscribe now

• Monthly plan price: $5 a month

• Annual plan price: $50 annually (heavily discounted from monthly)

• Founding plan price: $500 (you can choose to have it be less, as long as its more than annual)1

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I will keep you all periodically updated with the status of new contributors and other endeavors we plan to do with No Elegy.

No Elegy Needed will always remain free for all to read regardless. However, I love the idea of building this into a sustainable commentary outlet that focuses on Appalachia. To my knowledge, very few (if any, outside of this one) left-wing commentary publications exist focusing exclusively on Appalachia, and I want this to be the go-to source for that.

Solidarity forever,

Chuck

P.S. - Here is a pic of Big Dog begging for Moose Tracks ice cream

The reasons for this vary, but often are about perception. Appalachian and southern accents are often associated with being “dumb” or uneducated” in pop culture, and there is a belief that people who have these accents aren’t taken seriously in professional settings.1 This made me incredibly sad, so I set out to my small part in de-stigmatizing the accent.

A brief recap

Last year, I took on the fairly ambitious task of collecting samples of Appalachian accents. I had people send a brief voice recording of them reciting a short prompt:

This prompt was very deliberately written to get samples of how someone says both “Appalachia” and “Appalachian.”

To my surprise, we received 1,534 submissions from 408 of the 423 counties in the Appalachian Regional Commission’s map.

I wrote a bit about it, and included links to the full 4+ hour compilation of accents here.

I’ve since been left with the question of what to do with all this wonderful “data” Luckily, that question was resolved recently.

Abby Walker, the Head of Language Sciences at Virginia Tech, reached out about collaborating on accents. More specifically, putting her team of linguists to work to analyze our accent samples and analyze geographic breakdowns of pronunciation — tackling a fascinating angle to the “latch-uh” vs. “lay-shuh” debate.

I, of course, said abso-fucking-lutely.

Latch-uh & Lay-shuh: diving into the data

The cool thing about working with academics on this project — who are truly the experts in this field — is that they provide technical specificity to this project that makes it much more interesting.

On the pronunciation

Latch or Lay: geographic distribution

I know people have STRONG, often violently STRONG, opinions about how to pronounce Appalachia. For my latch-heads out there, the data will probably make you feel very validated.

Below is a county-by-county breakdown of latch vs. lay based on the accents we received from people. Based on VT’s analysis:

• 87.1% of speakers said LATCH

• 9.2% of speakers said LAY

Its very clear, based on this map, that the lay pronunciations are more concentrated in the northern part of Appalachia (Western + Central Pennsylvania, southwest New York, Southeast Ohio) and somewhat more concentrated in the southern parts (Northern Alabama, North Georgia).

The VT team put together an ArcGIS storymap of all of this data, and even catalogues the accents by county, showing the numerical breakdown of each.

Yes, I know about the Apalachee

Before anyone starts writing out their “well, ACTUALLY” comment about how there is a correct pronunciation of Appalachia is latch because the Apalachee indigenous people.

Yes, I know the history. I think its obviously valid, and worth bringing up in the broader disussion of accents and dialect and pronunciation.2

I plan on dedicating an entire post to the Apalachee. I spent a day at Mission San Luis in Tallahassee about a year ago learning a lot about them and their history. The history of their “ball game” in particular was wild and fascinating.3

Latch or Lay: Isoline perception of latch vs. lay

Public perception of what is and isn’t Appalachia is a source of much debate. I should know, I’ve existed on the internet as an entity arguing about Appalachia for the better part of 6 years, and have had to endlessly entertain the “THIS ISN’T WHAT I - the most important person in the universe and an enlightened intellectual - THINK APPALACHIA IS” refrain on more occasions than I can count.

These lines on the above image are used to visualize the public’s perception of what is and isn’t considered part of Appalachia: “the innermost isoline represents 80% agreement between study participants about what counts as Appalachia, while the outermost line represents 10% agreement.”

The Speech Lab team overlaid these lines onto the geographic county-by-county breakdown, and the takeaway is this: the areas that the majority of people consider to be Appalachia are ones that predominantly use the “latch” pronunciation.

Latch is becoming more dominant with younger generations

The research team estimated the age of people who sent in their accents and noticed a trend among younger people using the “latch” pronunciation more so than older people.

I will get into a lot more about why we’re seeing a change in pronunciation in general in Part 2, as well as alternative pronunciations and variants. PLUS, how some people pronounce the mountain range one way, and the region a different way!

Make sure you’re subscribed so you can get part 2!

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It had been a minute since I’d engaged in the masochistic practice of experiencing local government in action, in person, but it always serves as a reminder to me that Parks & Recreation was closer to a documentary than it was a work of fiction.

And don’t get me wrong, I jest but I genuinely like this stuff a lot and local government is probably the most important in how it affects our daily lives. But I’m also reminded of its…challenges.1

Shoehorning a data center into a movie studio

I was attending the meeting because I was interested in local organizing efforts around a proposed data center. A very atypical 10,000 square foot data center that was set to be situated in a proposed music and film production studio housed inside of an old county jail (thus, why the county was involved).

In addition to a data center being located right smack in the downtown of Chattanooga, another concern I had with it was the disparaging remarks from the developers about unions (see the video below).

I won’t get into all the nitty-gritty details about the proposed project itself and all the issues surrounding it, because I want to talk about what this means more broadly.

Why in the absolute fuck, you might ask, are they putting a data center inside a movie studio?

Well, their stated reason is to “support the advanced technical requirements of the [studio].”

To support the advanced technical requirements of the campus, Urban Story Ventures worked alongside Golden Acquisitions and STEM, an Oracle partner specializing in sovereign, quantum-ready data storage, processing, and AI infrastructure, and Golden Financial for the deployment of advanced technology capabilities in Chattanooga.

(Source)

I can’t help but point out the eye-roll

STEM’s Chief Technology Advisor and Oracle’s Senior Director of Generative AI, Sanjay Basu, who visited the site says, “By deploying a quantum-safe network with EPB, we are positioning the region as a national model for secure, next-generation digital communications. By combining EPB’s fiber infrastructure with STEM’s AI and Oracle’s cloud and security expertise, we are not talking about future theory. We are delivering a practical, production-grade quantum key distribution network that enterprises and public institutions can trust as the foundation for the next era of secure digital infrastructure.”

(Source)

My speculation, which I want to be clear is just speculation and I cannot yet substantiate this with any hard facts, is this is a two-fold equation:

1. They’re hedging their bets and allowing themselves a soft landing pad to convert the entire operation into a data center if the movie studio doesn’t work out.

2. Oracle is helping with the financing, and in turn is afforded a much easier public approval process for a data center than typical due to it being housed in a economic development engine rather than on somebody’s farmland.

Georgia movie studio is converting to a data center

The point on 1) about hedging bets isn’t exactly unfounded. Athena Studios in Athens, Georgia has seen a drop in movie production demand, and is now considering converting its space into a data center. The studio’s 185,000 square feet of space is, as the owner puts it, well-suited for data center operations. Obviously the owner has an incentive to offload the space into a more profitable venture, but it is telling that this is not just a one-off thing for Hamilton County.

This situation emerged due to a statewide decline in film production for Georgia - something I was honestly not aware was happening.

Film production spend in Georgia has dropped significantly. According to the Georgia Film Office, 245 film and television productions spent $2.3 billion as of June 2025, down by nearly half from the same period in 2022.

(Source: Data Center Dynamics)

Important concessions

When I say I was interested in the organizing work happening, I meant it. Its difficult to see progress when you aren’t deeply involved in it or dialed-in closely to negotiations on things as community-specific as this. I got connected with the folks at Hamilton County 4 Democracy on Instagram, and met up with one of their lead people, Michaela, at the commission meeting.

I learned that they had been working with members of the commission to secure some important safeguards to this project, including making sure that the Oracle infrastructure could not be more than 12,000 square feet in the building. Given the political make-up of the commission, this was a massive win.

My takeaway

I want to be clear: I actually think a movie/music recording studio in Chattanooga could be a good thing.2 Midsize cities like Chattanooga deserve to have cultural exports that the rest of the world can see and enjoy, and one of the best ways to do that is through digital arts and entertainment. Yes, the downtown jailhouse studios could have been utilized for much better things, no doubt. All these things can be true.

It just seems a bit sketchy to be throwing a data center into a project where it appears to be wholly unrelated.

To summarize: do I think this is an absolute disaster that will cause havoc on our great Scenic City? No, I doubt it. But I am skeptical that the scope of this data center will only be to serve the needs of the studio. Companies like Oracle should ALWAYS be viewed with skepticism and with a critical eye.

Weekly Listen

We’re bringing back the weekly listen! This week, I recommend checking out native Appalachian Kashus Culpepper.

*No Elegy Needed is an expression of the author’s opinions and observations, and should not be interpreted as a representation of journalism or of original reporting.

An NYC art exhibit about Appalachia, told from the perspective of a visitor

I received an email a few weeks ago from an artist and art historian named Ali Printz calling attention to an art exhibit in New York City about Appalachia. Ali is originally from West Virginia, and has dedicated her career to elevating Appalachian art and culture in museums and institutions. Her email described in detail how the exhibit repeated this unfortunate pattern of non-Appalachians telling Appalachian stories with their own spin on it. Here is some of how she framed it:

There is currently an exhibition at the Queens Museum in NYC called "The Great Society" that was mounted by a Swedish artist named Fia Backstrom. She went into the community of Buffalo Creek, West Virginia as an outsider and created a body of work around her own experience that is filled with stereotypes and cultural comparisons that elevate her own privileged background. I was shocked at the imagery and documentary footage that Backstrom featured and why she chose to focus on Buffalo Creek as a European outsider.

Ali also spoke about the power dynamics this created, among other things.

Needless to say, I read this and was interested in learning more. My full interview with Ali can be found here, but I wanted to expand on some thoughts below. While I wasn’t able to make it to the Queens Museum when I was in NYC earlier this month, I was able to see much of the exhibit through images that Ali shared with me from her and the GRIT Collective’s visit.

Playing the hits: poverty, exploitation, and stereotypes

It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in Appalachian Studies1 to know that there has been a history of extractive exploitation and poverty in Appalachia. This story has been told time and time again throughout our history. Yet, the Great Society chose to focus exclusively on this.

The artist is a native of Sweden who is an art professor and curently lives in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn. A New York Times article about the exhibit asks her why she chose this subject, and the answer is…well…not shocking if you’re from here I guess.

What sparked the idea for this portfolio of artworks?

After the 2016 election, the news was filled with articles about people, including those who lived in West Virginia, who were called everything from “baskets of deplorables” to “trash.” I wanted to meet people who were the target of this stereotyping to understand it firsthand.

Nice.

