Care, Democracy and The Need for Structural Change

A Conversation with Elizabeth Gish of the Kettering Foundation

“I hate to hear people like J.D. Vance say that Appalachians are lazy, because maybe he hasn’t worked in the coal mines, or tobacco fields, or factories, but this is not easy work and not an easy life.” - Elizabeth Gish, Kettering Foundation

Elizabeth Gish, senior program officer at the Kettering Foundation, on why care and democracy are linked. (photo courtesy Elizabeth Gish)

I’ve known Elizabeth Gish for years, and our work occasionally overlaps. In 2020, she left academia for a job at the Charles F. Kettering Foundation in Dayton, and began diving into the work of strengthening democracy in marginalized communities. One theme that kept coming up with people as an obstacle to being involved in democracy and community? Child care.  

Elizabeth developed a program at the Kettering Foundation called the Dayton Democracy Fellows. This is “lowercase-d” democracy – non-partisan work focused on making sure everyone can be part of democracy. Yet without sufficient care infrastructure in place, people feel disconnected from their community and from decision-making power structures. Elizabeth explains that many people are so busy trying to keep their head above water between child care woes, elderly parents, or medically compromised family members, that the idea of going to a community meeting, protest, or campaign event often seems absurd. 

I spent some time this week with Elizabeth in Dayton, Ohio, meeting with some of the Kettering Foundation Dayton Democracy Fellows and seeing their work in action. (I’ll be reporting on this more in the coming weeks.) Elizabeth was kind enough to do an interview, and a lightly edited Q+A is below. 

Rebecca: You were 20 years old when you wrote your senior thesis on the culture of Appalachian people in Dayton, Ohio, and the shift from work in the coal mines to work in factories. Your writing is decades ahead of J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy and Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead (books that take very distinct views of Appalachian history). How did that inform your community work that you’re doing today?

EG: There is this great song by Tyler Childers, who is an Appalachian singer whose music I love and I am writing about in my own research on religion and democracy. Childers sings:

And in my darkest hour

I cry out to the Lord

He says, "Keep on minin', boy

'Cause that's why you were born"

I start here because there is this recurring theme in the history of the Appalachian people that somehow this is what Appalachian people are for: our people, our land, our homes, and our stories are just there for the taking. ‘That’s why you were born.’ This idea that you were just made to mine coal, or whatever purpose you can serve for others. And understanding that helps explain why the Appalachian people, whether they are at home in the mountains or if they have moved to the cities ‘up north’ even several generations removed from the mountains, are often suspicious of systems and outsiders. They have long been exploited for their land, labor, or for how many pills they can buy up from Purdue Pharma. Appalachian folks share this with lots of other groups who have been exploited and marginalized: a lack of trust of outsiders and a sense that you are not enough as you are.

After WWII, many Appalachians left the declining coal mines behind and came to the north for better work. In many ways, this is my own family’s story. My great grandfather died of black lung, and then my own grandaddy moved his family up north to work at a Dupont factory. But they came back to Kentucky as often as they could because that’s where their community was and they wanted to be connected to that. So they went from coal mines to factories in cities, all of this back-breaking work. And then the factories shut down. I hate to hear people like J.D. Vance say that Appalachians are lazy, because maybe he hasn’t worked in the coal mines, or tobacco fields, or factories, but this is not easy work and not an easy life.

Photo of Elizabeth’s great-grandaddy John William Monaghan Jr. (left) and her great-uncle Charlie Coffey. Monaghan contracted black lung from working in the coal mines and died in 1971. Photo was taken in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky; the exact year us unknown, though likely between 1922 and 1940.

To add insult to injury, after the coal jobs are dwindling, the factories are closing, the rivers are poisoned, the trees are gone, then the opioid people swooped in all like, ‘Are you in pain from working in the mines or fields or the factories and not able to get actual real health care? We have a solution to that.’ You then get the pill mills, addiction, and yet somehow the narrative is often that people should work harder or try harder or do more. They can never give enough or be enough.

And you talk to my friends in the neighborhoods in Dayton and ask them what they think of the lack of jobs, the lack of health care, the lack of decent child care, the lack of adequate housing, failing schools, no care for mammaw, and they often tell you, “Well, I guess we should have tried harder.” They talk to you about shame. They talk to you about hopelessness and a sense that there is nothing that can be done, that this is the way things are because they have been trying so damn hard their whole lives and it is not better, so it must be something they are doing wrong. And this is what I hate. I hate this idea that people blame themselves for structural issues. For me, democracy is about everyone having a say about what their lives and communities should look like and people do want that. But too often the systems in their lives have failed them over and over again, and then people tell them “Oh go vote,” or “Oh go to an organizing meeting,” when they are really just trying to get through that day. For me, this is where I see the connection between care and democracy. We can’t have space in our lives to be engaged in creating the world we want, if we can’t even get through our day and we have no community support. 

