Pete Buttigieg on the real crisis in rural America: The Daily Beast

[CaliforniaPeggy]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mayor-pete-buttigieg-on-the-real-crisis-in-rural-america?ref=scroll

BERLIN, New Hampshire—At least a dozen times over the course of his four-day bus tour across New Hampshire last weekend, Mayor Pete Buttigieg described America as caught in the throes of a “crisis of belonging,” brought on by decades of economic, social, and civic isolation in communities across the country.

Buttigieg’s proposed solution to that crisis: a massive federal cash injection for jobs training, cutting restrictions on treating drug addiction as an illness instead of as a crime, and an $80 billion “Internet for All” program to expand access to broadband internet.
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Also, whitewater rafting and microbreweries. Lots of microbreweries.

“Every community is different, but I know what’s it like to have people question whether our community had a future,” Buttigieg told the audience at a town hall in this small North Country town. “The spirit of a community giving itself permission to believe in its own future is the spirit that we need right now in our country—and it’s the spirit that I seek to bring into the White House.”

[radical noodle]

1. I lived in small town Indiana for many years

He's right about this, although I'm not sure microbreweries are always the answer. Either we help small communities or just write them off and watch them die.

[MBS]

2. I especially liked the concluding parts of the article-

The potential partnership between generations to revitalize hollowed-out towns and cities is critical to national recovery, Buttigieg said—particularly as issues like gun control and climate change increase resentment from millennial and Gen Z voters towards their elders.
“Good leadership is negotiating among all kinds of cohorts that have justifiable frustration toward each other,” Buttigieg said, after The Daily Beast explained the “ok boomer” meme as an indicator of rising generational tensions. “Of course, there are going to be these frustrations… but the idea is to really make the most that you can out of the areas where there’s common feeling, knowing that there should be enough to what it is to be American that it’s kind of giving us the glue even across those kinds of divides.”
That unlikely intergenerational partnership in rural America could also represent a huge strategic win for Democrats, whose electoral losses in rural America could represent a major problem for Senate control down the road.
. . . .

“I like especially that he’s talking about, like, we need good education and cultural opportunities, not just for jobs but just so your quality of life is elevated,” echoed companion Katie Stevenson, who grew up in a small town in Virginia and worked as a missionary in rural Nevada. “I don’t hear anyone else talking about that. So I think that’s a really powerful message.”

More immediately, however, Buttigieg’s emphasis on rebuilding small towns with grants, training programs and craft beer has been a boon to a candidate who less than a year ago had no national political profile—particularly in communities where they’ve already tried everything else.“In many ways, Berlin is a lot like South Bend,” said Berlin Mayor Paul Grenier, who introduced Buttigieg on Saturday. “It’s taken a lot of work, creativity and unconventional ideas, but we’re going to keep moving forward. We’ve got a lot of work still to do, but we never gave up on our city.”