Across the Geographic Divide

Nearly 5 million people living in Appalachia are Black and Brown,  but Appalachians have been reduced to stereotypes of white coal miners in the mainstream media. Attorney Loree Stark breaks down what’s really going on in Appalachia, including how systemic inequity, exploitation of the labor force, disability, housing instability, and predatory lending all intersect in this unique part of the country. Loree then shares how mutual aid groups and others in the community are building coalitions and sharing stories to make change.

Guest: 

Loree Stark (@loreestark), is a Staff Attorney at the Human Rights Defense Center. Prior to joining HRDC, she worked for the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia, Mountain State Justice, and the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund of Kentucky.

If you enjoy this show and want to help fight poverty and injustice, consider making a donation to Community Legal Services today! You can also follow us on Twitter @CLSphila to stay connected.

How Is That Legal is a podcast from Community Legal Services of Philadelphia and Rowhome Productions. Jake Nussbaum is our Producer and Editor. Executive Producers are Alex Lewis and John Myers. Special thanks to Caitlin Nagel, Zakya Hall, and Farwa Zaidi. Music provided by Blue Dot Sessions.

Transcript

Kee Tobar:

Hello everyone and welcome to How Is That Legal, the podcast where we break down examples of systemic racial inequity in the law and policy and talk to experts whose stories of injustice will make you ask, how in the world is that legal? I'm your host, Kee Tobar. I'm a legal aid attorney, history enthusiast, and Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia. Today we're traveling far from our studio location here in Philadelphia to talk with attorney Loree Stark about systemic inequity in Appalachia. We're also going to dispel some prevalent myths about the region.

Personally, I had no idea that the Lehigh Gap is actually less than two hours from Philly, and you guessed it, that's Appalachia. As it turns out, Appalachia is made up 423 counties across 13 states and spans 206,000 square miles from southern New York to northern Mississippi. The region has 26.1 million residents and also comprises three federally recognized and five state recognized Native American tribal communities. Yet somehow in the mainstream media, people living in Appalachia have been reduced to white coal miners. The truth is that Appalachia is, in fact, 80% white and some regions within it are even more so, but that also means that one in five Appalachians are black and brown. That's a whole lot of people to leave out of the conversation, over 5 million.

Our guest, Loree Stark, is the staff attorney at the Human Rights Defense Center. Prior to joining HRDC, she worked for the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia, Mountain State Justice, and the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund of Kentucky. Loree and I talk about how labor issues, disability, housing instability, and predatory lending show up in Appalachia, but we also discussed some of the values that make people in Appalachia unique and how organizers in the region are fighting for justice. So here's my candid conversation with Loree Stark about what's really happening in Appalachia.

Welcome, Loree, to the show. Thank you so much for joining us.

Loree Stark:

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Kee Tobar:

Could you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about how you came to this work?

Loree Stark:

So yeah, my name is Loree Stark. I'm an attorney. I've been practicing for about 10 years. I graduated in 2012 from law school. I am from western Kentucky, originally at a town called Paducah, and I grew up in an environment where my dad was dad was in a union, so I experienced some financial stability that a lot of people who were, and circumstances similar to mine, didn't really have that opportunity. But kind of growing up where I did and being certainly in a family that was touched by poverty and having close family members that were experiencing poverty, I think I went into law school hoping to be able to do some kind of work to help alleviate those issues. And so I was in law school and while I was there I was trying to find something that felt like any area of corporate law or something, I was like, maybe there's something I'm interested in. But I just kept coming back to legal aid type work and now I'm in an organization called the Human Rights Defense Center. It's a national nonprofit.

The issue focus there is on people who are incarcerated, but also the organization is the publisher of two publications, Criminal Legal News and Prison Legal News. And as people who are familiar with the justice system know, you might be shocked to hear that they have some problems getting these publications into the facilities. So a lot of the work is actually on behalf of the publications doing First Amendment type stuff, censorship, some public record stuff. And then there are also some cases that are actually on behalf of the people who have been incarcerated, like wrongful death, working with their families and stuff like that.

Kee Tobar:

So a lot of what you said was focused on the intersection of civil rights and poverty law. Can you tell us about how those two fields connect with you or intersect?

