How would you feel if you were paid a fourth less than everyone else? If you’re a woman in WV, you likely know. Nationwide, women earn 80% of what men earn, but in WV, it’s only 74%, the fifth worst income gap in the nation, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families.

Carol Amos and Linda Morgan could have done a lot of things during their retirement to celebrate their many years of service; instead, they decided to honor the history of Fairmont Senior High School by writing a book about it for future generations. This serves as more evidence of West Virginia teachers doing more than asked for the kids of West Virginia.

West Virginia is independent and free, but it has never been easy to survive in our mountains, which present challenges as well as opportunities to those who live here. Thankfully, the federal government provides help to our aging population with programs like Medicare and Social Security. And with high unemployment, low wages , and widespread poverty widespread, many West Virginians are eligible for Medicaid and other forms of assistance like SNAP (food stamps).

In the midst of the addiction crisis, it’s going to take people power to heal our people and our communities. We need politicians willing to explore many different solutions, politicians who listen to us and care more about West Virginians than wealthy interests or drug companies. And we need residents who are willing to keep pushing.

Our last three governors, including our current one, have paved the way for West Virginia’s road repair crisis. They did this by neglecting their duties to our state’s citizens who need safe and secure roads to get to work. This crisis wasn’t created overnight. Mismanagement and neglect over several administrations got us here.

West Virginians faced with economic and environmental devastation have been forced to leave their beloved hills and hollows for too long. But if you ask Bill Bissett, the head of the Huntington Regional Chamber of Commerce, people who seek to hold coal and gas companies accountable for cleaning up their messes should just leave. In Mr. Bissett’s Letter to the Editor in the Huntington Herald Dispatch, he stated, “We need to change ‘The Struggle to Stay’ to ‘Maybe You Should Leave’: ...if you only see negativity here and have soiled to the possibility that the state can be improved and succeed, maybe you should leave.”

West Virginians are proud Americans who love democracy and believe that every citizen should have an equal say in how our government is run and our laws are made. The Founding Fathers, however, weren’t sure a pure democracy in which everyone had an equal voice and vote would work. They were all wealthy landowners and reserved the vote for land owning white men for the most part. Senators and the President were not elected directly, but by state legislatures or electors—all essentially wealthy, land owning men.

This year’s legislative session many of our leaders showed where their loyalties lie. Time after time bills came up that had vast public opposition, only for the legislature to push them through because big money lobbyists rolled into their office with an argument that served special interests over the people.

It’s no secret that money plays a huge role in WV Politics. Look at the steam coal severance tax cut our legislature passed earlier this year. The coal companies pushing for those tax cuts were owned by some of the same men who contributed millions to the various campaigns and PACs that got our current leaders elected. It’s clear that their campaign contributions got them something in return.

Recently, members of the WV Legislature had a chance to help clean up West Virginia elections.  They took a vote on a bill amendment to shine light on who contributes “dark money” to groups that spend money on political ads, so that voters could actually know who’s trying to influence their votes and their elected representatives.

They voted it down.