Jeanine — your assumption was correct and I thank you for the link. If I had known JW was Wildfire, I could not have read this essay with an open mind. For that reason, I am glad things worked out the way they did.

While I understand your impulse, I will not be blocking Bugg. Medium is not an idle pass time for me. Rural America is my home and the focus of my work, professionally, for more than 30 years. I am too invested in rural America to walk away.

Bugg is a sympton, but she is not the problem. Bug put her feelings down in writing and that is rare. Without Bugg, comments like these would never be recorded. Like it or not, this is important to those of us who work on rural policy.

Interestingly enough, dis-investment in both rural communities and inner-cities resulted in similar outcomes (extreme and entrenched poverty, poor health, poor schools, high rates of teen pregnancy, abortion and children given up for adoption, high rates of STDs, substance abuse, domestic violence anger and despair). In other words, rural America is suffering the same conditions as inner-cities — for the same reasons.

Jessica Wildfire is struggling because too many people walked away from rural America and inner-cities and when we complained they threw indifference in our faces.

As rural America’s problems spread inwards, towards the suburbs, inner-city problems are spreading outward, into the suburbs. Unfortunately, good and decent people like Jessica Wildfire are caught in the middle of these two disenfranchised groups.

I don’t fault Wildfire for quitting. When things turn dangerous, walking away is wise.