This is Change in the Coalfields. My name is Brandon Dennison, I'm your host. I'm genuinely honored this week(to welcome) the Central Appalachian Network (CAN) and Executive Director of the Mountain Association based in Eastern Kentucky, Peter Hille. So Peter, thank you for your time today.
Peter Hille:I'm happy to be here, Brandon.
Brandon Dennison:I think it might be good, I mentioned CAN, a goal for this podcast, I want to include all the directors of the CAN organizations. Mountain Association, I believe as a founding member of CAN. So I'd love if you could give us, tell us a little bit about your involvement with CAN.
Peter Hille:Sure, actually, Mountain Association, which was formerly known as MACED, was not a founding organization, but came in pretty early on. I had the opportunity myself to participate in some of the earliest meetings of the Central Appalachian Network as a facilitator when I was the director of the Brushy Fork Institute at Berea College. And Caroline Carpenter, who was at that time a program officer with the Benedum Foundation, was supporting this, the creation of this nascent network and supported me coming in to serve as a facilitator for that group.
Brandon Dennison:I'm gonna circle back to Brushy Fork, because I'm sure there's a lot of, a lot of rich content in that whole experience. Could you tell the viewers just in case they don't know what CAN is today, how we're organized and what our vision is for Appalachia?
Peter Hille:Sure. The Central Appalachian network is one of multiple organizations that have really come to share and an analysis about the Appalachian region that centers up on the idea of "just transition." And when we talk about just transition, it's the idea that these communities and particularly the coalfields of Appalachia, literally fueled the growth of the entire nation. And they made tremendous sacrifices in order to do that. They sacrificed lives, they sacrificed health, they sacrificed local economies. In some ways, I think you could say they sacrificed good governance and education, to the altar of resource production. And they did not, however, share in the prosperity that resulted from the exploitation of those resources, that prosperity largely left the region along with the coal. And we know that resource extraction industries in general don't produce durable assets and wealth in the places where they happen. So when we talk about the justice in a just transition, we're really talking about repaying a debt to these communities that gave so much to the entire nation. And we think that that debt can be satisfied with the new investments that are needed to grow a new economy. And that's right at the heart of what CAN is all about. It's, it's deeply embedded in the Mountain Association's work. Also, the Appalachia Funders Network is another group that shares that analysis of the region.
Brandon Dennison:Absolutely. You're clearly a key leader in the just transition movement. I call it a movement for Appalachia. You've given many years of your career to this work. I would love to hear sort of the longer version of how you got to this point of of leadership, Peter, so did you, did you grow up in Kentucky?
Peter Hille:I didn't. I actually grew up in a small town just outside of St. Louis, Missouri, and was a member of a church youth group there. And we had a summer project, the summer after my senior year of high school to go to Appalachia and run a summer camp for kids in the mountains. And in preparing for that, of course, we watched films, we didn't have videos at that point, we watch films about the war on poverty, and we tried to educate ourselves about this place before we came. But I realized in retrospect, that part of that looking through the lens of trying to understand the war on poverty in the early 1970s, I ended up absorbing an idea that Appalachia was black and white because that's all the imagery that we were looking at. And lo and behold when we arrived in the first week of June 1973, it wasn't black and white - it was green.
Brandon Dennison:The hills were alive.
Peter Hille:The hills were definitely alive and fireflies and cicadas singing and sitting by the riverbank in the moonlight playing guitars - and I I fell in love with the place. And spent the next four years of college in Philadelphia, hitchhiking back to Kentucky on all my breaks because I really felt that this was the place I wanted to live. And got out of college and moved to Kentucky, and then spent the next 13 years trying to figure out how to put food on the table. Because I learned pretty quickly that it was an easy place to love but not necessarily an easy place to live. And definitely not an easy place to make a living. So I did a lot of different things. I built houses, I literally dug ditches, I became a woodworker, I learned to build kitchen cabinets. And was doing that work in 1990 when a friend of mine who had gone to work for Berea College, told me about a new program that was being started there called the Brushy Fork Institute. And that was the brainchild of John Stephenson, who was the president of Berea College at the time, who saw a need and an opportunity to support community based local leadership across Appalachia. And in John's guiding words for that were that the people of these communities themselves have the wisdom and the vision and the commitment that's needed to guide their own development. They didn't need that from outside. So our role was always to serve as a catalyst to the local leaders, not to be riding in with the answers. And through that work, coming to know people like John Stephenson, Lloyd Jones, Ron Eller, some of the the guiding lights of Appalachian scholarship, I got an incredible grounding in a pretty deep understanding of the region from a sociological and economic standpoint that I don't think I could have gotten any other way. And for the next 22 years, I had the wonderful opportunity to work with leaders in communities all over Central Appalachia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Southeast Ohio. And all of that was was part of my grounding and education. The last nine years I was at Brushy Fork, I served on the board of directors of what is now the Mountain Association, and was board treasurer and then became board chair, and then was recruited by my predecessor to join the staff at Mountain Association in 2012. And then, when my predecessor Justin Maxson went on to become the executive director at the Murray Reynolds Babcock foundation, then I became president of what was then MACED, which just last year changed our name to the Mountain Association.
