18: Cultural Organizing in Appalachia: Building Trust, Equity, and Economic Resilience – Part 2

CSCW EP 18: Ben Fink – A Communist Jew from the Northeast – Chapter 2Threshold Questions and Delicious QuotesAs a self described "communist Jew from the Northeast, what kind of hostility did you encounter in coal country?Honestly, the most hostility I got was from some of the liberals who are like, this is our way of doing things and we have this way of doing activism, and this way of doing community development, and this way of, who we relate to and who we don't relate to and blah, blah, blah.How can traditional hymn singing help build trust?And, you know what I have been told that a lot of ice was broken at some of these events. When I got up in front of the room, I didn't need a mic cause I'm loud, and I was able to line out, Poor Wayfaring Stranger, or What Wonderous Love is This, ... and that became my identity to a lot of people. I was the shape note guy. I was the guy who could come in and lead a sing and, line out of him. And it just, it broke down some walls.What is Performing Our Future?Yeah. So, Performing Our Future began as a community-based research project to figure out how can people tell their stories, communities that have long resisted, systematic, organized exploitation, how those communities can collectively tell their own stories, connected to building their own power connected, to creating their own and do so in coalition with each other, both locally, as well as nationally."What is the difference between cooking and catering?"As Gwen said, we never done cater and we just done cooking. What's the difference between catering and cooking? The difference is what our economist friend Fluney Hutchinson calls, bounded imagination. Cooking is something you do for yourself and your neighbors to survive. Catering is something that you can do to add value and create jobs.And in this case, jobs for neighbors that were coming back from incarceration and addiction and serve in the armed forces overseas, with various kinds of trauma who were really having trouble finding other jobs.How did culture figure in the Letcher County organizing effort? A central building block was a play that roadside theater made alongside these folks, and with these folks, sharing their stories, developing this grip, performing in it called the future of Letcher County, which is literally people of all ages, ideologies backgrounds, debating about the political, cultural and economic future of Letcher County.We've now performed this, actually performed in West Baltimore just before the pandemic hit. It was... I'll tell you what happened was, I heard somebody in the audience say "I didn't know, white people dealt with that stuff too "TranscriptBen Fink: What is a thing that this group of people likes to do together or cares about, and it's not just cares about, but also wants to make together like that act of making things together and owning what we make. It's so central to the work, because when you make something together, then you are changing that story because you now have a story of, we built this we have added to our world in a way that is deeply meaningful of both of us. From that foundation. It is really hard to dehumanize someone. You can disagree, you can be pissed. You can have all sorts of, all sorts of conflict, right? Bill Cleveland: That was Ben Fink talking about how important the simple act of “making things together” is to creating trust in communities that have a history of being exploited and betrayed. In our last episode we learned how Ben, an activist theater worker and community organizer from the northeast came work for an arts-based community development organization called Appalshop, in Letcher County Kentucky. We also heard about how his hands-on approach to building partnerships panned out in his collaboration with a Trump loving, ex-coal miner, volunteer fire chief producing bluegrass concerts in the firehouse, and bringing solar energy into the heart of coal country. In this second episode with Ben, we hear more stories that confound easy us vs. them stereotypes about Appalachia and Appalshop’s work in other communities across the country. This is Change the Story / Change the World, a chronicle of art and transformation. I’m Bill Cleveland.Part 3: Lining OutBC: So Ben...BF: yeah. BC: Be a dramaturge here and take me into this beautiful, physical place that you spent your five years and place it geographically and talk about it in terms of,, the rich culture that you've found when you're there.BF: Yeah. Before I do just want to say that I spent my first two to three years there really intensely. And then I spent the final years literally living on the road, building partnerships across divides, and so that, so we get to the point where we do have a van load at East Kentucky, and it's coming to the middle of Penn, North and West Baltimore.And so, I'll focus on East Kentucky for the moment. Because I hear you asking that, but I think it's really important. For people to understand that even in this really deep and granular and local work that we'll be talking about, there was always the outward facing component. We were always thinking about how do we, not only tell our stories to others and other places, but also invite them in from the very start.But, East Kentucky, I'd never set foot there before I interviewed at the Apple shop, I knew about it only through, media and all the other ways professional class, white guy growing up in West Hartford, Connecticut hears about a place like that. And I thought about beautiful mountains and beautiful music and terrible politics.[When} I get there, what I find are some of the most open-minded people I've ever met and a lot, yeah. People that disagree with me in terms of, national consumer politics. But a lot of people who are as devoted to their place and their land and their neighbors as any people I'd ever met anywhere, if not more. But these are people who welcomed me in as a communist Jew, from the Northeast, and joked about it and invited me into their homes.Since then, I have invited so many people down to the coal fields, and their reactions have been the same, that there are people who fundamentally are about hospitality and are about building their community and have had a lot of history with people, screwing them over and that has hit hard. There is a lot of distrust, a lot of inherent distrust, but that distrust has still never overshadowed the love. They are people that fundamentally lead from love and loving each other, and loving the place where they live, and that was not something I was fully prepared for, but, I kept seeing it again and again, and I'd meet people and they'd introduce me to their neighbors, and they'd introduced me to their neighbors, and I think they for a while waiting for me to get scared and run away, or waiting for me to pull up or waiting for me to impose some kind of program, and I don't blame them for any of that because that's the experience they've had for a lot of people. But nowhere in that was a hostility. Honestly, the most hostility I got was from some of the liberals who are like, can, we're this is our way of doing things and we have this way of doing activism, and this way of doing community development, and this way of, who we relate to and who we don't relate to and blah, blah, blah.With good mentorship from my colleagues at Roadside, I said, "no, I'm not going to deal with that".I asked one of the old guards early on "what's the limit, of who roadside we'll work with? Who do we not work with?" And the response was the question is where do you stand on organized exploitation?If you are for organized exploitation, the intentional taking of value from people who create it, we're probably not going to work with you, but if you are against organized exploitation, we're good to work with. You turns out pretty much everybody is against organized exploitation because it's pretty much 0.1% that's doing it. So, within that framework, we were able to understand each other pretty quick.BC: I was wondering, how did the cultural aspect show up in your work with your neighbors in East Kentucky?BF: The other thing I would say, which is not trivial is I was surprised how many of their favorite old songs that I knew. I'm a shape note him singer, sacred, harp gospel, all that stuff. I've done it for many years.And, you know what I have been told that a lot of ice was broken at some of these events. When I got up in front of the room, I didn't need a mic cause I'm loud, and I was able to line out, Poor Wayfaring Stranger, or What Wonderous Love is This, where in a lot of these old hymns, that again, I told them I was a communist Jew from the Northeast that was not claiming to be an old, regular Baptist or...