This article caught my eye just because (a) it is in the BBC and (b) it is about Martinsville, Virginia. It just so happens I was born in Martinsville in 1975 and lived there until 1985. Many of my relatives worked in the furniture and textile factories there between the end of World War II and when most of the factory jobs left in the 80s and 90s. Once upon a time Martinsville was an Appalachian manufacturing powerhouse and a place working class people could get decent paying jobs. Race relations were not perfect by any means but still, white and black and spanish-speaking working people shared in the relative prosperity. Workplace health and safety was also not perfect – my grandfather was minus a foot and an aunt was minus a few fingers at one point, although they were later reattached. Given all that, there was relative prosperity, health, and modern amenities for people whose parents and grandparents were subsistence farmers. The article talks about how NAFTA destroyed most of those jobs and most of that prosperity, and people are still bitter about it.

Now, I find the ideology of free trade attractive as a general principle. I think those industries were on the wane and those jobs were on the way out, and NAFTA just hastened them along. Still, it was a very abrupt and drastic change in Martinsville, and the people who were hurt are real people that I know. It illustrates that abstract measures of average economic prosperity that look good on paper have to be tempered with an understanding of what is going on with a broad cross-section of people across geographies, for example working class white and black and Hispanic people in Appalachia. People need viable options to be retrained and relocated in some cases to remain economically viable, and obviously their children need to be well educated. There has to be a safety net for the people who still fall through the cracks.

Sadly, the people interviewed in this article don’t seem supportive of the very policies that might help them, like universal health care. They were supportive of Obama but felt let down by him when he wasn’t able to deliver substantive change in their lives during his years in office. They don’t support anyone named Clinton because they associate that name with NAFTA. So, despite the fact that the people interviewed in this article are kind hearted, moral, and anything but bigots, which fits my personal experience in Appalachia, they are left with Trump as the only available choice that makes sense to them.