Brandon Dennison:When I was a young intern with the Housing Authority of Wayne County, I joined something called a hubcap team, to the Brushy Fork Institute, I believe that would have been 2011. And I did Vaughn Grisham's community development course. And it was, I still, I still call on notes from that week to this day.
Peter Hille:They're having the Brushy Fork Institute right now. And I was just in those sessions this morning. And yesterday morning.
Brandon Dennison:How timely. Well, that is a gift to this region, truly. So thank you for your, for your leadership at Brushy Fork all those years. Do you still make cabinets, you still do woodwork?
Peter Hille:I still have a woodshop and I occasionally get to do little projects. It kind of varies depending on what needs doing around here and my biggest project over the last year has been building a large shed to support a 10 kilowatt solar panel installation.
Brandon Dennison:Fantastic.
Peter Hille:So I'm now generating probably half of the electricity that we use here with some more energy efficiency here in the house. I'll probably get that up to 70% or 80%.
Brandon Dennison:You mentioned the the war on poverty. You mentioned someone I've read a lot, Ronald Eller. I'm curious to know, we're seeing some of the largest federal investment in Appalachia since the war on poverty. I feel like analysis of the war on poverty is mixed at best and complete and utter failure would be some people's, you know, read on it. It's probably somewhere mixed in there. I would love to just hear, I know you've studied this region closely, you've had incredible experiences working in this region - what's your take on the war on poverty? And for this time around what you see that's maybe better, worse the same?
Peter Hille:Yeah, you know, it's, it is interesting to sort of step back and take the long view on this because we didn't, we didn't invent the work that that you and I are involved in, we clearly stand on the shoulders of giants. And we can't look back at the war on poverty and say, well, problem solved. Obviously, it's not, on the other hand, we can't deny the progress that has been made. There has been a lot of progress. Let me divert for just a minute and share a story with you and your listeners because I feel like I carry this story and I feel obligated to pass it along. But about 20 years ago, I had the opportunity to have lunch with Former Governor Ned Breathitt, who was elected governor of Kentucky in 1963. He was part of the Kentucky Appalachian Task Force and I was serving as a facilitator for that task force in my role at Brushy Fork. This would have been 1974...sorry, 1994. And John Stephenson was the chair of that task force. And I really, it was an amazing group of people to have together, it included Ron Eller, it included Former Governor Breathitt included Paul Patton, and who at that time was lieutenant governor went on to become a two term governor. I took the opportunity over lunch one day to sit next to Governor Breathitt and asked him if he thought the things that we were grappling with, in 1994, were as challenging as the issues he was facing in the early 60s. And he said, No, he said, I don't think so he said, Let me tell you, I ran for governor on a platform of racial integration. And I ran as a Kennedy Democrat, and that was an uphill battle. And the night before the election, my opponent went on television with the Bible in front of him and the flag behind him. And he looked right in the camera, and he said, If I'm elected governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, there'll be no integration by executive fiat, I'll give the issue to the legislature, and they'll know what to do with it. And Breathitt had stopped at that point and he laughed, and he said, everybody knew what that meant, the legislature wasn't going to support integration. He said, so you know, with the election, then election night, I was shaking in my boots, I didn't know how it was going to come out. And it was late that night when they finally called the election in my favor. And then he said shortly after they called the election, the telephone rang, and it was President Kennedy. And President Kennedy said, Governor, I'm calling to congratulate you on your election. And Breathitt and laughed and said, Well, Mr. President, I'm sorry, I couldn't give you a better margin. And then Kennedy laughed, because of course, he had just barely squeaked in, too. But Kennedy said, Now, listen, Governor, I've got some ideas about what we can do to help those folks down there in the mountains. And I want to come and talk to you about it just as soon as I get back from Dallas.
