The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

APPALACHIA – People are packing up their tents and RVs in the campground on Sunday to head back home or on down the road, and over coffee here in the woods, I can’t stop thinking about all the ways Americans are on the move these days.

Paying attention to the news you already know about all the refugees from Ukraine, flooding other parts of Europe to escape Russia’s invasion and war. People are leaving parts of Africa, Asia and Central America due to climate change and political unrest.

But you may not be hearing as much about all the migration going on across the United States.

By following my travels, you already know about the uptick in migration from cities and suburbs to nature in camper vans and RVs: Giving Voice to Americans Living in Nomadland.

But there is more going on here than meets the eye.

Population migration out of the American South was a major force for national political realignment in the 20th century. Then in our lifetime, the reverse migration back to the Sun Belt became a major trend, benefiting states like Florida, California and Arizona.

In recent years, another mass migration began with people leaving states with major cities like New York, New Jersey, Michigan (Detroit) and Illinois (Chicago).

Related: America’s Mass Migration Intensifies As ‘Leftugees’ Flee Blue States And Counties For Red

Due to drought and wildfires in the American West, a new migration back east is underway.

But now due to the Great Political Divide, I’m calling it, people are leaving politically conservative red states and moving again.

In states like Alabama, the brain drain is real.

Sim Butler, an educated man, a college professor with a good job and a religious family man who likes to fish, was happy in the state until the legislature went bonkers and passed laws openly discriminating against transgender children, according to a recent blog column published on an Alabama news website.

Because they have a transgender child, a 13-year-old, who came to find herself after a troubled start, who blossomed when she was accepted as a girl, found a school that embraced her and doctors who cared for her without judgment or fear.

Sim and his wife Rachel followed the recommendations of physicians, and of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which says youth who identify as transgender “should have access to comprehensive, gender-affirming, and developmentally appropriate health care that is provided in a safe and inclusive clinical space.”

But due to recent laws embraced by the White nationalist conservative Republicans who control all three branches of government in the state, they say they must leave Alabama.

When asked if he was prepared to leave after making the decision, Butler said not exactly.

“Prepared is the wrong word,” he said. “It’s not prepared. It’s being sucked out of the escape hatch in the middle of space. We are so afraid that we could be arrested and thrown in jail for doing what’s best for our kid that we have to. We feel like we are fleeing.”

It’s not hard for me and a number of my Facebook friends to relate. We left Alabama in years past for political, economic and environmental reasons. I may have just been a bit ahead of my time in realizing the place to be is Maryland, in the Mid-Alantic region, where the government seems to at least function on a basic level, the global warming heat is not totally out of control yet, and there’s plenty of rainfall, fresh water and local produce — and cool places to camp.

Annabel Ascher, the publisher of Taos Magazine, is no stranger to migration. She’s a native of New York, but moved to California back when moving to California was cool. She left California due to the out of control wildfires and high prices for New Mexico. But in recent days, she’s watched out her window as one of the largest wildfires in the state’s history is burning down the forests there.

High winds drive wildfires in New Mexico: Facebook

Responding to one of my posts about this on Facebook, she said: “There are climate refugees in the United States already. A woman I know has moved to Virginia from Oregon after being burned out twice. I moved from California to New Mexico partly out of fire and drought considerations. Now the drought is bad in Taos County and we are under threat of evacuation as the two biggest fires in state history rage. I am slowly turning my eyes to the Northeast. Near water and away from woodlands.”

Now in Tennessee, the Republican dominated legislature is about to send the conservative governor Bill Lee a bill that would make it a felony to camp on public property.

Opponents say the legislation would do nothing to help reduce homelessness, while potentially making it even harder for homeless people to rise out of extreme poverty if they have a felony on their records.

“When we allow our legislators to turn those who are society’s most beaten down into criminals, we reject the very thing that gives us the right to call ourselves civilized: our capacity for compassion, for justice rooted in love for others rather than hate,” Father Charles Strobel, founding director of homeless aid organization Room In The Inn, wrote in a newspaper guest column this week.

But what the Associated Press may not know and did not report on is that while Tennessee has become a popular place for RV livers and campers, news of this legislation will run them off as well, along with the money they spend on gas, groceries and other goods and services.

Like Alabama, they are only shooting themselves in the foot. They are not saying it out loud, but clearly they are trying to run liberals and Democrats out to hold onto political power, where they can exploit the ignorant masses to enrich themselves at will.

The people are not finding out this is what’s going on because they have already contributed to destroying any semblance of a Watchdog Press. Democracy cannot work without a well functioning free press.

For more than 100 years, people tended to move south to escape the cold. Many New Yorkers, for example, moved to Florida. Now they are moving north to escape the growing heat, violent storms and rising seas.

For years people moved to more conservative, rural states to escape taxes and regulations. Will they now move back because those taxes provide infrastructure and regulations provide a cleaner environment and a better health care system and other benefits?

So in the face of the Covid crisis, people discovered the great outdoors. Because of the climate crisis, people are discovering the best places to live in nature. Now because of the Great Political Divide, people are moving to places that work.

That is if they are smart and financially able.

Many people feel like they are stuck where they are, or just refuse to leave their homes and where they are from. This was true in Louisiana after one of the first major hurricanes that put climate change on the national agenda, Hurricane Katrina, which flooded New Orleans in 2005.

The city lost a third of its population when people refused to come back, and for good reason, since Louisiana is losing land to the Gulf of Mexico at an alarming rate. The loss of Louisiana wetlands was a major national story even before we started reporting on climate change due to global warming from the burning of fossil fuels.

Always a bit ahead of my time, I reported on that back in 2004, and then got out myself before Katrina hit.

Remember, you heard it here first.

Global Warming Makes Saving Louisiana’s Wetlands Hard

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