If you’re trying to avoid stereotypes about West Virginians, it’s usually best to rely on nuance rather than broad generalizations. In that vein, I’d recommend not immediately associating West Virginians with Hilary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comments.2

The exhibit doesn’t feature any faces of the people of Buffalo Creek. The above referenced article about the exhibit is quite literally titled “An artist explores community, without the people.” The artist’s entire calling card is that she does not photograph people. There is, of course, artistic value in doing this depending on the context. But telling a story about Appalachia, especially one where you focus almost exclusively on the utter despair and sorrow, necessitates a perspective of people who have lived it — not those perspectives curated by an observer.

That’s not to dismiss the very real tragedies that have occurred at Buffalo Creek and other parts of Appalachian coal country, and lord knows I’ve stood on my soapbox for many years hurling every expletive in the book at the likes of Don Blankenship and others, but this story is not the only story. And it also the story that has been told over and over again. AND it is likely the only story most people know about coal country.

I think this exhibit treats the people of Buffalo Creek as subjects to be pitied and felt bad for beause they are downtrodden. While the stories of real tragedy and trauma are important to tell, they are not and cannot be the only stories about Appalachia. Yet, it often seems that those are the only stories people with large platforms are willing to tell.

As the above image suggests, the artist’s reference to Close Encounters of the Third Kind likens the people here to an “alien” or “unfamilar” entity…kind of a strange thing to say when you’re trying to give a nuanced, sympathetic ear to a people.

My takeaway

I encourage you to listen to my interview with Ali, because her perspective is infinitly more detailed and valuable. One thing I will say is that I appreciate an earnest attempt at trying to understand the complexity of a place like Appalachia — particularly coal country — but it doesn’t sit well with me when other people try and tell that story primarily from their own perspective.

That’s not to say someone who isn’t from Appalachia cannot use their platform and talents to help tell the story. There can, and their has been. And I’m certainly not the gatekeeper of what is/isn’t acceptable when it comes to this.

When it comes to evaluating storytelling about Appalachia from someone outside the region I try to rely on two things: 1) do I feel it is a fair, accurate, and helpful representation, and 2) what has the reaction been by others from the region, especially those personally connected?

When I think about this particular exhibit, I am much more inclined to rely on the perspective of Appalachian artists — especially ones who went to view it in person. GRIT shared this about the exhibit on Instagram:

We write in response to the exhibition The Great Society at the Queens Museum.

Artist Fia Backström approaches West Virginia as a site of research rather than a living community. Her methodology reproduces the same extractive gaze that has historically defined relationships between outsiders and Appalachia — mining stories, aesthetics, and trauma for cultural capital.
.
This exhibition is not our story told by us.
.
It is a story about us, told by an outside artist, and framed by an outside institution.
.
Representation carries power. When museums present work through documentary forms, audiences understand it as truth. But without collaboration, accountability, or regional authorship, this authority reinforces stereotypes rather than dismantling them.
.
The exhibition focuses almost exclusively on trauma and despair, while failing to acknowledge the strength, complexity, pride, and humanity of our communities.
.
Appalachia is not an abstract concept.
.
It is our home.
.
Cultural institutions have a responsibility to engage communities with care, humility, and
equity.
.
These places are not sites for extraction. They are living, evolving cultures.
.
We call for accountability.
We call for dialogue.
We call for structural change

This art project uses the prestigious platform of the Queens Museum to tell their version of a story about our region that is too often told by those who never experienced the environmental degradation, disaster capitalism, and chronic poverty firsthand. Making a project like this faceless and with only a curated perspective of the people who experienced it renders it unable to accomplish what it set out to do: tell the story of extraction in Appalachia.

Giving Appalachians a platform like this to tell their story through their own unique artistic expression would certainly do the museum’s audience more justice, in my opinion.

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If that’s the case for you, then you’ve also dealt with condescending “enlightened liberal/centrist” outsiders who — after anything detrimental happens to that state, no matter how big or small — confidently proclaim they1 “got what they voted for.”

60 Minutes aired a segment on last Sunday about an ongoing water crisis in Southern West Virginia - primarily McDowell County.2 McDowell is one of the poorest counties in the country, the birthplace of the food stamp program, and a community in crisis in the heart of coal country.

The water has been contaminated for DECADES

There are some political observers who were born yesterday and cannot comprehend the concept of places like Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia ever electing someone with a big, fat, girthy D next to their name statewide, but those times did in fact exist - and not that long ago!

Political history side-quest

West Virginia, as the above image will show, was bluer than hell for a LONG time. But don’t get too far ahead of your skiis, that doesn’t mean they were all that left wing.

While Sen. Robert Byrd (aka “Big Daddy” aka “I use to hold rank in the Ku Klux Klan”) was good at getting lots of money directed back to the state, he wasn’t exactly spouting Marxist-Leninist revolutionary screeds and seizing the means of production from the bourgeoisie capital owners.

So to speak…

I remember in early 2012, I was serving as president of the Shepherd University Young Democrats. I had been in the role since I transferred from WVU in 2010, and I was not very good at it. The crowning achievements were two debates with the Young Republicans, and attending the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert rally in D.C. We did, however, have some banger parties in my dorm/suite.

Anyway, the democratic primary for governor was well underway in West Virginia at this point, and I had a preferred candidate: Jeff Kessler.3 Kessler had travelled to Mingo County, WV and took pictures of peoples dirty, orange tapwater that had been contaminated by coal slurry run-off (he quite literally showed me the pictures on his phone). My sister was living in Mingo County at the time and could attest to the massive water problems, so this issue was very personal to me.

That was 2012. 14 years ago. An era of Democratic Party dominance in West Virginia.

But this crisis goes back even further, even before the 2000s. One of the reasons for this is pretty simple: coal companies. Coal has ruled West Virginia and its politicians for basically the past century. While they aren’t the sole source of water quality issues in southern West Virginia, they’re a chief culprit.

I’ll spare you all the environmental science details, but long story short, things like coal slurry have been contaminating the groundwater in these places. It had gone mostly unregulated (or poorly enforced) for many decades, leading to significant water problems including orange muck-looking liquid that came out of peoples taps.

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Democrats didn’t fix the problem, and some contributed to it

Democrats technically held the reigns of power for many years, but you know who really held power in the state? Big. mother. fucking. coal.

It’s a running bit and common stereotype to say West Virginia is synonymous with coal. But the fun thing about stereotypes is there is always at least a kernel of truth to them. While most of the time that kernel is really tiny (you see one toothless man with no shoes chugging a 2-liter Mountain Dew in an Earnhardt jacket and suddenly he’s the mascot of the Appalachian region), sometimes those kernels are quite large. Coal is one of those kernels…or at least it was until very recently.

Coal’s stranglehold over the state’s politics is significant, and doing anything that would be perceived as “going against” the interests of the industry would have been political suicide.

Being ride-or-die for big coal was a bipartisan issue for many years. As the above article references, former congressman Nick Rahall (a democrat) was on the record poo-pooing suggestions that coal combustion wastes were harmful way back in 2009. And anyone who knows anything about Joe Manchin knows his decades-long political track record has been very coal-protectionist.

I provide all this background to say: the water contamination problems and crisis have been ongoing long before Republicans swept local, state, and federal offices permanently. So to suggest that if people in Southern West Virginia simply voted Democrat, their water problems would be solved is to deny history.

Clean drinking water is a human right

I don’t care what someone’s personal politics are, and I don’t care how despicable a human being they might be, it will not change the fact that I believe you deserve to have things like healthcare, shelter, and clean drinking water.

Meeting peoples basic needs is the primary function of government, and West Virginia has long failed the people of Southern West Virginia.

When I see self-described “liberals” and “centrists” and “never Trumpers” say things like “WHO DID THEY VOTE FOR?” “FAFO” “THIS IS WHAT YOU VOTED FOR”, it makes me question what values and convictions those people actually hold.

If you think clean drinking water should be means tested and ideologically gatekept, you can’t claim any moral high ground whatsoever.

The GOP obsession with trans people continues

A time-honored tactic in the Republican party is to use children as political scapegoats to emotionally manipulate voters and provide cover for bigoted legislation.

West Virginia Senate Bill 630 claims to want to protect minors from “exposure to indecent displays of a sexually explicit nature.” As you may have guessed, the bill does something entirely different.

It was introduced by Sen. Mike Azinger, a failed Ohio politician who had to move to West Virginia to get elected (you’ll never guess where he was on January 6th).

It’s time for a recurring segment!

I’ve read the mind-numbing and antiquated language of the bill and broken it down for you, so you don’t have to! You’re welcome.12

What this bill claims to be about

At its core, this bill is LARPing as a “drag show ban” bill. In reality, it bans some drag performances. However, the nefarious part is how it uses the terms “transgender” and “transvestite.”

As you can see in the text, the bill is claiming to protect children from being exposed to certain “prohibited displays” and includes “transvestite and/or transgender exposure, performance, or display to any minor” in how it defines this prohibition.

Bill wants transgender and transvestite to be considered obscene and/or sexually explicit

The bill neglects to clearly define “exposure” and “performance” and instead leaves it up to the reader (or a judge) to infer what they mean. This creates an opportunity for a very broad interpretation of what these words mean:

• Someone identifying as transgender or presenting as gender non-conforming performing a comedy show where someone under the age of 18 is present

• Someone identifying as transgender or presenting as gender non-conforming walking down a public sidewalk where someone under the age of 18 can see them3

Defenders of this bill would say, “It’s obvious this is intended for things like nudity, sexually explicit in nature, etc.,” or “it’s just a ban on drag shows!” but the bill’s muddied language and sloppy composition are anything but explicit about that. And make no mistake, this is by design.

Legally recognizing transgender and gender non-conforming people as inherently obscene and inappropriate for children

The bill intentionally singles out the terms “transvestite” and “transgender” and implies they are obscene or sexually explicit. This is also by design. They want to make trans and gender non-conforming people pariahs of society, and this is an attempt to legally recognize them as inherently obscene and inappropriate for children. It’s disgusting.

Proponents of this bill would try to defend it by saying, “we’re just trying to protect kids from being exposed to nudity/adult performances, etc.”

If this is the case, ask yourself this: why would you need to specify “transgender” or “transvestite”???? Because obscenity laws don’t inherently apply to only cisgender people. Trans people aren’t some magical creature that normal laws governing human beings don’t apply to. Singling out transgender and transvestite people in this bill is designed to criminalize their very existence by classifying them as obscene and sexually explicit. There is no other interpretation. Otherwise, there is literally no need to even have this bill.

Does this mean that, if the bill is passed, they’ll start rounding up trans and gender non-conforming people on the streets? No, that would be extremely unlikely (and I would hope a federal court would step in if that were the case), but—like many bigoted laws—it creates a chilling effect and is designed to modify existing behavior. It is designed to make trans and gender non-conforming people feel uncomfortable, like outsiders, like they don’t belong in West Virginia. It is designed to make them think twice about participating in society for fear of being on the wrong side of the law. That is the purpose of this bill.

