We drove into Green County, Alabama, the poorest county in the country — and it shows. Touring downtown Boligee, Alabama, we saw a grocery, a bank, a mechanic shop and a series of other buildings, all closed. Some reduced to rubble. (The only thing open now is the Post Office.) The small farms, cotton gins, and other industry were once the staple here. But agri-business up north and out west has driven most small farmers off their land here, the industry has gone north and most jobs (which aren’t many) pay little more than minimum wage. Gary Burton, 41, said he is one of the lucky ones, working at a small cedar mill for “pretty good money,” $7.10 an hour. When asked how people got by down here, Gary said: “Dollar Stores.” In Epes, Alabama, just south of Boligee, Debra Bock told us a good number of people from here take a bus 2 and 1\/2 hours from here to work at the Tyson Chicken Plant in Forest, Mississippi “for a little over $7 an hour.” She said people will get on the bus at 6:30 p.m., work from 10:15 p.m. to 6:15 a.m., ride another 2 and 1\/2 hours home — and do it again the following night. [Meanwhile, many of those who are “advantaged,” comfortably sit back over a chicken dinner and the nightly news — without a social justice thought about it all. What an absolute travesty, not to mention a huge moral failing.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We drove into Green County, Alabama, the poorest county in the country — and it shows. Touring downtown Boligee, Alabama, we saw a grocery, a bank, a mechanic shop and a series of other buildings, all closed. Some reduced to …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}