Brandon Dennison:Wow.
Peter Hille:So to hear those words, from Kennedy to Breathitt, to me, was one degree of separation from a moment that certainly rocked my young world. But it was on the heels of that, that Johnson was able to advance the idea of the war on poverty. And we always see the iconic picture of Lyndon Johnson squatting on the front porch in Martin County, Kentucky. And, you know, there are reasons why that's the picture that we see of that. And, and they're not all good reasons. But in fact, one of the very real reasons for that is that the war on poverty was largely promoted to the American people as something that would address white poverty, even though that we know that the racial inequities that continue to this day, have slanted the economics of our country heavily in favor of white people. But it was going to be more politically palatable, to sell the program in that context, and partly because of that, Appalachia was always featured prominently in the narrative about the war on poverty. So you know, and I think in some ways, Appalachia may have benefited more than some other places have. You know, we look at the road system we have today, that's a result of the Appalachian Regional Commission, which was one of the creations of the war on poverty, we look at the water systems, we look at the schools, and there has been a lot of advancement. The problem is that there, there hasn't been enough advancement. And the advancement hasn't always reached everybody. So just as we see with the growing prosperity in the United States in recent years, so much of that prosperity has attained to the top 10%, 5%, 1% of the population. And in fact, things in many ways haven't gotten better for a lot of people all across the economic spectrum. So I think that's the challenge that remains ahead of us as we ask what this next chapter of this generations-long work needs to look like. The advantage that I see that we have today is that because of that long work, because of those giants upon whose shoulders we stand, there is a cadre of organizations now that have been doing this work for a long time, our friends at Appalshop, more than 50 years, the Mountain Association more than 40 years, the Central Appalachian Network - 25 years. Even the Appalachia Funders Network, which we think of as a relative newcomer, is now more than 10 years old. So we have built a lot of organizational capacity and a lot of knowledge and a strong, strong cadre of people across these organizations, both who are, those who are new to the work and bring tremendous energy and excitement to it and passion, as well as some of us who've been doing it for a long time and will be looking to pass batons in the years ahead. So for this new tranche of federal investment to come at this time, it's feels to me like we're in a position to maybe make the best use of it, that could possibly be made. And then the onus is on us to do that.
Brandon Dennison:So the civic infrastructure, you would say, is stronger now than it was back during the war on poverty of the 60s?
Peter Hille:I think it's all the infrastructures, you know, its physical infrastructure, its civic infrastructure, its social capital, the other forms of financial capital that exists in the region that can be leveraged by this. You know, they'll never be enough government investment or philanthropic investment to create a new economy. But what those things can do is they can, they can build up the pieces that get the various sectors of the economy up to the point where they can become functioning and self sustaining.
Brandon Dennison:Yep. Yep. You mentioned JFK, just briefly, I've heard you over dinners and lunches and meetings we've been in together, he comes up a lot for you. As a young person, how big of an inspiration was JFK for some of the work you ended up being involved in?
Peter Hille:Gosh, well, you know, I was in third grade, when
Brandon Dennison:I love that. And so connected to that could Kennedy was assassinated. So it was probably a sort of coming to awareness moment of even the reality of the federal government, I was dimly aware of the 1960 presidential election. You know, I see the covers of the magazines that came into my(you) say a little bit more about where Mountain Association parents house. And but you know, Kennedy's assassination was, you is today, and what some what are some of your big priorities as know, it was a big deal. And I think that, you know, we grew up with that, sort of echoing of those words, asked, not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. We grew up with this notion that we were going to go to the moon. And even today, when people talk about making an extraordinary effort, and I've said this several times over the years in my work, this is going to be a moonshot, you know, we're going to try to do something incredibly ambitious here. And when Kennedy said, we're going to go to the moon, he didn't know how we were going to do it. He didn't, we didn't have the technology. We didn't have the plan. We just had the will and the vision. And I think that there's a powerful leadership lesson in that, that part of what leaders have to do is stand in front of where we are, and enunciate a vision of where we need to get to, and then open up that capacity that everybody has to bring to figure out how to get there. And I think in a very real way, that's what we're trying to do in Appalachia. an organization right now?
