Much has been made about the places occupied by the white working class in the wake of the 2016 election and the death and possible rebirth of the mass employment manufacturing economy. So let’s move beyond that, and onto an issue that must be shown to not just be relevant to Silicon Valley, but to the Clinch River Valley.

I live in Appalachia, more specifically in a blue city, surrounded by red, in an increasingly blue state. But that blueness is irrelevant here, 4 hours from the nation’s capital. Perhaps you’ve read a thing or two in a popular book or national newspaper about what people out here value. Independence. Self-sufficiency. Work. Oh, and coal. Don’t forget coal. It’s certainly been a driver of the local economy in the past, from the workers in the mines, to equipment repair, to the railroads transporting the coal, to the stores that all those persons employed by the various phases of the coal extraction process shop in.

Dependence on mining has, for over a century, meant dependence on the owners of the mines. Even after unionization became widespread in the industry, decisions made in boardrooms hours, if not days, away drove the livelihoods of those dependent on King Coal. As the new energy revolution has accellerated towards natural gas, solar, wind, and other less labor-intensive sources, an indelible mark has been left on the hillsides, valleys, and downtowns of this area. Left behind are the broken bodies of the laborers dependent on these jobs and their families. The drug addiction issue has been covered in-depth worldwide. I don’t need to cover it again here. For one, it’s a part of my daily work.

I work with, to be kind, the displaced. To be less kind, I work with the broken. Those out of work. Those without the prospect of work. Sometimes it’s due to physical disabilities incurred on the job. Sometimes it’s due to disadvantages pressed on them by their families who never thought their sons wouldn’t have the mines to look to for work. Why encourage someone to go to school during their prime teen years, when they can fit into tight seams? Today, the energy revolution, coupled with increasing automation in all extraction industries, makes these physically worn down or unskilled individuals redundant. That’s a tough label to accept, redundant. It’s even harder when you realize that, for many, accepting another label, that of the disabled, may be their only ticket to a paycheck in a land where those who are ambitious move and those left fight over the few remaining service jobs at Wal Mart and the occasional call center, that is if you haven’t had your nerves shot to death working in high stress positions, leaving you unable to deal with people.

For as long as I can remember, there’s been two formulas for winning the jobs issue here: environmental regulation rollbacks (long live King Coal), or, what is most often the center-left’s chestnut, “investing in education, skills, and job creation.” What the latter translates to is not always clear. You can give incentives to small businesses (who’ve gradually seen clientel leave or have their wages curtailed through job loss and a shift onto a fixed income of Social Security or food stamps) to hire, you can fund retraining for new skills and education that can be used at jobs that are never guaranteed, or you can try to roll out the welcome mat for new big employers. That last one is the most involved. Take the AT&T call center located in Russell County, VA. It’s a step above Wal Mart as far as job environments go, but customer service jobs, especially tech-related ones, both require considerable additional investment in infrastructure such as increased internet capacity, as well as competitive wages to compete with offshore call centers in South Asia. This doesn’t even get into the realm of corporate welfare in the form of massive land and tax giveaways to large corporations who promise to create some, any number of jobs that can be used in an upcoming campaign ad and the hole this blows in already strapped county government budgets in a place where the median household income can hover around $10,000 a year.

So what do you do with these families it seems like everyone forgot except the people calling from the power company and social services? As a humanist and a Christian, doing nothing is not an option for me. Letting Appalachia sort itself out, burn itself down, or just empty out should not be acceptable to anyone with concern for social justice. And making false promises that coal can be recrowned King or that we can out-compete India for call centers in perpetuity or that a skill always comes with a job guarantee will not cut it. We need a permanent solution that respects the humanity and freedom of all persons globally and takes us out of the era of fighting for scarce resources and into a more stable era of basic dignity, where one will never have to worry again about whether or not all of their various maladies add up to the title of “disabled.” We need Universal Basic Income to ensure first the ability to afford basic necessities. Work, be it what little part time work a big box store or local cafe or machine shop can offer, will become not just a way to subsist and not die from poor heath and lack of resources, but a way to move ahead and unlock potential. Who knows? Maybe that extra money on top of this theoretical basic living allowance will be what a 40 year old who once had poor job prospects due to a prior neck fusion, heart defect, and PTSD uses to pursue a more fulfilling living at his own independent in-home business? Or maybe he pays down the debt owed to the therapist he could only afford to see once every other month (of course, stronger health reform must run parallel to UBI, too)? Maybe he volunteers what he learned through therapy to help get others with the same illness back on their feet through a support group? Or maybe he just learns a new skill for the often-forgotten life necessity of fun rather than survival? Isn’t it time we gave people living in some of the roughest terrain in America respect rather than a check that comes attached to a judgmental look? It’s all they, or rather, we’ve ever wanted.