Drive along U.S. 64 between Asheboro and Siler City, and you can still see the rusted tin roofs of curing barns that once sustained generations of farming families. For two decades, national pundits wrote off these Piedmont towns as casualties of globalization.
Today, those same rural corridors host the clean-tech battery megasites and semiconductor foundries of the 21st century. But progress cannot take for granted the people who kept the lights on during the lean years. Workforce training must remain free, apprenticeships must be localized, and prosperity must reach beyond executive suites in Uptown Charlotte.