Some may argue I’m being an alarmist and that this is an extreme interpretation of this bill’s language. I would hope that you are correct, but if we’ve learned anything over the past year, it’s that we can’t leave things up to chance. Republican politicians will not hesitate to impose their worldview on people and use the arms of the government to do so. This bill, if it became law, would give them more legal authority to terrorize trans and gender non-conforming people.

If you live in West Virginia, I would encourage you to sound the alarm on this to your local lawmaker. Most of them are Republicans, but it doesn’t hurt to try. I would recommend framing your opposition as opening the door to unintended consequences and restricting the freedoms of West Virginians.4

The regular plugs:

• You can become a paid subscriber to No Elegy Needed if you like what I do and want to support my work (just upgrade your subscription at the button below)

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No Elegy Needed is an opinion column Substack. All views expressed are solely the opinions of the author and in no way are to be interpreted as anything besides that. I am not a journalist, I am not a reporter, nor do I claim to be one. This is an expression of opinion for entertainment purposes only.

Well, I would hope so. Based on my experience working in renewable energy development, the vast majority of people would absolutely want that say. And they should! In fact, they often do! However, West Virginia Republicans don’t seem to think so —1 or in the very least, do not care. Earlier this year, they passed a bill stripping away virtually all local authority to regulate data center development. That’s not hyperbole.

Anti-data center: the biggest political slam dunk in 2026

Before I get into what lawmakers in West Virginia did, I want to provide some background about why data center development is so controversial and unpopular.

• They’ve been found to jack up your power bill. When electricity demand outpaces supply, prices go up. Data centers demand a fuck-ton2 of electricity. In fact, they are expected to consume anywhere from 6.7% to 12% of total U.S. electricity by 2028

• The economic benefits are typically not that great, or exaggerated. Data centers tend to not be a massive employment boon, and often only create a handful of new jobs despite their size and massive needs.

• They’re massive, and take up a ton of land. The sheer size alone of some of these data centers — gobbling up hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of acres of land — disrupts the natural habitat and is typically a massive eyesore.

• Environmental and health impacts. As we’ve seen with the xAi data center in Memphis’s Boxtown neighborhood, air quality conditions and other quality of life issues like water consumption and emissions are a significant concern.

I read it so you don’t have to

Consider this a new segment of No Elegy Needed: I read it, so you don’t have to!

Since I have a law degree and work in policy, I’ve distilled some important information about the bill for you here so you don’t have to read it.

What local power they specifically eliminated

1. The ability of local governments to pass any new rule/law/regulation/etc. that “limit, in any way, the creation of, and acquisition, construction, equipping, development, expansion, and operation of any certified microgrid district or certified high impact data center project”3

2. Ability to impose or enforce local laws about the creation or regulation of a microgrid district (which could include more than just the data center itself)

3. Disregards existing local powers and says microgrid districts and data centers may not be subject to:

   1. Local/county zoning, horticultural, noise, viewshed, lighting, development, or land use ordinances, restrictions, limitations, or approvals.

   2. Local/county building permitting, inspection, or code enforcement

   3. Local/county licensing requirements

   4. THE LEGAL JURISDICTION OF THE COUNTY OR MUNICIPALITY

   5. Any state law that requires consent of a local/county government

Well, at least the local community will reap the glorious benefit of taxes generated by the data center. . .right? . . . RIGHT????

WRONG. The new law robs the community of the majority of the tax revenue from data centers — one of the few good things that comes from them. Here is the breakdown:

Rationale

• CHINA! The legislature invokes “China” nine times in the legislative text as a rationale to build more data centers, claiming they will be the global leader of data centers. It’s a shame the same sense of urgency over “China beating us” isn’t applied to high-speed rail.

• West Virginia is the best Virginia. The text claims West Virginia is “strategically positioned” as the best location for data centers, while subsequently highlighting the “national security threat” of so many data centers being in….checks notes….Loudon County, Virginia4

WVGOP loves BIG government, and big data center

Back in July, Governor Pat Morrissey signed HB 2014 into law. This bill stripped local governments and regulators of the ability to regulate data centers by classifying them as “microgrids” and creating the “Microgrid Development Program.”

“In order for West Virginia to reach its potential, we must continue to focus on economic development and utilizing our many natural resources,” Morrisey said. “The Power Generation and Consumption Act will make West Virginia the most attractive state in the country for data centers and help America better compete with China in the technology arms race of the future.”

(Big Pat quoted in an article by West Virginia Watch)

The vote

In fairness, I want to acknowledge that a few Republicans joined Democrats in voting against this terrible bill in the house. Those delegates are:

• Del. Chris Anders (R-Berkeley)

• Del. Jordan Bridges (R-Logan)

• Del. Joe Funkhouser (R-Jefferson)

• Del. Marty Gearheart (R-Mercer)5

• Del. Rolland Jennings (R-Preston)

• Del. Laura Kimble (R-Harrison)

• Del. George Street (R-Preston)

And one in the senate, Sen. Rupie Phillips (R-Logan).

Shame on the two Democrats who voted for the bill in the Senate, Sen. Joey Garcia and Sen. Mike Woelfel.

Side quest: my old Physics teacher who voted for this bill

Even my old high school Physics teacher, Dave Foggin, voted to strip your rights away from you if you live in West Virginia.67

Foggin is perhaps best known for being suspended in 2014 after posting this deeply weird Facebook post. He was a decade too early on this, to be frank. Had he posted this in 2024, he could have claimed the woke mob tried to take him down and use it to launch a semi-successful podcast.

Or, perhaps, he is known for introducing a bill that would authorize corporal punishment in public schools earlier this year. In an email exchange below (that was posted publicly on Facebook — still the local gossip honey hole), Foggin claimed “teachers [were] being abused by out of control children…mostly in elementary schools.”

He is apparently planning to run for Wood County Commission next year, which is ironic considering he voted to limit the power that he will have if he wins that race.

Residents don’t want these. Politicians should run on opposing them

Caity Coyne wrote a very good article back in May about Tucker County residents, and their discontent with a proposed data center. I strongly recommend reading it.

Residents in Mingo County filed a federal lawsuit against TransGas Development Systems (and other named defendants) against a plan to build “an ammonia plant, two natural gas power plants, and a data center complex in their communities.”8

If residents in one of the most Republican-voting towns in the state, and arguably the country, are pissed about this, it should tell you something. The opposition isn’t unique to West Virginia, it is happening all across the country.

A politician wanting an easy slam dunk would run on opposing these monstrosities…just saying.

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No Elegy Needed is an opinion column Substack. All views expressed are solely the opinions of the author and in no way are to be interpreted as anything besides that. I am not a journalist, I am not a reporter, nor do I claim to be one. This is an expression of opinion for entertainment purposes only.

Lee Beaman has been a known quantity around Tennessee, and especially Nashville, for decades. He has rarely met a republican candidate or conservative cause that he wasn’t willing to open his checkbook for.

The extremely dogged veteran reporter, Sam Stockard, pulled together a sampling of Beaman’s state-level donations for the Tennessee Lookout back in 2022. Again, these are massive amounts of money for small snippets in time, so you can imagine the type of coin this guy is shelling out over his lifetime to financially support republicans.

Beaman also likes to use his wealth to torpedo any semblance of progress in Nashville, including two major transit initiatives (I was a key part of the 2018 transit campaign that failed miserably), and a 2009 effort to pass an English only amendment to Nashville’s charter.

He is one of the first phone calls a republican political hopeful in Tennessee makes, and that financial gravitas has seen quite the ROI recently.

What the f*ck is the TVA? It’s where Roosevelt let us all work for an honest day’s pay

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a controversial entity, and is currently the subject of potential privatization talks. Since many of y’all probably aren’t familiar, I drew up a handsome little bulleted list below with some info :)

Some facts about the TVA, because I like New Deal stuff

For people who aren’t public utility ball-knowers, here are some fast facts about the TVA:

• It is the largest public utility in the country.

• Part of FDR’s New Deal created by Congress in 1933. It had several goals, including:

  • Harnessing the power of the Tennessee River to bring electricity to the Tennessee Valley

  • Control catastrophic flooding

  • Provide desperately needed jobs for the region

• Today, it provides electricity to about 10 million people (including ya boi)

• Although it is owned by the federal government, it receives no taxpayer funding and operates on a self-funded model

• Their CEO made $5.7 million this year, making him the highest paid federal employee

• The legendary Jason Isbell made a song about it called “TVA” and it is a fucking banger

The TVA isn’t without flaws2, but it keeps our utility bills relatively stable and is not in the business of paying dividends to shareholders. I like the TVA. Call me TVA-pilled, call me a TVA-stan, call me whatever the hell you want, but I want it to stay public.

John F*cking Rich

And fuck John Rich for planting the goddamn bug in Donald Trump’s ear about privatizing it.

Beaman nominated to TVA Board

Back in July, Trump nominated Beaman to the TVA’s board. The TVA board itself is pretty wild, and holds a tremendous amount of power over the utility’s operations.

ELI5: The TVA Board

Here is your “explain like I’m five years old” rundown of the TVA Board of Directors

• Composed of nine members who are nominated by POTUS and confirmed by the Senate. 7 of 9 must be residents of TVA’s service area.

• The board is tasked with establishing the “broad strategies, goals, objectives, long-range plans, and policies of the TVA”. This means they decide things like the power generation portfolio (what % of their portfolio is renewable vs. coal, etc.) And most importantly, they set the wholesale power rates.

• Currently, six seats on the board are vacant — meaning they lack a quorum and cannot make major decisions like rate hikes.

For the curious, here are their bylaws.

Bad News Beaman

As you can see, the TVA Board has a tremendous amount of power, 11.1% of which could soon be in Lee Beaman’s hands.

Beaman has absolutely zero experience in public utilities, or the energy sector, whatsoever.

In a March 2025 POWER magazine op-ed, the senators claimed TVA needed “visionary industrial leaders” with “serious energy expertise.” Yet both have lined up behind Beaman, a nominee with little apparent background in energy, utilities, or infrastructure.

(Source: Energy & Policy Institute)

What he does have are connections to more republicans and other wealthy conservative donors than most other people in the entire country.

• It also probably helps that he owns a Capitol Hill row home where many Republican congressmen reside

About the only thing even halfway decent from his most recent Senate testimony is that he views nuclear power as valuable, and “the future of power in the United States and probably around the world.”3

Beaman has technically stated that he thinks TVA should remain public, but you cannot take him at his word when we’re talking about Donald Trump. Trump has the power to stack the board with loyalists, given the number of vacancies, and we already know how easy it is for him to exert his will over anyone in the greater GOP orbit.

