I was once in a store I used to work at, but had quit and was just there shopping. I guess some lady recognized me and started asking me questions, but I told her I didn’t work there. She insisted I in fact did and kept asking me questions. I informed her I was an employee but no longer was so I couldn’t help her. She demands to speak to my manager, I said “what manager?” A former co-worker comes over and tells her that, indeed, I no longer work there and offers to help her but she demands that I help her. I just turn around and go check out, and she’s screaming at me from the aisles as this guy keeps telling her I don’t work there anymore.

Later my buddy who still worked there called and informed me she filed a complaint with management, who again tried to explain I was no longer an employee of their company.

As a guy with some Appalachian roots, I’ll be honest, I don’t think there’s much hope.

Firstly I would like to say I think a lot of leftists over estimate the proletariat character of rural Appalachia. Despite the hillbilly aesthetics there’s actually quite a big labor aristocrat class here. Take a drive around WV and you’ll see almost as many nice houses nestled in the woods as trailer parks. The cost of living is so low here it makes living a middle class lifestyle easier on a budget, you can be petite bourgeois with a salary that would be peanuts in even a cheaper US city. Even the more genuinely less well off people have some things going for them over their urban counterparts, they generally own the land they live on, they don’t have to worry as much about state surveillance and pay less taxes. Overall they have a lot more independence than the urban poor and that makes them a bit less predisposed to the idea of socialism.

A lot of the real proletariat of Appalachia has left for Philly and Cincinnati, once coal jobs dried up. What you have left now is more akin to a culture of poor yoeman farmers, exploited but deeply conservative.