Loree Stark:

Yeah, it's really just kind of a natural connection and unfortunately, in West Virginia, poverty just touches everything. And often I think you see this everywhere, but people who are poor, people who are unhoused are having hard enough time already, but then they are disproportionately affected by whatever policies their governments are enacting. And so we see what regularly plays out in West Virginia. But then we also see on top of that, despite there being just ... One thing I talk about a bit is harm reduction. Just there's a huge opioid crisis in West Virginia, but instead of focusing on laws that make it easier for people to be healthy and to be safe, our legislators are trying to incarcerate people for simply wanting to obtain clean syringes. So those are cases and issues that I think not a lot of other ACLUs or civil rights organizations are necessarily looking at as a civil rights or constitutional rights issue.

But because it impacts such a large swath of people where we're at, it became, and also in part because we don't have that many resources in West Virginia, something that we would look at. But also we'll see the things like it's not uncommon even in our bigger cities for the liberal governments to try to criminalize panhandling. There's so much case law that says you can't do that, but there's still ... Charleston, the city I'm in, is the biggest city, here a couple of years ago tried to criminalize panhandling, and that was in the midst of a pandemic. And on top of everything, it's just like, one, why we're trying to incarcerate people, but why are we trying to certainly incarcerate people for asking for money in the middle of a pandemic? And that raises a lot of constitutional issues. But for me, it's really right at the intersection of constitutional law and poverty and has a way to help, hopefully, as many West Virginians as we can.

Kee Tobar:

So that the name of this podcast is How Is That Legal? And as an attorney and advocate, have you ever come across a specific law or a piece of legislation that stopped you in your tracks and made you ask yourself or made you say, now I know what's written here in the statute, but how is this possibly legal?

Loree Stark:

I think definitely in consumer law starting out, those were the first few places where I saw how much latitude, certainly, that banks were given. You've got people who are signing on to take on hundreds, thousands of dollars in debt for a house or a mobile home. They can sign away all of their rights essentially, or they can sign on to this debt and give up so much to do without really requiring that much on the lenders part to verify it. And so I remember starting out looking at that stuff and being like, oh, well that can't be right. They didn't check these boxes. Surely, there's got to be significant recourse for that. And one, often there was not any recourse, but two, a lot of cases where it was, it like, oh, okay, the recourse is then the consumer or the home buyer has to go and fill out this other mountain of paperwork and maybe their house doesn't get foreclosed at this time. So I don't know, it's hard. It's absurd.

Kee Tobar:

So we're going to talk today about systemic racism in Appalachia.

Loree Stark:

Yeah.

Kee Tobar:

I'm really excited for this conversation to help dispel prevalent myths associated with this region. But first, I'd love to start with some broader context about the region. What does Appalachia refer to first and what do you think are some of the main things that folks who aren't from the region should know about it?

Loree Stark:

So Appalachia refers to a certain area of the country, and I think I said before, but I'm not from Appalachia originally. I consider myself being from the south, I'm from western Kentucky. But in Kentucky, Appalachia starts really in eastern Kentucky. And you do feel a geographic divide going across that state, western Kentucky feels very flat and in some ways is it feels like it's a little bit of a cultural twist of Midwestern and Southern. And then you have these bigger cities like Louisville and Lexington that have their own identities. But then you get to eastern Kentucky and it's a mountainous. Appalachia is some of the beautiful parts of the country I've been in. And then West Virginia, I believe, is the only state that is entirely situated within Appalachia, but I have friends who are from Appalachian Maryland. And so it cuts across a few other states.

I think something for people to know who haven't been to Appalachia is I think certainly people are going to come to it with a framework of what they've seen on TV and in the movies and all that comes with, those sort of connotations. But one thing that I think has been very interesting about Appalachia coming from a place, I didn't grow up in New York or anywhere. I grew up in a pretty small town, but it feels different than Appalachia for some of that I think has to do with the history of the region. So in West Virginia, there's a large history of unions and protests, and there is still this very, I feel like people, you're going to go down fighting. And there certainly are, I'm not going to say there aren't prejudices there, there absolutely are. But it felt different to me from where I grew up in the sense that in Appalachia feels that there's a little bit more of a live and let live, more likely to stay out of other people's business for whatever that comes to.

Whereas I know the area of the country I'm from, that very much not the case. So similar in that they're kind of a little bit rural and smaller places, but there is, I think, an identity that comes along with being in Appalachia or being an Appalachian. And that's really unique.

Kee Tobar:

In the mainstream media and in entertainment, people living in Appalachia tend to be portrayed as White, while Black and Brown people are often portrayed as only living in big cities. What is the real demographic makeup of Appalachia and why do you think things are portrayed as they are?