Aside from very likely being a dyed-in-the-wool Trump loyalist, Beaman also has….shall we say….potential character flaws.

Extremely disturbing divorce filings from ex-wife

When Beaman’s divorce proceedings became public in 2018, it was a local spectacle unto itself.

Rather than put my own spin on the details, I’ll share a blurb from the venerable Stephen Elliott’s reporting for the Nashville Scene at the time.

In her trial brief, Beaman’s fourth wife Kelley alleges that Lee Beaman made her watch videos of him having sex with a prostitute — what he called “training videos.” On more than one occasion, Kelley Beaman alleges, her husband persuaded her to have joint sexual encounters with prostitutes. Kelley Beaman says that

It gets worse….

Lee Beaman was so addicted to pornography that he would watch it on his iPad while sitting in the same room as his family, including his minor son.

Beaman appears to be a self-absorbed man obsessed with his own wealth and power, including the power he exercised over his then-wife.

She admits to an affair of her own toward the end of the marriage, though she suggests his reaction to learning of her infidelity is further proof of his “degradation, control, manipulation and abuse.” According to his wife, Beaman made her confess to the affair on conference calls with several of their friends and associates and used knowledge of the affair to force her to do things he wanted her to do.

These revelations temporarily tarnished his public image when they came out in 2018, but Beaman soon recovered. It clearly hasn’t prevented him from ascending to influential levers of power.

I am pessimistic that the senate will vote his nomination down, and I worry greatly about the future of TVA considering it will be stacked with loyalists to our fascist authoritarian president. Only time will tell, I suppose.

Thank you for reading.

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No Elegy Needed is an opinion column Substack. All views expressed are solely the opinions of the author and in no way are to be interpreted as anything besides that. I am not a journalist, I am not a reporter, nor do I claim to be one. This is an expression of opinion for entertainment purposes only.

The nation’s eyes will be on Middle Tennessee this Tuesday as one of the most consequential elections of the year is decided. A special election that should, on paper, be an easy win for Republicans has quickly become competitive.

Some background on how we got here!

TNGOP supermajority drew this district to be a slam dunk for them. It was NEVER supposed to be competitive.

Real Tennessee politics ball-knowers will recall Nashville used to be represented by a Democrat as recently as 2022, but the TNGOP supermajority redrew the congressional district maps in 2022.

The result was this:

• Nashville, which was entirely included in District 5, was split across three districts: 5, 7, and 6.

• TN-05 immediately shifted +15 in favor of Republicans, from a D+7 to a GOP +8, thereby eliminating a Democrat-held seat

• TN-07 became a GOP +10 district, and TN-06 became a GOP +16 district

The TNGOP was successful in one of their favorite pastimes, picking their voters (second only to passing bigoted legislation that deprives people of rights and basic human dignities).

Mark “mysterious business deal in Guyana” Green resigns, triggering a special election.

TN-07 was represented by former state senator Mark Green from 2019 until July 2025. Mark Green apparently decided he wanted more green when he announced he would be resigning after voting for the Big Bullshit Bill earlier this year. Mark apparently had an affair with a younger woman and was pitching lobbyists on oil investment opportunities in South America.

From what I can tell, he rage-quit the U.S. House and has quite literally fucked off to Guyana.

This, of course, triggered a special election in the district in a year when Republicans aren’t exactly the most popular across the country. Turns out, turbo-fucking the economy by way of insane across-the-board tariffs, authoritarian mobilizations of the military, and throwing all your chips into the “employing masked agents of the state to rip families apart” bucket isn’t widely popular politics. Go figure.

I won’t get into what happened in the Democratic primary, because that isn’t pertinent currently, but Rep. Aftyn Behn—a state legislator from Nashville—emerged victorious.

I was extremely excited about this result. I had briefly worked with Aftyn while she was a campaign director at RuralOrganizing.org and knew her to be an incredibly talented organizer with strong progressive bonafides. Her even making this race competitive is a testament to the FACT that you don’t have to be a corporatist democrat and “centrist” to run successfully in tough districts.

The race is currently in a dead heat. Aftyn Behn is polling within the margin of error of her corporate stooge opponent, and the GOP is SCARED.

They sent JD Vance to Fort Campbell to campaign for the GOP nominee, and Donald Trump’s campaign arm desperately scrambled to push out GOTV text messages. They clearly see this as a tight race and are worried about the message it would send if a Democrat won in a district Trump won easily.1

So, let’s get into what the right is trying to do to her.

The smear campaign against Rep. Aftyn Behn

The GOP is pushing a 2019 video of Aftyn Behn2 being dragged out of Governor Bill Lee’s office by law enforcement. In the video she can be heard screaming. They’re presenting this, devoid of context of course, to try to smear Aftyn as a radical leftist who is “hysterical.”3

The video actually shows how much of a fighter Aftyn Behn really is, though, because she put her body on the line to support the victims of sexual violence.

Let’s discuss the context that Republicans conveniently decided to avoid!

Aftyn went after a credibly accused predator in the legislature, and the TNGOP protected him.

Rep. David Byrd represented a rural state house district in Middle Tennessee for over a decade. In 2017, three women came forward and accused Rep. Byrd of sexual misconduct while he was their high school basketball coach. And while I don’t believe these accusations were ever criminally or civilly pursued to a resolution in the courts, the evidence against Byrd was extremely compelling. Byrd denied the allegations. However, there is an audio recording of him apologizing to one of the alleged victims for something unspecified, but the context is extremely damning.

Aftyn Behn was a member of TN Enough is Enough at the time, a group calling for Rep. David Byrd to step down. During one of the final meetings of the legislature in 2019, she started shouting at Speaker Glen Casada from the gallery in the House chambers.

State troopers removed her from the gallery at the time. On a separate occasion, she was drug out of Governor Bill Lee’s office during a sit-in, where she was demanding that the governor support their calls for Byrd’s resignation/expulsion.

The governor and the vast majority4 of the TNGOP refused to push Byrd’s resignation, preferring instead to ignore the allegations and allow him to continue serving in the state legislature. The only thing they did was ask Byrd to step down from his chairmanship of a subcommittee—a pathetic way to say they “did something.”

The GOP smear campaign actually shows how much of a fighter Aftyn Behn is and will be

This attempt to paint Aftyn as an unserious disruptor is, of course, absurd. But the context clearly shows she is someone who is willing to fight, willing to put her body on the line in service of others, and willing to stand up for marginalized voices in an extremely hostile environment.

Right now, the Democratic Party DESPERATELY needs someone who is willing to fight. And ACTUALLY fight, not performative bullshit. Aftyn is that person. She is a “pissed off social worker” who is showing the country that the South is not a red monolith. I think she can actually win this thing on Tuesday, and I am doing as much as I can to help carry her to victory. I hope everyone reading this will too. If you’re in the 7th district, GO VOTE ON DECEMBER 2nd. If you’re not, phone bank!

The politics of the South will change. Progressives face massive institutional obstacles to gaining power, but Aftyn making this a close race is proof that better elected representation is possible.

Thank you for reading.

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No Elegy Needed is an opinion column Substack. All views expressed are solely the opinions of the author and in no way are to be interpreted as anything besides that. I am not a journalist, I am not a reporter, nor do I claim to be one. This is an expression of opinion for entertainment purposes only.

While I’m normally sympathetic to the “New York City isn’t like the rest of the country” mantra, I think the above fundamentally misunderstands what made Mamdani so appealing and popular.

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What made it successful

While no campaign can be boiled down into one simple answer for its success or failure, Zohran Mamdani’s policies cut to the heart of what New Yorkers desperately needed: affordability.

Mamdani made his entire brand a relentless focus on affordability.

Not only that, but he made it VERY easy for people to understand and relate to.

• Fast and free buses (simple, gets to a core issue for working class residents)

• Freeze the rent (simple, cuts at the biggest expense for rent stabilized NYers)

• No cost childcare (simple, likely the second-biggest expense for most people)

The list goes on.

He also made his vehicle to accomplish these goals extremely simple and palatable: raise the corporate tax rate to match New Jersey’s.1 By comparing it to New Jersey’s tax rate, it made the feat seem way more achievable because such a thing already existed right across the river.

New York City is one of the most expensive cities in the country, and people there are struggling to get by. Almost every single resident aside from the top 1% have to deal with the consequences of a lack of affordability. Zohran knew this, came up with tangible solutions to the problem, and has the charisma and charm to communicate this to people. That is a recipe for success.

Lastly, one of the reasons people distrust politicians is that they often make big promises and can’t deliver on them. Zohran’s promises, while some of them will have hurdles with state government, feel achievable. He cited instances where rent freezes and free buses have been done, and replicating that to scale. If he is able to do this, it will instill a lot of earned trust in him that other politicians do not have.

People EVERYWHERE, including Appalachia, are struggling to get by. Affordability is a universal problem. Too often, politicians are extremely out of touch with the day-to-day struggles of average constituents to realize this.

Zohran’s model of relentlessly focusing on affordability can, and SHOULD, be tailored to communities in Appalachia. It really is that simple, but let me explain a bit more.

Fast and free buses is not something that will necessarily resonate in most communities in Appalachia, where residents are much less reliant on public transit than in NYC. But there are dozens of other universal affordability problems in our communities. Identifying a solution to that problem, finding a way to communicate it very simply, then pounding that message in a way that shows you can actually deliver.

Let me spitball some ideas for you. And keep in mind, I’m neither a policy wonk nor a slogan machine. So before anyone starts yelling at me about the specifics of this, THESE ARE HYPOTHETICAL EXAMPLES.2

• Utility costs: Most communities in Appalachia are suffering from their electric bills skyrocketing. This is a universal affordability problem for people because everybody pays an electric bill. A candidate for local or state office can address this situation through an innovative solution and boil it down simple for people. For example:

  • Stop data centers: An affordability politics approach could easily be adapted in communities where data centers are trying to be developed. There is evidence that electric bills are tied to their development and consumption of power. This is a very easy issue to communicate that voters can understand.3

• Rent and housing costs: Another universal issue in Appalachia is housing costs — whether you rent or buy

  • Slumlord Accountability: Passing stricter regulations on landlord that prevent them from unreasonably raising rents and compelling them to comply with more timely repairs

  • Freeze the property tax: For homeowners, this is a policy that could help them plan for the annual expense of property taxes and not have to worry about rate increases.

The point with writing this is that it is not hard to see how Zohran’s affordability campaign can be applied literally anywhere. I want people to stop looking at Zohran Mamdani as someone with extremely radical views, because they aren’t.

Affordability is and will be a universal issue. The takeaway from his campaign is that relentlessly focusing on affordability while tailoring solutions to the community is a way to reach people authentically, and effectively.

