By BERRY CRAIG
Paducah is the main town in arguably the reddest region of Republican Red Kentucky.
Even so, close to 100 people showed up Tuesday night for a “Paducah Stands for Kentucky” rally that was anything but GOP crimson-hued.
One in the crowd even confessed he’s a real “red.”“I’m a socialist,” declared teenage Travis Calhoun, who sported a bright green Bernie Sanders for president tee shirt. “We need a government that represents the people and not a government that takes big corporate money and then bows its head and does what it’s told.”
Calhoun’s views are rare in the Bible Belt Bluegrass State, though Sen. Sanders, a socialist, barely lost the May Democratic primary to Hillary Clinton.
Paducah, population 25,000, is the seat of McCracken County in the deeply conservative, eight-county Jackson Purchase region, which is as far west as Kentucky goes. A huge and controversial Confederate battle flag flies just east of town along Interstate 24. Dubbed “the South Carolina of Kentucky,” the intensely pro-slavery Purchase was Kentucky’s only Confederate-majority region in the Civil War.
In the 1968 presidential election, segregationist George Wallace, to whom Donald Trump has been compared, won a pair of Purchase counties and finished second in three more.
While President Trump piled up 62.5 percent of Kentucky’s vote, the Republican collected more than 66 percent of McCracken County ballots and 72.5 percent Purchase-wide.
By showing up, rally goers hoped they at least offered more prove that there’s another side to this rural, tobacco-farming section of Trump’s America. On Jan. 21, a “March for Equality and Social Justice” in Murray, also in the Purchase, attracted 800 people. The procession was a sister to the “Women’s March on Washington.”
Some in the Paducah crowd marched in Murray.
“It’s important to get involved in small towns and promote acceptance and progress,” said Alivia Boulton.
Andy Wiggins agreed. “It is important to show Paducah there are individuals and groups here that are opposed to the actions that are happening in our state and federal governments.”
Matt Bevin, Kentucky’s tea party Republican governor, is a Trump fan. So are GOP lawmakers who command big majorities in the state house and senate.
The rally began at dusk in the city’s Dolly McNutt Plaza, named for Paducah’s first woman mayor.
Several people carried homemade signs which proclaimed multiple messages: “Love Trumps Hate,”“Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere,”“Equal Rights for All,”“My Mother Was Refugee,”“Health Care for All” and more.
“We are here because we all stand for humanity,” said Jennifer DuBerry.
The crowd listened to impromptu speeches and testimonials from DuBerry and others. About an hour into the rally, a fast-moving thunderstorm scattered the gathering. Some sought refuge in their vehicles; others dashed for the McCracken County Library across the street.
Speakers included Jennifer Smith and DuBerry. Both said they owed their lives to the Affordable Care Act.
A two-time cancer survivor, Smith is worried that Trump and the Republicans will abolish ACA or replace it with an inadequate plan.
“What if they impose lifetime limits?” Smith asked. “My life depends on access to medical care.”
Smith, one of a handful of women present who marched in Washington, also she also came to protest Trump’s policies on immigration and his Muslim ban. “The majority of my oncology team at Vanderbilt [University Hospital] are immigrants. My life depends on immigrants, too.”
DuBerry said she was born with only one kidney. “I get automatic SSI for my dialysis because of Obamacare,” she said. “If Trump messes with it, who’s to say they won’t say ‘She doesn’t need it.’ If I cannot continue my treatment, I won’t make it a month.”
Eliza Purcell said she got up the rally after hearing that Kentuckians for the Commonwealth was holding a “Stand for Kentucky Day of Action”Tuesday in Frankfort when the legislature reconvened.
Founded in 1981 and allied with unions and other progressive groups, KFTC unites “people from diverse backgrounds and [helps] … them see the connections between their communities and issues,”according to the organization’s website. KFCT also seeks “to build long-term, mutually supportive relationships that are the basis for building power together.”
Several in the crowd attended a recent KFTC meeting at the library. The meeting was held to gauge interest in starting a chapter in westernmost Kentucky. About 80 people came.
“I felt like I had to do something to stand up,” Purcell said of the rally. “I just winged it on Facebook. I didn’t think there’d be this many people.”
The crowd ranged in age from grade school kids to seniors like Curtis Grace. “I’m here to stand up for what I believe is right,” he said. “I’m gay but honestly all our rights are being trampled on, including our children’s rights.”
He cited Vice President Mike Pence’s tie-breaking vote that made billionaire GOP donor Betsy DeVos education secretary earlier on Tuesday. “She is disgusting. She doesn’t deserve the job, but I’m horrified at … [Trump’s cabinet] picks and how he is conducting himself.”
Ricardo Harding stood near Grace. He said he came to support minority and LGBT rights and to protest the display of the Confederate flag in Paducah’s November Veterans’ Day parades. “That’s offensive to our African American veterans.”
He said he brought his son, Thomas, age 8, “to see how democracy works.” “We are all brothers and sisters and that is how Jesus made us,” Thomas said.
Randall Myre said Republican conservatives have “hijacked” Christianity. “President Truman said neither party is of God.”
Added Myre: “I believe in Jesus Christ who died for our sins. But Jesus wouldn’t want us to shun anybody, especially refugees.”
Dann Patterson called himself a “spiritual” person. He said he is upset “by so many of my Christian friends who support this man who uses this vulgar language and talks the way he does about women and immigrants and casts others aside.”
Pulling no punches, he called Trump’s rhetoric “venomous vomit.”
Patterson said the president “misled a whole lot of people and I hope they realize the truth and have the courage to say, ‘We made a mistake.’”
— Berry Craig is an emeritus professor of history at West Kentucky Community and Technical College in Paducah and the author of five books including Kentucky Confederates: Secession, Civil War, and the Jackson Purchase. He also co-authored, with Dieter Ullrich, Unconditional Unionist: The Hazardous Life of Lucian Anderson, Kentucky Congressman.