By NANCY WILSTACH / Community Columnist

Hometown Action may be the new kid on the block as protest movements go, but it pulls ideas and motivation from the pages of social history, as demonstrated by its recent inaugural meeting in Montevallo.

Justin Vest, Hometown Action’s founder and executive director, is one of those University of Montevallo products who left town after he left school but was drawn back by the magnetism of this little college town.

Vest came back with a mission.

Neither party, he said, “puts any time or energy into our small towns—certainly not in the South. We are a throw-away people.”

As evidence, he pointed to the shipping of partially treated human waste from New York and New Jersey for disposal in Uniontown.

Environmental justice, racial and gender equality, quality public education and access to health care are some of the organization’s aims for small town and rural areas of the South, Vest said.

The terms “progressive” and “populist” were applied to Hometown Action’s efforts by Vest and two other volunteer organizers, Beth Ferguson and K.C. Vick. Ferguson is local, and Vick works with a Montgomery-area affiliate.

Both had compelling back stories. Vick, despite a good salary in her “day” job, struggles with six-figure student-loan debt. Ferguson, a college graduate and store manager, recalls enduring childhood taunts of “trailer trash.”

“Our aim is to advance a multiracial, race-conscious populist movement that will change the course of our democracy,” is how People’s Action, an umbrella organization, sees its objective.

Poor people hold the key, according to Vest.

An initial Hometown Action meeting was held May 3 at University Baptist Church, drawing roughly 30 people. By the end of the meeting, Vest, Vick and Ferguson had the mostly white, mostly middle-class and mostly middle-aged attendees holding hands in a circle and chanting: “We’ve got nothing to lose but our chains! It is our duty to fight for our freedom!”

For this child of the 1950s, the terms “collective” and “exploitation” and “movement” awaken memories of the Cold War, the House Unamerican Activities Committee and duck-and-cover drills in high-ceilinged classrooms made stifling by steam radiators. For these younger progressive populists, however, such words have other, friendlier connotations, such as working together and more equitably sharing resources.

Some of our poorer neighbors, one woman said, “are just a flat tire away from being homeless.”

Others forego needed medical treatment because they lack transportation or cannot afford high insurance co-pays, she said.

Still others have no choice but to live near landfills that accept rancid waste from out-of-state, Vest said.

He and some early Hometown Action recruits canvased neighborhoods in Montevallo and surrounding areas in January to ask about people’s concerns.

The top three in order, he said, were improved public education, better access to health care and jobs.

The next Hometown Action meeting will be May 31 in Alabaster, he said, with location yet to be determined.