Do you know what message I, as a working-class West Virginian, got from Obama this primary season? That we don't count. That he can't be bothered. That he'll jump like a frog from a hot rock to the defense of mine owners and outdated laws that rape the land and kill its people, but the people IN the mines and who live near the poisoned creeks are an expendable demographic. Beneath his royal contempt. The "untouchables".

You might say that's an overreaction or even a knee-jerk reaction but I can tell you there are plenty of folks here who share it. When Mr. Obama wins the nod for the nomination and expects West Virginians will fall in line after he bestows his righteous forgiveness upon us, don't be surprised if they turn away. We learned a long time ago that those who curry favor for us only for November will forget us in December. (And that's been true ever since RFK was assassinated.) I think Obama missed a golden opportunity by ignoring West Virginia, if only to send a message that he really does give a damn, votes or not. This election is not about a machine, or delegate counts or demographics -- it's about human beings. It's about showing and proving that "hope" is more than a word.

I don't mean to stray too much from the thread topic but I also believe this is probably one of the very few threads on GDP where I can honestly express my feelings on this subject among both Clinton and Obama supporters who care and who are willing to listen. You will have to pardon me if I come off a bit raw right now -- after hearing an entire state dismissed here on this forum as inbred morons, trailer trash, ignorant racist banjo-picking outhouse dwellers? This is not the Democratic Party of compassion which, as a young idealist, I grew to know and love.

Very soon there will be another primary vote in Kentucky. As a woman whose father was born on Racoon Creek in Pike County, KY and still has family down there, I am bracing myself for the barrage of bilious invectives and stereotypes that will be hurled at my people when the vote does not go as they wish. If only they, like some of you here, would take even a cursory interest in the land, its history and people, they might give pause before they hit the send button.

I would like to leave y'all with THIS message, one I embraced as a young Democratic activist but which serves as a good reminder to us -- and particularly to the people of Appalachia -- what true hope and democratic ideals once meant.

http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/a...
(excerpts)

While the Tet Offensive raged in Vietnam in February 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was on the mountain roads of southeastern Kentucky, shaking hands and setting fire to hearts from Vortex to Prestonsburg. Conducted as part of a Senate Subcommittee on Manpower, Employment and Poverty examination of War on Poverty practices, RFK’s Appalachian tour occurred one week before he announced his candidacy for President. A few months later he would be dead. But his visit touched off what the mountain people still call “a ripple of hope” that empowered them to take their future into their own hands...

...The folks of southeastern Kentucky remember RFK with extraordinary fondness. His touching intimacy and directness had a lasting effect on them, says attorney Jim Pruitt, a local Democratic Party activist who was only six when RFK came through. Pruitt now works in an office in Pikeville with pictures of “Kennedys looking at me from every direction.” He says he is inspired every day by a Bobby Kennedy quote from a speech in South Africa in 1966:

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

Thanks again for this thread.