Do, Die, or Get Along weaves together voices of twenty-six people
who have intimate connections to two neighboring towns in the
southwestern Virginia coal country. Filled with evidence of a new
kind of local outlook on the widespread challenge of small
community survival, the book tells how a confrontational
""do-or-die"" past has given way to a ""get-along"" present built
on coalition and guarded hope. St. Paul and Dante are six miles
apart; measured in other ways, the distance can be greater. Dante,
for decades a company town controlled at all levels by the mine
owners, has only a recent history of civic initiative. In St. Paul,
which arose at a railroad junction, public debate,
entrepreneurship, and education found a more receptive home. The
speakers are men and women, wealthy and poor, black and white,
old-timers and newcomers. Their concerns and interests range
widely, including the battle over strip mining, efforts to control
flooding, the 1989-90 Pittston strike, the nationally acclaimed
Wetlands Estonoa Project, and the grassroots revitalization of both
towns led by the St. Paul Tomorrow and Dante Lives On
organizations. Their talk of the past often invokes an ethos,
rooted in the hand-to-mouth pioneer era, of short-term gain. Just
as frequently, however, talk turns to more recent times, when
community leaders, corporations, unions, the federal government,
and environmental groups have begun to seek accord based on what
will be best, in the long run, for the towns. The story of Dante
and St. Paul, Crow writes, ""gives twenty-first-century meaning to
the idea of the good fight."" This is an absorbing account of
persistence, resourcefulness, and eclectic redefinition of success
and community revival, with ramifications well beyond Appalachia.
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