Loree Stark:

I do think the state has a larger White population than a number of other states, but certainly not in the way that it is portrayed in the media. The entire time I've lived in West Virginia, I've been in Charleston, so that probably does, at least, it probably feels a bit more diverse than some other areas. But what's been really interesting to see take hold here is that you'll see that actually a lot of the representations, the better, I think more accurate representations of what's happening in West Virginia and with West Virginians comes from either the local media or for people who have started their own storytelling type projects, getting their stories out. So as opposed to the joke about the national media coming and talking to a bunch of people in a diner or whatever about trap, I would be much more likely to trust someone locally who has spent a lot of time with the people and the issues.

There's a woman here, her name is Crystal Good, and what she did is she decided to start a Black newspaper for West Virginia. And there's a phrase, and I don't know the origination of it, but people will call West Virginia, West by God, Virginia. And so her newspaper is Black by God, Virginia, and it's really amazing. She's on Twitter and I'll find the link for it. But she has, and I think she has a media background, but she is doing something that's new and interesting and elevating voices that were not being heard before. And it's because of her ties to the community, so good at connecting people. But it's been really amazing to watch that happen. And I think that's been really just instrumental in getting these real life narratives out there.

Something I've been kind of a third point on my work, certainly in the past few years, is prison and jail issues. And so when I go into a courtroom in West Virginia, I'm a civil litigator, but it is often, still overwhelmingly White. But if you still get down, you still drill down to the number, you still will see what you're seeing in other places, which is that Black people and Brown people are being treated disproportionately in the system as opposed ... It's still happening here, it's just because people view West Virginia a certain way. They say, oh, well that's not a problem just because most of the state is White and you're like, well, no, actually it very much still is a problem. But that is a thing that I think people talk about a lot is why do they only show this kind of one version of West Virginia when there's lots of stories to be told.

Kee Tobar:

There have been a lot of books and so-called scholarly articles that assign a bootstraps mentality to generational poverty in Appalachia and the assumption that getting out of poverty is an individual responsibility. Can you tell us about the actual causes of poverty in Appalachia and the systemic injustices that prevent people from economic mobility or stability?

Loree Stark:

Sure. So one thing you can say about West Virginia and I think Appalachia broadly, is that this is an area and it's a people that have been exploited just time and time again. So whether you're talking about the mines, the people that own the mines coming in, or sometimes it can be even the tourism industry, but it's people that have had to work very, very hard and have had, whether it's companies or government or whatever, have a lot taken from them. And I think that kind of lends itself to that sort of spirit I was talking about earlier of feels a bit more live and let live or something in that people seem to, for better or worse, focus on what's in front of them. And I think maybe that's because that's what they've had to do for a long time. And so there are lots of things that can lead to poverty, but certainly in Appalachia we see a history of predatory practices from companies against people that live and work in West Virginia.

We were talking about some of the consumer type stuff, we had so much work to do when I was at Mountain State Justice on behalf of working with people who had gotten into these predatory loans. And part of that is because actually West Virginia has one of the highest property ownership rates in the country. And that's because property is relatively inexpensive here. And so what happens is people will get into, often, loans for manufactured homes and then they end up putting up their land as collateral, the land that they own. And then the terms of these loans can be horrifying in terms of interest rates and they find themselves losing their home and their poverty. And that kind of just comes back to this, you're seeing a way to get out of poverty or to follow this track that you think you should be following, but no matter what's happening or there's something coming for you around the corner, it feels like.

And then so in that case, it's like with these mortgage companies or with these lenders, but then also it's just certainly, currently with our current legislature, it's like people are just wanting to live their lives and the legislature and a lot of local governments are really either from a consumer standpoint, they're trying to make it easier for companies to be predatory. Or in looking at some of these other issues, making it more difficult for our kids in our public schools and just coming after all with all of these hateful bills and legislation targeting people who are already having a pretty tough time.

Kee Tobar:

So I'm from Turrell and Blytheville, Arkansas. Turrell, Arkansas is population, I think at this moment, maybe a bit 600 or under. I know it's not over 600. And Blytheville, Arkansas, I think we are at a whopping 12 to 13,000 now. Such a big city. So I often think when I'm telling people I'm from Arkansas, one, they're like, where is that on a map? Or when I tell them I'm from a place that's a really small town, I often think that small towns or rural areas generally are not in the imagination of people. I don't think they know anything at all or think anything at all about what the lives are like for people who are living in that town.

Connect to that. I'm wondering, could you explain, from your opinion, how not only systemic racism may show up for Black and Brown people in rural areas. How does discrimination of any identity period in your experience show up for communities in rural areas?