Mary Rose Gish, a.k.a Elizabeth’s Mammaw, in Davises Co., Kentucky, circa 1935. (photo courtesy Elizabeth Gish)

RG: You mentioned that your goal of the Kettering Foundation Dayton Democracy Fellows program is to give resources to people to “keep doing the good work that they are doing in their communities.” How has that worked so far?

EG: As someone who has worked in philanthropy and nonprofits for decades, I often see that there are people doing incredible work in churches and nonprofits and neighborhoods and the work that they are doing changes lives and changes systems, but it doesn’t make money. It’s not profitable to provide people the kind of child care, health care, and mental health care that everyone needs. Community work is not a profit-making effort, it’s not a business, and you don’t make money doing it.

And there are a lot of things we need in our society that don't make money. The common good, and democracy more generally, is not going to make anyone rich, but it is going to make things more fair and people and communities more healthy.

It’s not that I thought up the Dayton Democracy Fellows idea - a lot of people have the idea of fellowships [including New America!]. But the idea is that you give people support to people who are already doing incredible work so they can keep doing what they are doing and build on that… you trust everyday people and impacted people know what they and their communities need, and provide a space for them to connect with each other, and dream together what is possible. 

Elizabeth (far right) and Dayton community members, activists, and leaders, several of whom are Dayton Democracy Fellows. (photo courtesy of Elizabeth Gish)

RG: Can you explain what you mean by “lowercase d” democracy?

EG: So by “democracy,” we mean everyday people engaging with each other and their communities to bring about the lives and the communities that they want. Part of this might be voting, policy, or campaigns, but a big part of this is also what happens around kitchen tables, at PTA meetings, at the local barber shop, or in our religious communities. We want to support efforts where people work together to improve their communities and where they experience the benefits of collaboration firsthand. Like, you have to try it out to get good at it. We want to support more accessible on-ramps for people to find ways to get involved in this kind of work. We don’t have to agree on everything or have to be the same political party - but how do we find some common ground to act on things to make it better? I think often philanthropies struggle with wanting outcomes quickly or going in with their own idea of what needs to happen. I think our approach works because we trust Daytonians to know what Daytonians need, and want to be a collaborator and partner as they do the work that is already successful. 

There are all these incredible people I encounter in this work that are brilliant and passionate and care about their neighbors and the world that they live in and they want to do something different. They want to do this work and they want to go to meetings and canvass and have their elected officials listen to them. Instead they spend every moment of every day trying to keep their head above water. 

*They want to get a job but their schedule is unpredictable and how do you get child care for that? How do you get the baby to child care if you don’t have a car? Do you take them on the bus? All of their energy goes to caring for their families - food and rent and health care, plus mental health that they probably can’t get. How could you possibly expect them to write a letter to their Congressperson, or go to a two-hour community meeting?* 

RG: What do larger structural solutions look like that would change people’s ability to be more community minded?

EG: It starts with changing the systems. The barriers to caring for children and elderly family members and family with disabilities are so extraordinary and I think that they are extraordinary because the people running the systems are not impacted people. 

Our current systems - political, health care, child care, etc - are generally run by a systems logic that doesn't center the needs of people who need to access the system. The systems are catered to the logic of the systems, not the needs of everyday people. We need to find ways to support impacted people, not just with financial support, but with practical support and strong communities, so they have more bandwidth to engage in their communities is a way forward.

For instance, the Omega Community Development Association in the west side of Dayton has community working groups. There is child care there and also food, and you can get gift cards for taking part of things. Being a part of that community work is hard, but there is support that makes sense for the folks who live there. It's because the Omega is run and designed by people who are a part of the community and many who live there. When systems are designed by and responsive to impacted people, where the goal is not the perpetuation of the efficiency of the system itself, but increasing well-being, the common good, and fairness, the systems are going to better meet the needs of the folks for whom the systems are supposed to serve. It is hard to let go of that power and that control for people who are used to having power and used to having resources, but when we can trust and when we can let go and respond to the needs of everyday people instead of our own need to be the experts or be in control or maintain power, it turns out this actually works better.

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