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How Democrats abandoned rural America, how Republicans exploited it, and why both have to answer for what they have done... And What You Can Do

Aaron Joseph Metzger is not a career politician. He is a CT technologist who has worked the night shift at a Joplin hospital for 13 years, scanning patients through car wrecks, heart attacks, strokes, and every emergency that does not wait for daylight. Now he is running as the Democratic candidate for Missouri House District 161, which covers most of Joplin north of the Newton County line.

Joplin, Missouri sits on a federal Superfund site where one in six residents lives in poverty, 460 children are homeless, and wages run $28,000 below the national average, the direct legacy of industrial extraction that built fortunes and left workers with poisoned soil. Yet Joplin votes Republican by 74% margins, rejected its own minimum wage increase by 731 votes, and sends to Washington two senators who have not lifted a finger to address the very conditions their party cr