Loree Stark:

It's interesting because where I grew up, it was only more than 600 people. Paducah is like 20,000 and it was the big metropolitan area in western Kentucky. But my grandparents lived a little bit further out. And then certainly, in the past decade of my career, I've been mostly working in smaller communities and those are really some of the most interesting, and I think, difficult cases I've had are with families that are fighting back against some terrible law that the legislature has passed. And if you're looking at a situation where the legislature is trying to make life more difficult for trans kids, then, first of all, in these rural areas to begin with ... And oftentimes, people come in with preconceived notions about how a family is going to be or not be. And I have found that I've represented people and families from rural areas who have seemed to have more loving and supportive environments than I think a lot of people would imagined, but maybe how they got there is a different journey.

But I think that is the thing is that people can be more complicated and complex than we perceive them as. And I think it can cut both ways. But when we're talking about representing people in Appalachia with that really broad brush of being poor and not very smart, and all of these things, you can also get into some of these rural communities and you see, oh, everyone is as emotionally adept or intellectually adept in one area as they are to the other, and it's hurting them to come in with these sort of preconceived notions. I think a lot of the people I have represented, I'm sure I disagree with a number of them on politics, but certainly in my consumer cases and stuff, they're people that are working that were victimized by a predatory lending company that have been dealing with all this. And they have these lawmakers coming in who are overwhelmingly older White men like rich and that have never approached anything like that, that to deal with it. And so it's just a really interesting disconnect, I think.

Kee Tobar:

So growing up in the rural south, that's what led me to wanting to do poverty law because I had a very intimate relationship with poverty, even not necessarily talking about solely my family, but just the community around me. When the whole town depends on one particular industry, when that industry leaves and we're all feeling a certain type of way. I understand that the percentage of people, so that's what led me to the work. And so disability and dealing with, because you say you were speaking about I think a coal town, and so we were a steel town. We had one little steel mill and everybody worked there and then you realize that lots of people are getting cancer, lots of people are ... This a tough industry, so on and so forth. So I'll connect that too.

I understand that the percentage of people receiving disability benefits is higher in the Appalachia region, which is at I think 7.3% than in the United States as a whole, which is 5.1%, and that Social Security disability insurance beneficiaries are most likely to live in the south, as was my case, seeing that and Appalachia or the Great Lakes. What are some of the factors contributed to this higher rate of disability in the area? And how are these factors tied to race at all, if at all?

Loree Stark:

I think it's really interesting how we were talking about coming from a steel town and how a sort of the comparison to a coal town because where I grew up, my dad, he worked for a nuclear power plant, so we were a nuclear power plant town, but that was the place you could work and make a decent wage and not have to have a certain level of education. But then also a lot of people ended up getting really sick too later on down the road. And so I think a lot of it is certainly, we're looking at a disability is the conditions under which people are working. And certainly in coal mines, it's just pretty historically awful. And then you have generations of that. And then you also have the fact that this isn't a place that is attracting or growing jobs or industries that will keep people employed or continuously employed. But there are a lot of just poor health factors and that's like some of that is from the conditions that people work in and some of it is just access to things like clean water, and a lot of it is tied to poverty too.

Kee Tobar:

We've had quite a few conversations on this podcast about housing issues because, as you know, all these issues are connected. Many from a more urban perspective, how does housing instability show up in Appalachia and what do you think are possible solutions?

Loree Stark:

Housing instability shows up in a lot of different ways. And it's interesting in West Virginia, and then it was like this a bit in eastern Kentucky too is that there's a lot of areas where it's almost impossible to rent. There's just not a rental market. And so people that want to stay in those communities or be in those communities to be close to their family are already coming in not having a lot of, particularly the smaller towns, a lot of affordable rental options. And so then in that case it becomes even easier, I think, to get them into some kind of predatory lending contract for land or for a manufactured home or something like that. Because then they'll say, oh, we've got a lot more of this and there's not too many regulations on what we have to do for the contracts or what the terms can be. And so that's how people get often get into these sort of predatory housing things.

But then also in terms of rentals, there's not a lot of competitive rental markets, I think. And so you have university towns where you have a lot of renters and a lot more places to choose from, but that are pretty much targeting kids that are in college. Or in those places, you're going to find like in a lot of places, that they just do a horrible job of upkeep on the property and because they have so many college students, there aren't people there long enough to really bring the problems to light. But it's what has been the most interesting for me, I think is it's hard for people to even to rent and to find a place that's like, if you come into town and you can't pass whatever the credit check is or if your rent is going to be, and this will happen a lot in West Virginia, wherever you go to rent, it's probably going to be more than you'd be paying or making for a house payment.

