Holly Bradley smiled down at her two boys Thursday afternoon as they romped on a sidewalk in the Wharf District.
Elam, 5, danced and jumped while his little brother, Arlo, going on 2, mirrored his every move.
Moves were on the mind of Bradley, whose roots here go back nine generations.
Bradley lived in Colorado and California, before making it back home.
She’s the West Virginia organizer for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, a Washington, D.C. area grassroots group which combats global warming.
If her sons should ever leave the state, she said, she wants it to be by their choice – and not the other way around.
“I don’t want them to go because they can’t make a living here or it isn’t healthy to stay,” she said.
“I want to them to stay and raise their families here. I want them to be West Virginians.”
Which is why she was standing in front of the Morgantown offices of Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., who is a Mountain State senator on Capitol Hill along with Democrat Joe Manchin.
Other rallies were held at the same time at Capito’s offices in Charleston, Beckley and Martinsburg.
Given that it was 5 p.m., and with COVID restrictions, her office in the bustling commercial strip flanked by the region’s rail-trail network, was closed.
That didn’t stop the group – Bradley and around eight or so kindred spirits – from chanting anyway.
“Shell it out, Shelley, shell it out, THRIVE Act!” the chant went.
The act being name-checked in the chant is a proposed 10-year, $10 trillion package for every nook and cranny of the American economy, including environmental concerns and eldercare.
A group of progressive Democrats including Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington State is among the act’s sponsors.
THRIVE is short for Transform, Heal and Renew by Investing in a Vibrant Economy, and its proponents in West Virginia say it will do just that, for a state that has long languished while its neighbors haven’t.
The act, they say will generate 50,000 new jobs a year in West Virginia alone, making for a $5.2 billion fiscal splash.
Its jobs would come in infrastructure, agriculture, clean energy, the care economy and public health.
The idea, those boosters say, is to unshackle the state from the boom-and-bust, and now declining, fossil fuels industry.
Andy Cockburn, a Morgantown resident who turned out, said he likes the sound of that word, “infrastructure,” since it hits everyone where they live.
The act in its first year here would bring 8,900 jobs in surface transportation, which would mean rehabbing worn bridges and eradicating potholes.
“Ask any West Virginian about our crappy roads,” he said.
TWEET @DominionPostWV
