Cancel culture in coal country
Reported for WHYY’s Keystone Crossroads, as part of the project Embedded 2020, February 4 2020
Andrew Barrow sat down to dinner with his wife, his teenage daughter, and a gnawing question. What does it mean to be a ‘snowflake’?
Someone had dropped the word in a comment on his post on Nosey Neighbors of Schuylkill County, a hyper-active local Facebook group. Usually, it’s a snapshot of rural Pennsylvania life: burglaries, missing pets, fundraisers for sick neighbors, and fires. Every few days, it seemed, another fire.
But, lately, things had gotten personal.“
Well dad, usually old people say that if you’re being soft about something,” his daughter translated.
That struck a nerve. No one had ever called Andy Barrow, 52 — a former police officer, a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan — soft before.
It almost defied belief. After all he’d done to try and shine a light on a problem in the community, Andy and his brother were being painted as weak — as if somehow they were the bad guys.
But Andy had no intention of backing down. He couldn’t let Schuylkill County off the hook that easily.