Right after completing the previous post on the HRSA data set I came across this article in the Guardian titled Trump 2.0 has deleted or altered nearly 400 US datasets, endangering public health, education and more. As someone who relies on these releases to find meaningful social, environmental, political and economic trends for the Alleghenies, […]

by Paul Ricci Annually the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) comes out with an Unmet Need Score (UNS) for every zip code in the U.S. The UNS is a composite of 33 health variables at the zip code level. This post will focus on the 100 zip codes with the highest UNSs in Pennsylvania. […]

Nick Brisini has written this piece on the great Cassandra coal strike in 1932. The battle for human rights in the Appalachian coal fields had a long history and, if studied, has a lot of lessons for workers today. One strike, barely known, was the great Cassandra coal strike of 1932. It was a yearlong […]

Jackie Allison wrote this humorous piece, Working Class Majority, for the online magazine Funny Times in 2015. It is still relevant today and is reprinted with permission. I suggest a new government party, the Working Class Majority. Note that it would be called a majority, not a party. The working class isn’t a hedonistic picnic. […]

by Paul Ricci Watching Dr. Anthony Fauci get grilled by the U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee brought back a lot of memories of the struggles of the pandemic. The committee is chaired by Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky). He is a trained ophthalmologist. Senator Paul is now pursuing contempt of Congress charges against Fauci after he […]

On July 24 & 25, I went to two events: one in Pittsburgh and one in Bellwood, PA. The former was a One Payer States panel on strategies to push for Medicare for All at the state level. The other group was a vigil in honor of the two men killed by ICE in Maine […]

Nick Brisini has written the poem Appalachian Fire. Below is a video of him doing another poetry reading. Discarded snuff cans, empty beer bottles line back roads to a cold hell below. In the mines of Appalachia men and women worked and some died. Others spent their final days gasping for breath. Then the mines […]

On Saturday, July 18, I went to the second annual Justice Jam at the Oakhurst Homes in Johnstown. The event was run by Put People First PA. They cooked hamburgers and hot dogs. There was also music and speakers who spoke on their struggles with poverty and healthcare. The video above shows the speakers and […]

Nick Brisini has written a review of the book Working Class Radicals: The Socialist Party in West Virginia, 1889-1920 by Frederick Barley. The capitalist brainwashing of works over time to convince us that socialism has no place in “our” country. It is, they proclaim, Un-American as if capitalism was synonymous with America. Reading Working Class […]

Recently, the Southern Poverty Law Center has published its new hate map for 2025. Last year they tracked 1,263 groups nationwide. The year before they tracked 1,371 groups and 1,430 in 2023. There was a 12% decrease between 2023 and 2025 in the raw number of groups. When adjusting for population there were 3.81 groups […]