You’ve made it to the end, congrats! Here is a pic of Big Dog.

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The assembly plant is Volkswagen’s North American hub for electric vehicle assembly and employs over 3,800 people. It is an important employer in the area, but also holds some interesting symbolism as the first place in the U.S. to assemble Volkswagen’s ID.4 electric vehicle — in deeply “red” Tennessee, a state whose lawmakers are mostly hostile to EVs.

History-making vote last year

UAW had been trying to organize it for several years when a breakthrough happened in 2024. Last year, the assembly plant became the first foreign-owned auto plant in the South to unionize, and the first one in the South outside the Big 3 manufacturers.

This was a massive moment. Tennessee is a right-to-work state that is very hostile to unions. The union had been rejected twice in recent years, in part due to heavy campaigning by Volkswagen corporate and by Republican politicians against unionizing. The company held captive audience meetings and other anti-union tactics, and were successful in defeating a union vote in 2019.

The UAW and the global union movement felt more optimistic this time around than in 2014, but the bullying tactics of the massive anti-union movement in southern US turned out to be stronger.

For nine weeks, VW employees were told that a yes vote meant not only a severe threat of job losses, but also economic decline for the state of Tennessee and the entire US South.

Let’s just say, this time around, Volkswagen wasn’t exactly thrilled to have to be dealing with a union (big corporations fucking hate unions, in case y’all didn’t know). They are the very justified thorn in the ass of massive corporations, and the only real line of defense and tool of leverage against them for workers.

Earlier this year, UAW filed unfair labor practices charges against Volkswagen, after the automaker cut production in Tennessee.

A fair and just contract is warranted, but not being delivered

The lead-up to this strike authorization has been over a year long, protracted contract negotiation battle that has stalled. Volkswagen’s last best and final offer was a 20% wage increase, a cost of living allowance, an updated retirement contribution, bonus opportunities and new health and safety processes.

While this may sound decent on its face, you have to realize what these workers are dealing with.

Last year, the company paid out roughly $3.72 billion (€3.2 billion) in a dividend to shareholders, according to the company’s 2024 annual report.

“You guys are making money hand over fist, we can’t even buy stock in our own company that we bleed for every day,” plant body employee and UAW-VW Bargaining committee member and Volkswagen Chattanooga Brooke Benoit said in a video.

There are three big concerns that the offers don’t address

1. VW’s offer does not include sufficient language guaranteeing protection from layoffs

2. The healthcare packages do not meet industry standards, and contain high out-of-pocket costs

3. Insufficient cost of living adjustments, that also don’t meet industry standards

Why this matters

These contact concerns deserve to be addressed and fulfilled by Volkswagen. VW workers are a huge part of the local economy in Chattanooga, and their jobs are difficult, physically demanding, and essential for Volkswagen to continue making vehicles.

Unions in the south have been gutted by right-to-work laws and anti-union politicians who have been hired to do the bidding of massive corporations. UAW workers in Chattanooga are fighting these massive headwinds in order to negotiate the best, ironclad, fair, and dignified contract they can possibly get.

If they’re able to hold the line and secure a solid contract, it will be a powerful test case and show across the south that these anti-labor attacks can be defeated. And it will send a message that worker solidarity can successfully overwhelm a billion-dollar corporation’s decades-long effort to undermine organized labor.

I’ve been thinking about writing this for some time now, but every time I sit down to write, I cannot seem to find the best words.1 I realize now that the best words will never be there, and it’s pretty important to share my perspective and growth on an issue that has unexpectedly come to shape and define how I view politics entirely. Some people reading this may not like what I say and question the sincerity of my convictions. That’s fine. But know that I’ve reflected on this a long time, and whether you choose to believe me or not, this is how I feel.

So, to put it simply, Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, and learning more about their ongoing occupation of Palestinian (and Syrian) land and the historic oppression of Palestinians, has changed the way I view and approach politics. Not just because of the abject despicable horror and inhumane nature of these vicious acts of violence—genocide being the crime of all crimes—but how the United States government has been one of the most complicit parties in it aside from the Israeli government itself.

Republicans, and more importantly for this discussion, Democrats, have used our tax dollars to aid and abet the crimes of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government for decades.2

If you were to ask me 2 or 3 years ago if I’d ever write anything like this, I would be extremely confused by the question. I’d probably look at you with a confused dog head tilt kind of reaction.

Appodlachia has always been about Appalachia, and in my mind at the time, the pertinence of Israel and Palestine didn’t seem relevant to Appalachia. But what I came to understand in early 2024, is that my platform should not be constrained to issues explicitly about Appalachia. I have a responsibility to do what little I can to bring awareness to, and shape the discourse of, things as important as this. And, as the slaughter of Palestinians by Israel intensified, I felt morally compelled to not be silent. I also grew to better understand the history of the region, the history of Palestine, the history of Israel’s assault on Palestinian existence, and the role the United States has played.

As much as this probably sounds self-aggrandizing, I’ve come to realize that my small-ish platform is still important, and building critical mass of pressure often comes from many smaller voices.

How I got here

I want to premise this by saying that before and immediately after October 7, 2023, I was extremely ignorant about this region of the world, the history of Israel’s existence and their occupation/oppression/destruction of Palestine and occupation of parts of Syria, and even the geopolitical issues faced by my ancestral country of Syria. It’s embarrassing how little I knew or understood at the time.3

I did not fully grasp the powder keg cultivated from decades of oppression and dehumanization of Palestinians,4 because I did not know much at all about it. None of this is to excuse what happened on October 7th of course—a horrific and inexcusable attack on civilians—but the history of Israel’s violence against Palestinians cannot be ignored. That violent event itself cannot be fairly compared to the magnitude of Israel’s genocide in its severity and depravity, nor should it.

Several people I knew and trusted at this time were very pro-Israel, and while I’ve never aligned with that ideology, it is easy to look back and see how certain pro-Israel talking points were ones I just accepted, and never questioned. In fact, it’s scary to consider how willing I was to accept certain narratives at face value. I regret that I did not seek to question or clarify earlier than I did.

An example: people telling me that the accusations of apartheid, occupation, and genocide were just “far left talking points” and “antisemitic”.

Because I was extremely ignorant of the history behind Israel and Palestine, I didn’t feel like I had a leg to stand on to question the explaining away of these accusations. I also was aware of the rising antisemitism happening in this country over the past decade, such as the Tree of Life massacre and the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, and was fearful that I could be contributing to that by entertaining any of those accusations. I didn’t think about the fact that the alternative of explaining away those accusations could be, in and of itself, a form of Islamophobia.

I lacked the confidence of curiosity in the early moments after 10/7 when Israel began what would be its genocide that I very much regret to this day. However, the more I heard not to trust those voices on the “left”5, the more I felt I should listen to them.

At the beginning of 2024, those feelings truly began to consume my every day thoughts.6 However, I still questioned myself and felt like I/Appodlachia didn’t have a place in that public conversation. I told myself “you don’t need to feel obligated to comment on everything, especially on issues that are complex that you know little about.” That framing, as it turns out, was a huge part of the problem that I take ownership of. 7

It wasn’t until a friend of mine from high school reached out to me about it, noticing the absence of Appodlachia—then a fairly well known entity regionally—speaking out against it. I am grateful she did, because she challenged me on many things I thought I knew about Israel and Palestine, compelled me to actually educate myself extensively on it, and pushed me to use my platform in a way that could, at the very least, try to make a small difference. I look back on these conversations and am extremely grateful for their patience and their willingness to push me on something that I otherwise felt extremely unequipped to discuss.

I spent the next several months reading as much as I could, listening to trusted voices on Palestine, and following Palestinian journalists who put their lives on the line every day to desperately get the truth out to the world. What I saw was a reality entirely different than what many mainstream media outlets were covering, what most politicians were saying, and what I had previously believed about Israel’s relationship with Palestine. Seeing a reality on the ground so radically different than what you’ve previously been led to believe is jarring, and can re-wire one’s worldview.

How this changed my view of politics.

Bear with me as I attempt to articulate how I feel here. I don’t know if this will translate all that well to words on a blog post thing.

As a TLDR: Israel’s genocide and the political decisions that led to the U.S. complicity in it, have made me shift my view of politics and elections, mostly in terms of what should be deemed acceptable from certain democrats. It has caused me to mostly reject ideas of incrementalism and being accepting of mediocre democrats who “are more likely to win” as a strategy for what is best. In short, we need to be relentless and unwavering in our demand that we get better democrats and independents representing us rather than just focusing on getting more of them in office. Shifting the way we think and talk about political ideology is key to accomplishing this.

We don’t have to settle for a centrist corporate politician just because the “politics of the state/district demand it.” Our collective voices can have this power. We’ve seen how much the country has shifted in their views on Israel, and how this started to translate politically among democrats in Congress and those choosing to run.8 My approach has mostly been about getting bad republicans out of office and less about getting good democrats in office. That has changed.9

Ideology is not about “left/right/center”, it’s about the rich vs. the rest of us.

I feel now, more than ever, it is important to shift the way we view ideology. Pundits and many people who do politics for a living will insist the ideological spectrum in the country is left - right - center, while ascribing the stereotypical policy viewpoints akin to each. This has been the norm for decades, and is so thoroughly ingrained in how we talk about politics that it is the default setting for most electoral discussions. How many times have you heard “[candidate] needs to become more centrist to win an election” or “they’re views are too far left.”10 This hits SO HARD if you are financially comfortable and divorced from the reality of most people in this country. You can even find polling and data to back up this viewpoint.

Its a useful framing because it simplifies complex topics of public policy. And if we know anything about simplifying things in politics, it often works to win elections (“Build the Wall”, “MAGA” etc.). But what I have come to realize is this is a dated and irrelevant way of viewing our country and the electorate. I felt this in general for a while, but it has intensified in the past two years (I’m getting to how this relates overall to Israel and Palestine, just bear with me and let me land this plane on a long runway).

The dynamic is not a left-center-right, it’s the rich versus the rest. The widening income inequality gap has been so stark and significantly these past decades, and it’s no coincidence that Trumps fake ass economic populism was so successful. People are struggling. Future generations have no hope for being financially comfortable. More people are realizing the American Dream is a lie. We are teased with the upper crust before it is swiftly taken away from us every single time, then we’re told we don’t deserve things like universal healthcare and paid family leave.

For most of my adult life, and the majority of the time I’ve done this podcast, I’ve held the worldview that, in general, Democrats are better than Republicans, and that they should appeal in a way that is most “electable” in order to move the ball forward, so to speak (in other words, incremental progress). I was a lot less inclined to criticize Democrats because I felt that energy is best spent on criticizing and mocking republicans—whom I believed to be much worse than most, if not all, Democrats.11

To an extent, I still believe a lot of this, but I’ve become more cynical about Democrats and their ability to bring about the change needed to materially improve the lives of regular people, myself included. To be clear, elected Republicans (especially in Congress) have been far far worse than democrats as a whole, especially given their embrace of fascist authoritarianism.