But in order to buy a house in the traditional way and get a loan that's not super predatory, that requires having assets to put down, that requires lots of things where maybe you can pay this much this paycheck, but you don't have all that sitting around. And so that's often where I've kind of found the housing instability to really creep up as people that are getting into these long-term predatory lending contracts often for mobile homes and using their land as collateral because there wasn't a rental market for them to really get into.

Kee Tobar:

So throughout this conversation, I've heard you mention just predatory lending as a thing that is a consistent theme in the area. And as we've had our podcast, we've basically talked in various ways around what Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor would say is a predatory inclusion. We've discussed how the American dream of home ownership can turn into a nightmare for Black homeowners and families from, as you discussed, predatory loans and unfairly high property taxes to Medicaid estate recovery and tangled titles. At Mountain State Justice in Charleston, you represented West Virginians victimized by predatory mortgage lenders and abusive loan services. What was actually happening? I'd like to get more into that.

Loree Stark:

There were a few different ways cases would come to us. The first thing I would say is when I was in Kentucky, I was practicing, it was a judicial foreclosure state, so by the time anybody came to me, it was because they had already been sued in court by a bank to get their home. And I didn't really even know until I was learning more about the law before leaving Kentucky that there were places that didn't have to happen.

Kee Tobar:

What is a judicial, I don't mean to cut you off.

Loree Stark:

Judicial foreclosure.

Kee Tobar:

What is that?

Loree Stark:

So a judicial foreclosure versus a non-judicial foreclosure state. A judicial foreclosure state means, let's say Wells Fargo, they're who I owe my money to and for whatever reason they want to come after me. In Kentucky, for them to take my home, they have to go to court and they have to file a lawsuit. And I have to have the opportunity to come to court and do all this stuff. And it's how you would think, that's how I just assumed it worked everywhere. But West Virginia and a lot of other places are non-judicial foreclosure states. And so what that means is there are still some notice requirements. And so they have these trustees, essentially, who will post for the sale of a property and they do have to send so many notices and stuff to you, but there are scenarios in which your home would be foreclosed on without you having gone to court at all.

And so when people came to us, or would come to me at my job in Mountain State Justice in West Virginia, they would have often either been at a point where their house had just been sold, maybe they got some of the notices but didn't get all of them, or maybe it was confusing as to what they were supposed to actually get. And it is very confusing. Some people had just received maybe the first notice that they were intending to have the property sold. And so honestly, earlier it was generally better, but in West Virginia, my clients would be the ones, we would be suing the banks or whoever to stop the sale or to try to get that sorted out to avoid foreclosure.

Whereas in Kentucky, when I was working at Legal Aid, the banks had to jump through all these judicial hoops. So by the time people got to me, they had generally already been sued and were fearing that their house would be lost in foreclosure, but there were still entitled to the judicial process. So we had a discovery period, we could ask for certain things. It's a lot more streamlined than not judicial foreclosure.

Kee Tobar:

So how did racial injustice show up in that area?

Loree Stark:

You will see instances, for sure, where you know can, particularly if you're talking with, there's so many instances I think of talking with a client where it's clear that racism was part of a core, how they got stuck into this, were looped into this predatory contract, but then not having it amount to what you might need to demonstrate that aspect of it in court. But just sitting down and talking to people and getting their stories, you could get an understanding that a lot of times that might be a factor that is in play. And so some of it is, there are certain areas where I think historically had already been disenfranchised and you would see banks that might be coming in and just looking at several properties in that specific area or that specific neighborhood at that time. And it's hard to know exactly what factors all led up to that moment and that time, but it feels pretty safe to say that racism might've played a part in it.

Kee Tobar:

One of the things I want to always make sure we do as it relates to this podcast, it's not just talk about the problems, but making sure that we're also talking about some of those solutions and things that we can do to help change the problems. So we've talked about some of the challenges facing Appalachia, but in a region of 26.1 million, there are tons of people fighting to change these systems, including you. What does organizing look like in Appalachia and how are communities fighting injustice?

