As always, writing about a middle-sized community in the Pacific Northwest is like peering into the looking glass. All references to the One Percent, de-emphasizing community rights, brain drain and monopolization of all business sectors and privatizing the profits and socializing all the heavy burden and costs to the local community/economy, all of that applies to You Name It, USA!
Note: adjunct faculty and full-time historian, Harvey Whitney, short interview below story!
As a preface here, as I have done many times as my role as writer for DV, I have to default to the local, as in, where you see fault lines and bright lines in a local situation, you can pretty much make the larger microcosmic statement about many things for a state, region, country, culture, what have you.
The School to Prison Pipeline has been written about many, many times, and my hat goes off to some of those writers:
The ACLU has it on its radar: **
