A bridge called jobs

A thought keeps me moving through this boiling cauldron of a political environment: Can the creation of high-quality jobs bridge the political divide?

New River Gorge Bride, Fayetteville, WV - photo: public domain

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Everyday there seems to be some shocking news to digest that threatens to capsize my little boat trudging through tumultuous waters. Over the weekend it was news that we are aligning ourselves with Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship. It is taking all my will power these days to stay focused on the work in front of me when there is so much upheaval happening in our country and on the world stage. It is tempting to sit tight with my righteous anger. Maybe shoot off a few angry social media posts. But I know that that will not get our textile industry redevelopment work where it needs to be. We cannot afford to have stalled progress on our job creation efforts for the next four years. Holding onto my anger and withdrawing is not the way forward.

I wrote last week that I had reached out to our public officials - state senators, our congresswoman and some local government officials about our frozen funding for our Mercer County textile redevelopment work. Congresswoman Carol Miller’s field representative reached out to me to schedule an in-person

meeting. I am embarrassed to admit that at 40 - I never have been in touch with my government representatives wherever I have lived until now - until a treasured project I am working on is on the chopping block. And so I sat down with field representative Jonathan Hall, one of two field representatives for the 1st Congressional District that includes Mercer County.

I have to admit that I had no idea what to expect. The cynical part of me thought that perhaps this meeting was an empty exercise to make constituents feel heard. I sat down across from Mr. Hall at our Dream Bean coffee shop on Mercer Street and shared with him my story as a business owner turned local textile advocate when I needed trained sewers for my business. I shared that through living and working here I have learned that there are more than two dozen textile related businesses in Mercer County, many of which have shared business needs. And then I shared our Mercer County textile redevelopment work, with support from the WV Community Development HUB, that it could create more than 100 jobs in our community and that it was at risk because of the funding freeze.

I was pretty frank in my appeal to him. Mercer County needs jobs. For better or worse much of this job creation work is occurring with federal support. What is the plan for making sure that these efforts to create jobs in our communities continue? What are they doing to help?

What ensued was a very real conversation about job creation - about the southern part of West Virginia - where we are - not benefiting from the economic development work occurring up north including the steel manufacturing plant in Mason County. We talked about challenges and opportunities for workforce development programs. I am sure that there is plenty that Mr. Hall and I would not agree on. The need for job creation in this part of the state was not one of those things. There are enough issues with older business owners who can’t find skilled personnel, who are isolated and have to ride out ups and downs in our local economy and young people leaving the community for “better opportunities” that it is clear that just cutting taxes and enacting tariffs will not be enough to lift this community up. So what can we do about it?

It was quite frankly refreshing to sit down with someone from our very conservative government and to find so much common ground. Mr. Hall and I discussed ideas for sewing workforce development happening in various communities, and ways in which their office could support this work. I hope that it is just the start of a conversation and years of productive work together.

There were two big takeaways from our meeting that I wanted to share here: 1) Job creation work is bipartisan and a huge priority for the state government in West Virginia. Do not assume that your local government doesn’t want to support it because we may disagree on some other things. 2) Do not let your important job creation work fly under the radar. Get it out there - let your elected officials know what is happening with it - how it benefits the community. Mr. Hall asked me to follow up with an email with basic information about our project so that they could contact people at the Federal Economic Development Administration - where the funding for the program was held up. He said that they needed to know about this work. There is a lot going on all the time and they can’t help if it is not on their radar. Fair.

In the end our funding was unfrozen (!), something that was in the works before this meeting occurred. But my perspective shifted nonetheless. A very simple lesson keeps floating back to the top - make no assumptions about who will and will not support your work. Do not make your circle of supporters smaller before you have gone out there - yes - in person and had real world conversations with people to figure out where they stand on issues. And I am not resting on my laurels with this. At any moment we could be subject to spending cuts. But I am making it my business to keep this work on people’s radar.

This lesson was reinforced yesterday when we received some additional exciting news. Our statewide indigo project with Coalfield Development and West Virginia University to see if the natural dye indigo could be productively farmed as a cash crop for WV farmers has been awarded a $200k grant by USDA’s Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education program (SARE). As excited as I was to learn this news - I am viewing it with the same words of caution as the Mercer County textile redevelopment work. Do not let these projects fly under the radar in your communities. You need to get the word out there and be loud and proud about job creation efforts. So that if you find that your beloved work is on the chopping block again - people, including your local government, will be able to stand up for you and share what it means to them and their community.

A thought has been building over these past few weeks that keeps me moving through this boiling cauldron of a political environment. If we can get really focused on this question: How do we create high quality jobs in our communities? -can we use it to bridge the looming, perilous looking divide in this country? Can we swim together over to that island of neutral territory called job creation and work on answering this question together? Can we bring our best selves to the task of creating jobs in our community - the selves that are focused on benefiting our local community members above all else? Can we set aside our pride, our righteous anger, our team’s political colors and get to work on this?

After all, better quality jobs will lead to more abundance in our communities - which is the opposite of scarcity - the source of all the chaos we are experiencing.

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Please note: I will be offline from March 11th until March 28th. Reid Substack posts will resume on Tuesday April 1st.

For those of you in the region - please consider attending The West Virginia Sustainable Fashion Show on Saturday, April 26 at the Lewis Theater in Lewisburg, WV. More information and tickets available here.