Loree Stark:

Yeah, that's a great question. So when I was at the ACLU, I had the privilege of working alongside full-time organizers and getting to see how they do that work and getting an understanding that I would be very bad at their jobs. I think it requires certainly a very extroverted personality for a lot of people and being able to keep all these balls in the air. And so the organizers I've worked with are some of the hardest working people that I know. But I honestly think that, can I say this, I'm obviously a lawyer, so I am working within the system in a lot of ways, but I'm definitely not the type of lawyer that thinks that in most or in all cases, and certainly not even most cases, that the law is going to be the thing that gets you what you need the most quickly.

I think we should often be reversing the question to say, here's the problem, and looking at our solutions and not jumping to the law first, because lawsuits can drag out for years and years and years. And we're seeing courts doing things that we thought they would never do in a million years. And so when people have this question of, oh, is this constitutional or how can they do that? You can say it's not constitutional or they shouldn't be able to do that. But at the end of the day, you don't know exactly what a court is going to say. And so some of the fastest change in West Virginia is really through organizing work. And then to the extent that lawyers can ever put themselves in position to support organizers, ask them what they need and see what you can do to help.

But it's difficult in West Virginia with all the rural areas, I think, particularly getting people out to the capital, and particularly when you have the legislature who isn't super interested in what the public has to say anyway, or getting their input or they don't want the people of West Virginia to be heard. And so for organizers, how do we get people to the capital in one way and send it? How can people participate otherwise when we're in the middle of a pandemic? Also that there are lots of reasons, even in non-pandemic times, that people should or wouldn't want to go to the capital and then making sure their voices are heard. And so it just seems this really tireless work of connecting, not just organizations, and in fact a lot of times, it's not coalitions or anything, but just connecting with large groups of people and connecting with communities. And in a lot of cases, it seems like it's just really this ongoing relationship building.

Kee Tobar:

What do you think is the key to building successful multiracial coalitions to dismantle injustice?

Loree Stark:

A lot of the more successful organizing and coalition building I have seen has been, certainly some of it was in the traditional organizations you think of, but then also mutual aid organizations. A lot of people that are doing mutual aid work in West Virginia aren't people that generally work at or with the nonprofits, but they're in their communities in a way that people that sitting behind a desk however many hours a week aren't. And so I've seen some really interesting organizing and coalition building around some of the encampment work I was talking about earlier. I would personally love to sue every municipality that does this to an encampment, but one, there's only so much you can get in the court system, even if you find a favorable judge.

And then two, it's seeing it teamed with something or seeing in addition to that or a place of that, I've seen some organizers or mutual aid organizations really do all of this work to get people comfortable telling their stories about what happened to them, which must be so incredibly difficult, I think, particularly when you're someone who is constantly being already harassed by the police or whatever, or you've been disappointed or left out by your representatives and your lawmakers over and over and time and time again, to have these people in their communities working to get people to at least at a level of comfort and trust with them. That, to me, that seems like where the most impactful work can jump off from once those connections are made.

Kee Tobar:

Thank you so much for joining the show. I really have enjoyed this conversation.

Loree Stark:

I had a great time.

Kee Tobar:

Well, that was my interview with Loree Stark. I'm really glad that I had the opportunity to hear how housing instability affects people in Appalachia. If you've listened to How Is That Legal for even just a few episodes, you know that housing has been such a massive sight of racial inequity in this country. It was really interesting to hear that renters in West Virginia are also dealing with an affordable housing crisis and many people are forced into predatory lending contracts. And when Loree described non-judicial foreclosures, I was immediately reminded of my conversation with Monty Wilson, where he described a very similar scenario here in Philadelphia.

What's become clear to me over the course of hosting this show is that inequity can affect different communities in different ways, but the root cause is the same, white supremacy. However, it doesn't have to be this way. Whether in Appalachia or Philadelphia or the other side of the planet, we must fight back against systems of oppression and ultimately dismantle them. And we'll definitely be talking about how to do that in the remaining episodes of season two.

If you want to ask questions about the show or let us know what you think, please email us at podcast@clsphila.org. Also, while Community Legal Services of Philadelphia offers free legal assistance on a range of civil legal issues, we are not a criminal defense firm. So if you live in Philadelphia and are looking for non-criminal legal help, please visit us at C-L-S-P-H-I-L-A.O-R-G. We cannot respond to questions about legal issues via email.

Season two of How Is That Legal is produced by Rowhome Productions. Jake Nussbaum is our producer and editor. Executive producers are Alex Lewis and John Myers. Music provided by Blue Dot Sessions. Special thanks to Caitlin Nagel, Zakya Hall, and Farwa Zaidi. I'm your host, Kee Tobar.