Peter Hille:Well, we just last year, began the first year of a five-year-plan, we're now in the second year of it. When we made the five-year-plan, there wasn't a pandemic. So it has definitely had a significant impact. But the plan is at a very high level, at a very visionary level. And we really centered that plan up on the work of aligning both our organization and our programmatic work with our values of equity and inclusion. And we have never before put that in the center of our work in the same way. Now our work continues to be focused on this idea of building a new economy. But we're saying alongside of that it's got to be an economy that works for everybody. It's got to be an economy that is not only more diverse and sustainable and resilient, but also more equitable. Because we know that even when it was supposedly working, the old economy didn't work for everybody. We know that the coal based economy didn't create durable wealth for people and communities, and that it created a lot of inequity and it's supported inequity. Even though those coal mining jobs were among the best paying jobs in the region, we were seeing fewer and fewer and fewer of those jobs as the years went by. You know, I don't have all the figures for West Virginia in my head, but I know that in in Kentucky, our coal mining jobs peaked in 1949 at 75,000 jobs. And then between 1949 and 2012, we went from 70,000 jobs to about 20,000 jobs. And then, very quickly, after 2012, with the collapse of the coal industry, we lost half the remaining jobs overnight. That's the first time people really saw the jobs going away. Because across that long, 60 year slide from 1949, to 2012, the jobs would come and go, the market would go through these boom and bust cycles, mines would shut down, mines would start back up again, people would say coal's always going to come back. What's harder to see unless you actually graph it out, is that every time that jobs came back, there weren't as many as there were. And every time it went bust again, there were even fewer jobs at the bottom of that cycle. So this cycle was going up and down. But it was, it was continually going further and further down. Even as mine production was increasing, because what happened in 1950, was the union signed an agreement with the coal operators to allow the mines to be mechanized. So from that time on, we had fewer people mining more coal with bigger machines. Then as those jobs became more technical, they also became better paying jobs. So by the time we got to 2012, these were among the best paying jobs in the region, a miner who might have only had a high school education, if they had the certifications, they could be making $60,000 - $80,000 a year or possibly even more, depending on what what they were doing. And so those were great jobs, but there weren't that many of them. And so in a region with millions of people, 1000s of jobs didn't result in an effectively functioning economy. Then we hit 2012, natural gas became cheaper than coal for the first time per BTU. At that point, the largest amount, the greatest use of coal is thermal coal used to generate electricity. And when natural gas became cheaper, the thermal market shifted to natural gas, coal mines shut down. Coal, major coal companies went bankrupt - Peabody Coal, Patriot, Coal, Arch Coal, Alpha Natural Resources all went bankrupt within a period of months. Within a very short time, Peabody Coal went from $80 a share to less than $1 a share. And, and so this, this was a huge shock to the system. And for the first time, I think, the general public and our elected officials joined into a conversation that many of us had been trying to have for a long time, which was a conversation about - what do we do now? What do we do differently, coal's not going to be the ongoing answer for us. And here in Kentucky, our governor who was a Democrat, and the Republican congressman who represents Eastern Kentucky, stood together on a stage in Pikeville, and said, we've got to do something different. And they created an organization called SOAR, which is Shaping Our Appalachian Region. And SOAR continues to be a part of this conversation about how we build the new economy. Now, there are a lot of complexities about that. And then in 2016, after four years of having this different conversation, another voice came into that with a counter narrative and said - no, we're going to bring back coal.
And a lot of people said:"Huzzah!" And of course they did, because, you know, that sounds like a great answer. And of course, people were drawn to that idea that we were going to bring back coal. The problem is, it just wasn't ever an economic reality.
Brandon Dennison:This is a 50-year, 60-year trend...
Peter Hille:Yeah, 60-year trend that was in the end disrupted by a new technology, which is what often happens. And that technology was fracking for natural gas, which made the price of natural gas so cheap. And that was, it was not ever a war on coal that resulted in that crash in 2012. It was an economic shift caused by a disruption because of the technological innovation.
