Bill Kopsky became Executive Director of the Arkansas Public Policy Panel in 1999. The Panel helps Arkansans improve their communities and develop policy solutions by taking collective action and building coalitions. In 1998, it organized the Arkansas Citizens First Congress, a coalition of 58 community organizations advocating for progressive policy change in Arkansas. The organizations...
Every day across various media platforms we are flooded with news about the downturn in our economy. In Appalachia, where the economy has traditionally been not so diverse, this often means layoffs in the coal industry, outsourcing of factory jobs and lack of job opportunities. Our young people are seeing this and taking note. Many of us have been encouraged to leave our mountains to...
The Center for Heirs' Property began as a project of the Coastal Community Foundation (CCF) in 2002 with input from heirs’ property owners, attorneys, judges, nonprofit service providers and funders. In 2005, The Center was established as its own nonprofit to meet the overwhelming need from low-income heirs' property owners for free educational and direct legal services.
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The last couple of years have brought substantial new economic challenges to Appalachian Kentucky. Already saddled with being one of the poorest regions in the country, mountain communities are being hit hard by steep layoffs in the coal industry. Since 2011, eastern Kentucky has lost more than 5,700 good-paying coal mining jobs. That’s a loss of 42% of the area’s coal workforce.
This...
– Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
That the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, the...