The vast majority of democrats in power chose to side with Israel in their genocide of Palestinians. Yes, a handful in Congress have been very critical of Israel and tried to do what they could to change the U.S. foreign policy trajectory on the matter, but they are by far the outlier.12 For the most part, Democrats have been lock-step in their support of Israel.

Does it mean I think people shouldn’t vote for someone like Mark Kelly in Arizona when he ends up running against a bootlicking hardcore MAGA republican? No. If a binary choice is presented when in the voting booth, practicality should take over, particuarly when other things like reproductive rights are on the line.

Voting is a calculated action where you choose the best vehicle of the options available to you to effectuate the worldview you want. It should be divorced from emotion, and should be viewed as one of many tools in the advocacy toolbelt.

However, Kelly should be pressured relentlessly to change his views, and droves of democrats in the state threaten to withold their votes for him if he doesn’t shift his viewpoints away from funding Israel’s military efforts. We have seen how more and more democratic candidates are rejecting AIPAC/Israel lobbying money that it is quickly becoming the standard approach in many parts of the country. That was UNTHINKABLE only a few years ago. We have seen how much the public’s views on Israel and Palestine have changed in the past two years. Americans have more sympathy for Palestinian lives than ever before, and that is in part because activists have elevated this issue constantly and have shown politicians that it does in fact matter that we are aiding and abetting genocide.

I think there’s is a prevailing belief that it isn’t productive to expect more from democrats. I often hear the refrain “why are you talking shit about [Democrat] when we have a literal fascist in office.” What is crystal clear to me is that if we continue to do this—to only train the focus on Republicans and not getting BETTER democrats, ones who are vicious class warriors with a bold vision to close the inequality gap— we will be doomed to the same failed policies of the past several decades. Shit will continue to get more expensive, the rich will get richer, and the life most of us dream of having will be further out of reach.13 14

• Class war over culture wars. We need a democratic party that truly represents an economic populism that is unwavering in its pursuit of policies that incontrovertibly improve the material conditions of the working poor and the average person. 15

• We have to stop hug-boxing democrats and hitting them with kid gloves. Most of them have the same capital-friendly worldview that has helped usher in an era of corporate oligarchy and massive income inequality.

• Electoral consequences for Democrats that don’t evolve and align with class-first politics. Democrats must be held to a much higher standard, and a different one than I previously thought necessary. We have to demand better from the ones in power, and provide real electoral consequences when they fail to abide by the will of the people.

• Support for Israel’s genocide can be boiled down to a class issue, and continued support for the genocide should have severe electoral costs. The U.S. has sent Israel almost $18 billion just since October 2023. By many estimates, that would be enough money to end homelessness in this country. Any Democrat who still supports funding Israel’s genocide should be primaried relentlessly. The slaughtering of innocent Palestinians and further occupation of their land will not stop if the U.S. continues to fund Israeli military projects.

• There needs to be a broader mechanism for initiating these efforts and funding challengers, which is something I hope to work on figuring out a solution to.16

If this sounds like pie-in-the-sky thinking, I kindly invite you to compare and contrast the Republican Party of 2015 with today. In 10 years (and let’s be for real, it took way less than 10) one man fundamentally reshaped an entire party. It is a proof of concept that it is in fact possible to do that with a major political party. I’m not suggesting we nominate an authoritarian, I am simply saying that the appetite for radical change exists among people in this country, and we can translate that into a political apparatus reflective of that.

The truth of the matter is if we do nothing to change the status quo of the democratic party - to force it to change into an apparatus for advancing truly class-centered pro-worker policies - we will only repeat this deadly cycle.

The genocide started under a democrat president. Joe Biden couldn’ve made ONE phone call to Netanyahu and ended the genocide, because Israel is so heavily reliant on U.S. arms and aid. But he didn’t. And the party establishment, by and large, backed him up every step of the way.17

Let’s land this plane, Chuck

To wrap this all together: Israel’s genocide radicalized me to completely reshape my view of politics. It has shown me that we must be extremely bold in our demands to democrats, that incremental progress is not enough, and that—for the Democratic Party to survive and be a relevant force in electoral politics—it must evolve into a vehicle that advances class-warrior candidates who make everything about the rich vs. the rest of us. This is the only way we can materially improve our conditions.

I know many of yall on the “left” have been saying this for years. I regret it took me so long to abandon the prism of practicality politics as it is clear that, in most instances, it has failed to meet the needs of people.

I may continue writing on this, because I’ve re-read it several times and still think I’m struggling to communicate my viewpoints coherently, but I digress!

This is a list of people I’ve paid close attention to and learned about Palestine/Israel from. This is neither a full nor exhaustive list, but a handful of people I find particularly important:

• Bisan Owda

• Plestia Alaqad

• Hasan Piker

• Dr. Mohammed Mustafa

• The late Rafat Al Areer

• Sarah Alami

• Dropsite News, especially Jeremy Scahill

• Bassem Youssef

If you like what I do/write, you can help support my work by upgrading to a paid subscription tier on here, or join my Patreon, where I post exclusive videos and other cool perks for subscribers.

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The usual disclaimer: These are personal opinions. They are not reflective of my employer and never will be.

I hope yo…

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Christian Nationalism has gained a significant foothold in U.S. politics and culture in recent years, and there are some who are trying to make rural Appalachia a breeding ground for it.

What is Christian Nationalism?

Christian Nationalism is a right wing ideology that believes, in simplistic terms, that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and should be that way — meaning the laws, symbols, values, and governmental policies should “Christian.”1

Why is it bad?

This goes against the fundamentals that the United States was founded upon…you know, that pesky “separation of church and state” thing. It also seeks to undermine, dismiss, or outright ban other religions, beliefs, or practices that are deemed to be in conflict with their interpretation of Christianity. In practice, it is also incredibly misogynistic and demeaning toward women. I won’t spend a ton of space here going into further detail (I imagine most of y’all are smart enough to fill in the blanks or draw inferences as to the negative consequences of this), but here are a few links worth checking out.

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Rich venture capitalists are buying land and imposing their “values” on Appalachia

Can you imagine a scenario where rich people exploit natural resources in Appalachia for their own personal gain?

<insert crickets chirping>

<crickets continue chirping>

<crickets continue chirping until they expire from natural causes>

Yeah…a totally novel idea that has definitely never happened before in the history of this historically not exploited region /s.

New Founding: a 21st century spin on a time-honored grift

Anyway….so there is this company called “New Founding.” The website’s description is extremely vague, and contains broad platitudes like defining an “alternate vision for America”, and “opposing DEI/ESG and the bureaucratization of American business culture.”

They present themselves as a venture capital fund, complete with the flashy veneer of any Silicon Valley VC group. The important part, though, is their real estate ventures.

RidgeRunner and The Highland Rim Project

RidgeRunner is an “affiliate” of New Founding, and — by their own words — is building “town & country charter communities in Appalachia” in order to “pioneer a new model for local life in the digital age.”

With collapsing social and institutional trust in America and the rise of digital age conditions, we see rising demand and capacity for new types of communities built around a shared vision for local life in America.

Our communities from the upper Cumberland River in Kentucky, near Wolf Creek Dam, down to the pristine Caney Fork River of Tennessee.

We are headquartered in Gainesboro, Tennessee, which we chose for its regional significance, history and stunning natural beauty2.

RidgeRunner was founded by a guy named Josh Abbotoy, who has explained his purpose for RidgeRunner in a “conservative man scared of big cities” way, but dressed up in vestments. He gave this answer in an interview question about localism:

As mainstream institutions and large cities become increasingly inhospitable to American Christians, localist strategies are necessary but not sufficient strategy. Our focus on the Highland Rim is what you might call a regionalist strategy – engaging an area selected for affordability, beauty, compatibility with existing residents, and friendly state governments. It is correspondingly more broadly pitched – we are not aiming to build a community centered around one particular Christian institution, so much as inviting many particular families and institutions – who share a general alignment – to build within the region.”

The intent is clear: they want to create a community where they’re in charge, they get to make the rules, they have as little government intrusion as humanly possible.

Brewington Farms — a snapshot

One of the communities they are creating that you can buy land in is called “Brewington Farms” — an area of land in Whitleyville, TN.

The description is cringey to say the least

Inspired by British farming villages and an Appalachian vernacular flair,3 the Brewington Farms lifestyle will center around an organic working farm - owned and controlled by the neighborhood's HOA - celebrating dramatic views of the pastoral landscapes, walkable community, and uplifting architectural beauty and cohesion.

I find it funny that they are striving to create these communities of self-governance away from the prying eyes of city folk, yet still will have a neighborhood HOA.4 The description continues:

Phase 1 of Brewington Farms will consist of a cottage court along with several large "holler" lots5 of 7-15 acres each. The cottages will be architected and built to maximize charm and authentic local materials and style, while buyers of the holler lots will be free to select their own architects, builders and building sites.

Again, they’ve wrapped the description in a veneer of “we’re just your ordinary neighborhood developers creating quaint little communities in rural Tennessee.”

But as you dig deeper into the people running these organizations, it becomes clear their intent is to create their own Christian nationalist communities that are as sovereign as one can possibly be in this country, and in the very very very Republican-controlled Volunteer State.

I’ll pivot away from these folks for a bit and come back to them in a future post.

News Channel 5’s Phil Williams has been reporting on this for a while.

The phenomenal Phil Williams of News Channel 5 (Nashville) has been doing some excellent reporting on this terrifying thing taking place: rich VC bros buying up land in rural Appalachia and turning them into Christian nationalist tech utopias from hell.

Phil is one of the true gumshoe investigative journalists in this country that, once he sniffs out a story, will doggedly stay on top of it until he unearths the truth. That is not an exaggeration. He has been the proverbial thorn in the ass of many public officials in Tennessee over the years — Republicans AND Democrats.6

This is an excerpt from one of his more recent stories:

Christian nationalists have set their sights on a remote Middle Tennessee county, hoping to attract hundreds, even thousands, of like-minded people from across the country as part of efforts, in the words of one activist, to “radicalize Main Street.”

That effort — with Christian nationalist podcasters Andrew Isker and C. Jay Engel leading the way — is targeting tiny Jackson County and the county seat of Gainesboro, located about 90 minutes northeast of Nashville in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Census data shows Jackson County is home to an estimated 12,711 people.

"We're building a town, right? We're building a community there,” Isker said during a July podcast when he and Engel first announced their move to Tennessee.

(Source: News Channel 5)

Phil has reported on the two far-right Christian nationalist pastors mentioned above for a bit now, and unearthed some of their viewpoints that they have professed over time. They’re genuinely disturbing.