Brandon Dennison:So when you say new economy, what does that look like? And where are you seeing progress?
Peter Hille:Well, we see the new the new economy is, a fundamental of that for us is relocalizing the economies of these places in a way that helps these communities to recreate themselves as once again places where people can live, in places where people will choose to live. One of the things that happened in that long slide from 1950 to 2012 is every time those mines would shut down, every time coal went through another bust cycle, people left they left to find jobs in other places. And so there was this long term diaspora from all over Appalachia. And we have many communities, West Virginia, East Kentucky, that have lost half their population or more since the 1940s. You look at McDowell County, West Virginia is a great example of that, because people will go looking for jobs, if the jobs aren't in the place where they are, there are fundamental economic realities that cause people to live in places. So you know, not only did we lose a large segment of our population, but the segment that we lost was the working age people. And what it did is to hollow out that workforce. And so our remaining population is now disproportionately people who are old people, who are very young, or people who, for one reason or another are not participating in the workforce. And there are a lot of reasons why people are not, but we have very low labor force participation rates in this region. So we have to really, in rebuilding the economy, we've got to start with the demographics, as well as the economics. And so when we think about what does it take to, to recast a place as somewhere where folks can live and will choose to live? Then a lot of amenities began to play an important role in this. You know, is there a grocery store? You know, just really fundamental stuff. How far do you have to go to get good food? Is there anything to do? You talk to young people on the street, you know - "there's nothing to do around here, I want to get out as soon as I can." I don't know how many times I've heard that. We've surveyed people and gotten those answers consistently. And they will leave, you know, so what does it mean to repopulate a place? We think that there are four groups of people that we should be thinking about in particular, one is the young people who are growing up in these communities today. A second is the young adults who left to go to college, or to go find their first job, who might come back if they saw opportunity. The third is people who left 30-40 years ago in one of those boom and bust cycles to go find a job somewhere else. And they went and they found a good job, and they had a successful career. And now they're going to retire somewhere. And we know there's a percentage of those folks from this region who would love to come back home, if we have the amenities and the services and the resources that they need that makes it appealing and feasible for them to come back. And then the fourth group is the people who come here, for one reason or another, they come here for whitewater rafting, or mountain biking or for a craft fair or music festival, or they come with friends to visit family. And they look around and they say, as I did as a young person coming with a church group on a on a mission trip, look around and say, Wow, this place is beautiful. It is green, the hills are alive. Maybe I could live here. And maybe like me, they find out what land prices are. And they say, well, maybe I could afford to own land here. That was a big attraction for me. And then they're going to start into another set of questions like, What is there to do here? Can I get groceries here? You know, can I find a job here? Is there something to do on the weekends? Maybe I could run my global internet business from here. How's your broadband? You know and if we can answer those questions, then suddenly things like that grocery store, and the brew pub, and the music venue and the coffee shop and the bookstore. Those aren't just micro businesses, those are all economic drivers. Those are all job opportunities. Those are all- each of those represents a livelihood for another family or families. And so sustaining the businesses that exist, supporting the new businesses that people want to start all becomes part of that nexus of re-envisioning and re-inhabiting these places. And then we build out from that into thinking about the economic sectors that can be part of building this new economy. And some of those connect to the things that we've already been talking about. We think about tourism, we think about local foods. We think about the creative economy, we think about clean energy, sustainable forestry, health care, and all of the businesses that become viable if we've got broadband. We think about housing because housing is not only important for people to have places to live, but it's also a lot of jobs and another major economic driver. So all these things that we need are also economic opportunities. So when we think about those sectors, and the businesses in those sectors, what we're looking at is really a triple screen, and the first part of that is asking the question, can this sector generate real economic opportunity? And all those ones I named can. The second thing is, is there a reason for it to exist in this place?
Brandon Dennison:Given the many years you've devoted to this work, are you feeling more encouraged? Less encouraged? Or about the same about Appalachia's future?
