Juliana Spahr and Brian Whitener Write for Worthy, New Commune

Poets Juliana Spahr and Brian Whitener have both penned pieces for the newest magazine on the proverbial shelf, Commune (Spahr is a contributing editor). In his piece, "The Parachutist Lands in Brasilia," Whitener looks at the "rabidly misogynist, racist, anti-poor, and homophobic former Army parachutist who sinisterly sings the praises of the military dictatorship of his youth," right-wing Brazilian politician Jair Bolsonaro. And Spahr focuses on Appalachia's effect on the mind and country, reading Steven Stoll’s Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia and Elizabeth Catte’s What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia. An excerpt from "Hostages":

Electoral politics loom large in both these books. Stoll notices again and again how inadequately Appalachians have been served by elected state and national officials and the resulting “astonishing lack of control over their environment.” Stoll on William MacCorkle (governor of West Virginia in the late 1890s): “no political leadership anywhere in the United States or the Atlantic World ever exposed its own people and environment to the same unbridled destruction and abuse.” Catte corrects the record on McDowell County (to which Stoll also attends), a county in West Virginia used by the media as exemplary of “Trump country” because 92 percent of voters went for Trump in the primary, and also, per the media,“the poorest county in West Virginia.” But as Catte points out, there are 17,508 registered voters in the county and 4,614 of them voted for Trump (another 1,429 for Clinton). McDowell County also had the lowest turnout in the state. Catte doesn’t know what to do with those 11,465 registered voters in McDowell who did not bother to vote (much less those that did not or could not register to vote).

Neither does Stoll. That is not to say he lacks for imagination. One of the more interesting parts of his book is when he presents a sort of thought experiment that he calls “the Commons Communities Act.” It’s a description of a meaningful commons. It is a bold and interesting move to turn suddenly to polemic. I confess it excited me to read it, even though Stoll admits that he favors “democratic socialism and a reinvention of the nation-state as a conduit for meeting human needs rather than for accumulating capital” and I am not at all convinced the nation state in this current formation is so malleable. Stoll is astute enough to recognize that democratic socialism might not be seen by many in the region—West Virginia regularly has the lowest voter turnout nationally—as the best or easiest path forward. He can at least see that “some within Appalachia might object to the participation of the federal government.” He also acknowledges, “people can do it for themselves, by squatting on abandoned land and defending their right to the commons” and he includes a provision that would allow the ability for residents to end their association with the federal government by majority vote.

It’s a start. He’s aware that it’s just a start...

Read on at Commune.