They want to go back to an America before the civil rights movement "ruined everything." They want to kick out legal immigrants even if they became U.S. citizens decades ago. And they want to put women back where they think they belong.

As Andrew Isker and C.Jay Engel see it, the only people who have a legitimate right to a homeland here in the United States are so-called Heritage Americans, like the white people depicted in Norman Rockwell art from the past.

They celebrate images of whites-only diners in the 1950s, with Engel proclaiming that "the 1960s ruined everything."

The pair have given a platform for antisemitic figures of the far right, with Isker arguing that Jews should be treated as second-class citizens in a country that “belongs to Jesus.”

(Sources: News Channel 5 — Source 1, Source 2)

These are the people attempting to colonize Appalachia because they don’t see the current existing communities as consistent with their values. As you can tell from Phil’s reporting, those “values” are alarming.

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I’ll leave it there for today, and will continue sharing some more about these people and their disturbing activities in the near future.

No Elegy Needed is an opinion column substack. All views expressed are solely the opinions of the author and in no way are to be interpreted as anything other than that. I am not a journalist, I am not a reporter, nor do I portend to be one.

The Big Beautiful Bullshit Bill was passed by Congress and signed by Trump on July 4th — one of the most destructive bills passed in recent memory, whose worst parts won’t even take effect until after Trump leaves office.

But one proposed cut hits home, literally. It is for a commission that has, despite its flaws, brought billions of dollars to one of the country’s poorest regions over its 50+ years in existence: The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC).

The White House’s discretionary budget recently came out, and it included a 93% cut to the ARC’s budget……93 PERCENT!

The proposal is included in a discretionary budget, a year-to-year funding proposal that is different than the mandatory funding included in the recently passed Trump-Republican megabill.

In the discretionary budget, Trump proposed a cut of 93% for the regional commission, from $200 million to $14 million in the 2026 fiscal year, according to the commission.

Local and state officials and organizations from around the region sent a letter to members of Congress asking that the funding the commission has received in the past be maintained.

“The ARC has been instrumental in driving forward (the region’s) potential,” the letter stated. “Reductions to its programs pose a risk to innovative initiatives in workforce development, community revitalization and American-made resilient energy.”

Source: Columbus Underground

Trump and JD Vance might as well just say,

“Dear Appalachia, you’ve been too greedy all these years with this modest amount of federal money. It is being taken from you and instead given to the people who really deserve it: billionaires and large corporations!”

I’m going to give y’all a little background on the ARC, then explain why it’s important. This is something that should seriously concern you.

The ARC was a tool in LBJ’s “War on Poverty” toolbox

Appalachia has always been behind the rest of the country on most measures including wealth, infrastructure, jobs, etc. In the 1950s and 60s, it was like another world. Here are just a few statistics from 1960:

Startling stats

• 1/3 of Appalachia’s population lived in poverty, which was double the national rate

• Per capita income was 2/3 of the U.S. Average

• Unemployment was twice the national average

• Rates of infant mortality were 50% higher than the national average

• 50% of all farm homes were estimated to not have indoor plumbing

• Only 43% of homes in central Appalachia had a telephone

This is just a small snippet of statistical examples for how left behind Appalachia was in 1960.

To address the chronic poverty and close the gap between Appalachia and the rest of the country, the Appalachian Regional Commission was formed in 1965.

It’s five strategic investment goals are the following:

• Creating economic opportunities

• developing a ready workforce,

• investing in infrastructure, including the Appalachian Development Highway System,

• leveraging natural and cultural assets,

• and bolstering leadership and community capacity.

Results

The results have been impressive. Since 1965, ARC has funded over 34,000 economic development projects and invested over $6 billion in Appalachia, which has been matched by over $12 billion in other federal, state and local funding sources.

$6 billion. With a B. That is $6 billion that would have otherwise not gone to Appalachia but for this critical federal program.

Consider just this handful of statistics that map the difference between 1960 and 2000

The ARC also helped cut the number of high-poverty counties in Appalachia from 295 in 1960, to 91 in 2015, reduced the infant mortality rate by two-thirds, and double the percentage of high school graduates.

Ripping away a federal funding lifeline for rural Americans

The ARC is not without its flaws, as is the case with any government agency. However, it is clearly an immensely important vehicle for delivering important federal dollars to the most economically distressed parts of the country — a place historically neglected and maligned by so many in power.

Just this past fiscal year, the ARC invested $365 million into the region with $593 million in project matching funds on 583 projects, which resulted in the creation or retention of 16,073 jobs.

Many of their projects are ones that are considered essential for the health, well-being, and economic mobility of the people who live here. There’s a good chance you may not even realize a project is being funded, in whole or in part, by ARC.

Here are just a handful of very recent project grants the ARC has awarded:

• $14.5 million to five collaborative, multi-state projects that will expand workforce training and capacity building in 8 states.

• $3.5 million for Hurricane Helene business recovery fund in North Carolina

• $68.2 million to 65 projects that will go toward economic revitalization in coal-impacted communities

• $11.5 million to 39 projects supporting Appalachians in recovery from addiction by creating or expanding services in the recovery ecosystem and workforce entry/re-entry

The 93% cut in the ARC’s funding is effectively defunding the commission entirely. The ARC is essential for ensuring 1) money gets to Appalachia, and 2) that money is competently spent on things that will help the region.

Appalachia is already chronically behind the rest of the country on so many metrics, and the ARC has been an important — albeit, insufficient — bandage to help heal that wound. By ripping this bandage away, the Trump Administration is telling Appalachia that it doesn’t care if it bleeds out, so long as they get to save a few bucks in the budget to continue giving greedy corporations and billionaires tax cuts.

This has been difficult to write — not because it’s painful or traumatic, but because it’s hard to articulate. My family background is important to me, but it didn’t have a large impact on my life until much later.

My dad’s side of the family is from Syria. I have always struggled to figure out how this plays into my overall identity, so I talk about that here.

Some family background

My great-grandparents — Ellis and Eva Ferris Corra were Syrian and were born in the 1880s in Saidnaya, Syria. Before coming to the United States, their names were Elias and Diva Kuri.1

They left in the early 1900s, when the Ottoman Turks still controlled the country. My great-grandfather came to the United States to build houses and was naturalized on February 5th, 1912 in Washington County, Ohio.

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It was rumored, and I wish I still had the diary entries that my dad showed me, that great-grandpa Elias ran a general store in Cairo, West Virginia and would hide whiskey in the floorboards during prohibition. Just rumors though!

From cobbling together research that I have done, and that other family members have put together, Elias worked many manual labor jobs in addition to running a general store and building houses throughout the first couple decades of his time in the United States.

FDR’s New Deal

As with many Americans in the early 30s, the Great Depression caused him and his family to fall into existential crisis. However, in 1935, FDR established the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as part of the New Deal, which gave unemployed people jobs to carry out public works projects.2 Elias was able to get a job through FDR’s WPA, and it gives me enormous pride to know that my immigrant great-grandpa was a beneficiary of this program, and helped in a small way to build our public infrastructure.

Anyway, that’s a bit of the history and foundation. Saidnaya is, interestingly enough, a predominantly Christian village in Syria, and there was a Christian emigration from Syria during the late 1800s and early 1900s, which would have been the time that my family left.

My Syrian identity

I say all this because my family came from an Arab nation, but I retained virtually no Arab cultural influence. My papaw was 100% Syrian, my dad 50% Syrian, myself 25% Syrian! Did I ever hear a lick of Arabic ever spoken in mine or my grandparents’ house? Never.

Why we never spoke Arabic

According to my dad, my papaw spoke some Arabic when he was younger, but lost most of it over the years. If you were to walk into my grandparent’s house, you would have never had any indication that my papaw was of 100% Syrian blood. There was nothing in Arabic whatsoever in the house, no cultural remnants of his parents’ life in their home country, nothing written in Arabic anywhere to be seen, and barely any Levantine cuisine aside from the occasional grape leaves.

Why? I asked my dad about this too, and his explanation was very limited and cryptic. He said that, “from what he could remember from grandpa (his grandpa), it was a tough time, and they tried to move on”.

He didn’t really elaborate — perhaps because he couldn’t, or he wasn’t willing to. There was a reason why they left. It sounded like an incredibly difficult life in Syria, and my great-grandparents tried desperately to assimilate to American society, and part of that meant no longer speaking Arabic. It makes me sad that there were little cultural aspects of Syria they chose to retain.

I lost my papaw when I was pretty young — 9th grade — and I had zero interest in our cultural heritage at that time.3 I never had the opportunity to ask him about his parents, what their lives were like, why he never spoke Arabic, or why they never retained any cultural aspects of their Syrian homeland.

As a sidebar: In my cursory research, Saidnaya had a higher Christian population than most other parts of Syria. I found it interesting that neither of my great-grandparents were Muslim, which would seem to track with them being from a higher Christian population city (although my grandparents were very Catholic, so I’m not entirely sure how to square all the circles here ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

Why I’ve avoided talking about this

Because my family shed nearly all of its cultural identity to Syria, I’ve always struggled to figure out where I fit in with my Syrian identity. How Syrian am I? Am I Syrian enough that when it comes to issues of Syria and the Middle East, I should have an opinion on them?

As someone who is only 1/4 Syrian, I’ve certainly never felt “enough” of anything to really feel qualified to consider myself Syrian or Middle Eastern: I’ve never felt Syrian enough, Middle Eastern enough, Arab, enough, etc.4 I have always wanted that connection because it’s where my family’s origin story comes from. It’s well documented. It’s our homeland and our story. My direct lineage can be traced back to Syria not that long ago.

Lately, though, the relevance of my Syrian roots/heritage/identity has become much clearer.

How I came to terms with what my identity is

A friend reached out to me a while back, when Israel first bombed Syria — because Israel apparently just bombs whoever the fuck they feel like with reckless abandon as long as the U.S. doesn’t care, I guess — and asked what I thought about it and when I was going to say something on behalf of the podcast.

I thought this was a strange thing to ask. Why in the world would I opine on geopolitical issues that I had no clue about from a podcast account about Appalachian politics and culture? Plus, it’s not like I knew dick about Syria! But this got me thinking a lot, about a lot of things.

The first, which was necessitated already by the ongoing genocide in Palestine, was that certain events in the world necessitate me using my platform to speak out beyond the confines of just issues pertaining to Appalachia. The second was that maybe I should care about what the hell was happening in Syria and the Middle East.

When it came down to it, I felt like I didn’t have a right to feel strongly about Syria and the Middle East because my ties to Syria/the region felt so thin.

But what I realized is that, despite these feelings — not speaking Arabic, not having a lot of cultural ties to the area — those things cannot replace the fact that this is where my family is from. My dad is half Syrian. My papaw was 100% Syrian. His parents came to the U.S. from Syria in search of a better life. This is who my family is, and I am proud of that.