Peter Hille:Let me let me back up a beat and finish that thought about the sectors. So when we think about these economic sectors that are important to building the new economy, we're looking at three screens. The first is, do these sectors have the capability to generate real economic activity? And clearly they do. We've, we've been able to make significant investments in clean energy, we're seeing job creation there. And there are a lot of businesses that can benefit from either energy efficiency or renewables across the region, we think about things like sustainable forestry, that can be a big industry, the University of Kentucky said that could be a $7 billion a year industry. So clearly, these have the opportunity to generate real economic activity, healthcare has had more jobs than coal mining for decades. So that's the first screen, can generate real economic activity. But that's not enough. The second screen is is there a reason for it to exist in this place? In other words, it's not just something that's dropped in, it's going to go away after the the incentives run out. So again, we think about sustainable forestry. But this is where the trees are, we think about clean energy, this is where the buildings are, that need to be retrofitted. So there has to be a reason for it to exist in this place. The third screen is does it generate additional benefits for people and communities beyond just the economic activity. And that's why things like health care are so important, because when we localize health care, and we make the services that people need available locally, they don't have to get in their car and drive two hours, more people can receive the benefit of that, more people have better access to health care. And frankly, if you have to get in your car and drive two hours to get your health care somewhere else, you might as well load your trunk up with cash because you're hauling that economic asset out of the community as you go.
Brandon Dennison:And Peter as you...I love the the way you break this down so systematically, you have such a clear vision for what a new economy looks like, the fact that it's that is possible, the types of individuals we need to be focused on, the four categories, the sectors will need to be focused on. You've been working on this for many years. Are you feeling more encouraged? Less encouraged about the same? Given the incredible experience in this work.
Peter Hille:Well, I think there are some markers that are really important that I find very encouraging. Obviously, the investments by the federal government are a key piece of this. And it's a legacy of what was beginning to happen at the end of the Obama administration with the creation of the power initiative with the Appalachian Regional Commission. But this the power initiative was never at a scale that we really need to see in order to drive real transformation. And so we see things like the EDA's Build Back Better initiative, we see numbers like $3 billion, we see 300 million for coal impacted communities, which is six years worth of power funding in one tranche. So we're seeing investment at the kind of scale that's needed to really advance transformation. I think that's a very encouraging sign. But also, as I said earlier, the kind of infrastructure that we have in terms of people and organizations that are ready, willing and able to move this work is another piece that's really important. And finally, I think there is just growing acceptance of what some of the dimensions of the new economy can look like. We have been able to support over $2 million of investments in solar installations for small commercial enterprises in Eastern Kentucky just in the last couple of years. Five years ago, I would not have imagined that that was possible at that kind of scale. And just see that growing. And as some of the broader solar installments are being done, installations, that is just in itself helping to drive more local buy-in. We've been working with a developer who is planning a very large solar installation in Martin County, Kentucky. The local government there is tremendously excited about it. Now, this is a longtime coal producing county. And it is just not a place where solar would have been welcomed with open arms 10 years ago. But I think the acceptance of the reality of the changes in our economy and the potential to see 300 jobs in the clean energy industry has really opened a lot of people's eyes.
Brandon Dennison:Well, Peter, you ended on a note of hope. Thank you - honest to goodness I've been honored to do some work with you. I've looked up to you for many years before you even knew me. I've benefited from Brushy Fork. I'm incredibly honored to be part of CAN, with with you and your colleagues at Mountain Association. Today, it was really fun. I heard some news stories I had not yet heard. I think our listeners are going to learn a lot from you and feel really inspired by your work.
Peter Hille:Well thank you, Brandon, for your kind words but more importantly, thank you for the awesome work you're doing there and Coalfield. You're on the cutting edge of this and one of the things that I think we recognize when we get into this work is nobody, no one organization is going to accomplish what we need to accomplish by themselves. It's our ability to all work together to have this shared vision, this shared analysis, this shared notion of just transition and moving forward collectively is is what's going to make this possible.
Brandon Dennison:Right on. Thank you Peter.
Peter Hille:Thank you, Brandon.
Brandon Dennison:Change in the Coalfields is a podcast created by Coalfield Development at the West Edge factory in Huntington, West Virginia. This episode was hosted by Brandon Dennison, and produced and edited by JJN Multimedia. Become a part of our mission to rebuild the Appalachian economy by going to our website Coalfield-Development.org to make a donation. You can email us anytime at info@Coalfield-Development.org and subscribe to our newsletter for up to date information on the podcast. You can follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn by searching for coalfields development. Check back soon for more episodes.