I’m not sure why I’m choosing to write this substack post now. Perhaps it is because Iran is the latest victim of Israel, a nation that unlawfully targets other countries in the Middle East whenever it feels like it (similar to how it did with and continues to do with Syria).

Perhaps it’s because there are a lot of ignorant people who look at Iran the way they look at Syria — like a country full of terrorists that need to be bombed out of existence. This line of thinking is unironically similar to how people view Appalachia — with broad, sweeping generalizations that cast the region in simplistic terms seeking to dismiss it as expendable.

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I’m going to make this short and sweet: what we’re seeing in Los Angeles is a sign of what’s to come in every community in the country. When protesters get in the way of federal ICE agents hell-bent on ripping families out of communities, law enforcement escalate toward violence. We are seeing it happening, livestreamed from the streets of Los Angeles.

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1. I stand unequivocally on the side of the protesters in Los Angeles, who are in the streets protesting against the violent kidnapping raids by ICE on families in the city.

2. This is a weaponization of the power of the federal government to strike fear in the hearts of non-white people. Donald Trump has activated over 700 National Guard troops to descend upon Los Angeles with the purpose of chilling lawful assembly and speech. Speech that is protected under a bloody and tattered First Amendment that, every day, is being eroded even further.

3. They do not care about your First Amendment rights. Police in Los Angeles have been filmed deliberately shooting rubber bullets at press, using vicious force on protesters that were not a threat to them, and shooting countless peaceful protesters with rubber bullets and other “non-lethal” weapons. We’ve seen this administration totally undermine the First Amendment basically since day one, and they’re totally fine with doing so as long as they get to do exactly what they want. The fucked up part? They have the power to do this—not legally, of course, but practically.

4. This is grounded in racist nativism. Donald Trump has always been a racist. Stephen Miller has always been a racist. They’ve always believed in deporting as many brown immigrants as humanly possible, and this is their way of doing so. The thing about this administration is that they have a reckless disregard for the law and procedural due process, which is why the raids in LA are taking place. It’s a bonus for them to be able to deploy the National Guard, because they can be seen as violently cracking down on “leftists” while throwing metric tons of red meat to their rabid, bloodthirsty base.

I’m proud of the protesters in Los Angeles. Many of them are profoundly brave, and I hope they continue pushing back against this oppressive federal regime and local law enforcement trolls.

I worry that this is a sign the government is thirsty to go to war with protesters in every community

that has the audacity1 to push back against their authoritarian, fascist regime tactics.

My views on billionaires as a principle won’t change based on this post. However, dear reader, we find ourselves in quite the interesting situation this week as we meander our way into Western North Carolina. I think that when an insanely rich person does something — on it’s face — good, it merits scrutiny. And if that scrutiny holds up, strong encouragement to continue!

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First off, I owe you an apology for my brief hiatus. Life has a habit of getting in the way of things I do for pleasure, like spout off my nonsense in this very reputable “No Elegy Needed” rag. But thank you for sticking with me.

Now, anyway. Back to the wildly unorthodox shit we will be talking about today.

Tim Sweeney: complicated billionaire nerd who might just save Appalachia’s forests

Imagine my shock, dear reader, my utter surprise, as I came across a Raleigh News-Observer article about Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney and his penchant for buying land in North Carolina - he is one of the largest private landowners in the state and has been gifting/selling much of it to conservation organizations in order to protect the land from development. Yes, this is the crux of the post, and we will be diving in, but let’s pump the brakes.

Unreal Engine? Fortnite? Appalachia? What the fuck are we talking about?

We have some people who read this Substack that are — to put it kindly — less cultured than others when it comes to the context of Epic Games, mainly Fortnite. 1 Tim Sweeney’s company, Epic Games2, has published and/or developed several notable video games, but Fortnite is by far one of their most successful. Fortnite is an online game where players compete to be the last one standing by collecting weapons, building structures, and eliminating other players. As of 2024, it had over 500 million players worldwide and made over $24 billion.

Tim Sweeney context unrelated to North Carolina land buying

Anyway, Epic Games is how Tim made his money. He has been a polarizing figure who has been involved in numerous lawsuits and controversies that contribute to his “complicated” label. I don’t plan on getting into all of them, but I’ll summarize a few below. Obviously, people are complicated. However, billionaires are billionaires and thus will billionaire from time-to-time. Here is a partial list, some of which were actually good things.

• Massive lawsuit with Apple. In 2020, Epic Games sued Apple after it removed Fortnite from the App Store. This was prompted by Fortnite adding a direct payment option, thus bypassing Apple’s 30% commission on in-app purchases.3 This was a long, drawn out court battle that Sweeney himself admitted cost Epic Games over $1 billion. At one point, though, he compared it to the civil rights movement. Which is a bit bizarre, and misguided, to put it charitably.4

• Said tech leaders were pretending to be Republicans to gain favor with trump, skirt antitrust laws, and rip off consumers. I fucking love a good antitrust law, you know me!5 I appreciate his candidness here because this is 100% true. Tech companies enjoyed a honeymoon period from the Clinton years through the Obama years, where Democrats treated them with kid gloves and tech executives responded accordingly. In fairness, he was getting the raw end of the deal with many tech companies (as seen with Apple and Google), so he had plenty to be salty about.

• Got kinda weird and defensive about the whole buying a blue checkmark thing on Twitter when Elon Musk bought it. I’ll just link to the article. I don’t know, man. You’re a billionaire. I don’t think you get to complain about elites.

• Epic Games had to pay the largest penalty ever collected by the FTC for violating a rule it enforced. Epic agreed to pay $520 million in both fines and refunds under an agreement reached with the FTC over violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA). This was the FTC under the leadership of Lina Khan (aka Bae <333333)

There are plenty of other things I could go through in his lengthy career with Epic games, but that’s really not what I’m here to talk about.

Fortnite billionaire, real land deals

Tim Sweeney has lived in North Carolina since 1999. In that time, he has bought a shitload of land there. Maybe even a metric fuckton, depending on how you quantify each.

Conservation Corridors

Sweeney is an advocate for conservation of natural environments, and his focus is preserving three big conservation corridors6 in North Carolina: the Roan Highlands, the Foothills of McDowell County, and an area near the Rocky River in Chatham County.

In 2021, he owned at least 56,000 acres of land in just North Carolina alone, according to land records pulled by the Raleigh News-Observer.

He has bought tens of thousands of acres of land from the Blue Ridge Mountains all the way to the coast, carrying out what he promises are efforts to conserve large swaths of land before they are developed.

He started buying land back around the time of the Great Recession, when real estate prices cratered. But he has remained active. In mid-September (2021), Sweeney was finalizing a purchase of nearly 270 acres of land in rural Chatham County — “part of a nature conservation project focused on the Rocky River and Bennett Flatwoods of Chatham County,” Sweeney told The News & Observer in an email. (Article link)

You can see the breakdown of his ownership in WNC below:

I don’t believe this counts the amount of land that he has gifted or sold for conservation purposes. This is a small list of some of his acquisitions and donations:

• November 2008

  • Bought 1,500 acre parcel of wilderness known as Stonehill Pines that was being eyed by developers for a mixed-use golf resort community. When the recession happened, the plans were dropped, and he bought the land and plans to hold it until he finds a permanent nature conservation home for it.

• August 2016

  • Funded a purchase of over 2,000 acres of land that more than doubled the size of Mount Mitchell State Park in Yancey County.

• November 2016

  • Bought 7,000 acres of land known as the Box Creek Wilderness in McDowell County, which is “home to more than 130 rare and vulnerable plant and wildlife species.” Prior to buying the land, he fought efforts by the local electric co-op to run power lines through the area. The land was eventually placed under a land conservation easement with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

• April 2021

  • Donated 7,500 acres in Avery and Mitchell Counties to the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, a land trust that will manage it as a nature preserve. At the time, it was the largest single gift in SAHC’s history.

  • Funded the purchase of roughly 1,300 acres of Hutaff Island — a 2-mile stretch of barrier island — which is held by the Coastal Land Trust while Audubon of North Carolina works to protect bird colonies and sea turtle nests.

• April 2022

  • Finalized sale of a three-phase acquisition totaling over 6,000 acres to the Foothills Conservancy of NC and the NC Division of Parks and Recreation in McDowell County to be used for Bobs Creek State Natural Area.

Putting the skeptics hat on, we took it to the people

I saw all of this and, on its face, it looks great. But with any rich person buying up a bunch of land in Appalachia and in the South, I have to remain skeptical. People do that for a variety of reasons: tax avoidance, nefarious business deals, money laundering, lying about the way they plan on using it then going around the people’s backs and building some god-awful monstrosity of capitalistic despair. It’s not unheard of.

So I tried to at least take it to the people — aka our followers from North Carolina — to see what they had to say. To my surprise, it was nearly universal praise and very little skepticism or criticism.

Now I’m not saying the people that replied to my posts are the official spokespeople of Western North Carolina, or North Carolina generally, but let’s just say they also aren’t the type of people predisposed to be sympathetic toward billionaires — that’s not exactly the community I’ve cultivated the past nearly 6 years.

Keep it up, Tim

From what I’ve seen, he seems to be genuinely interested in real land conservation. In some instances, even selling land at reasonable prices to people who are local to the area or that have local ties to the area — which is far and away better than letting greedy companies or private equity vulchers gobble it up to build some hellscape on it.

I hope he will consider pivoting some into how this type of land acquisition can accomplish these conservation goals while also helping solve the housing affordability crisis. For now though, I wish that other billionaires would at least take a page from Tim Sweeney’s book and do something good with their money like this.

Nature, unfortunately, cannot protect itself when there are money-hungry rich people out there willing to make a buck at the expense of an ecosystem. Perhaps that makes Sweeney’s money and how he uses it that much more important?

If you have a different opinion or different experience in North Carolina, PLEASE let me know. I’m not trying to glaze a billionaire here, but simply trying to show how money can be used for good things. I did some due dilligence with listening to people locally, but I want to know if I missed any perspectives!

Sorry, I don’t have a weekly music rec this week. However, if you appreciate my writing, it would mean the world to me if you upgraded to become a paid subscriber to No Elegy Needed.

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After 5 1/2 years of pouring thousands of hours into building Appodlachia as a platform to advocate for Appalachia and spout off opinions, I want to make the time I dedicate to it count financially. I know that sounds slightly selfish, but it is the truth. Regardless, thank you so much for being a loyal reader and follower of my work. It means the world to me.

Please forgive the part where I had to leave midway through to unlock the door for my wife, corral my dog, bolt back upstairs, and run out of breath then lose my train of thought about silica dust exposure rules. lol.

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