The stimulus is paying youths to get their GEDs in rural Alabama.

The dog metaphor continued on. When the pooch was given the chance to leave the electrified box and go into the open one he didn't want to. He had grown used to the pain of his box. He was afraid of what waited for him in the other place.

Outside the classroom a stray dog wandered the small campus. Strays are rampant in this part of Alabama, as hard to avoid when driving as the rampant poverty. To dwell on the poverty would be as irresponsible as not mentioning it at all. It is a fact of life here. It cannot be avoided but shouldn't be exaggerated. It is the backdrop on which everything unfolds. Shingles hang at odd angles from decaying houses, many of which are trailers that have been cemented into the ground. All the kids who have participated in HERO's GED program are below the poverty line. Eleven percent of the county is unemployed. Folks sit on their porches in the middle of the day. It is the sentry of the jobless.

Amid the typical symptoms of the rural poor are the embers of a younger energy. The area has become an active citizenship laboratory, and the stimulus is just the latest shot at bringing change. Design studios have descended to raise awareness of Hale County's dilapidated water system. Architects build strangely shaped houses for residents whose homes are falling apart. Next to HERO's campus is Pie Lab, an experiment to foster conversation among Greensboro residents, both black and white. (A "neutral space" in activist-speak.) There are no takeout containers there; everybody must sit and stay with their food, in the hope that they will engage with their neighbors. All of this lends the town a feeling of incongruity. New energy lives at the margins, but can it revive the withered core?

Racial issues underwrite both the town and all of this new activity. In Greensboro there is still a country-club pool and a public pool, de facto segregation at its most raw. Only whites sit down at Mustang Oil, the local gas station/restaurant, while the blacks come in and out for take-out. Catfish farmers are white; catfish factory workers are black.

The county is 58 percent black and 41 percent white, a different ratio than the nonprofits that bring in highly educated workers from out of town. HERO has an all-white staff despite providing housing to a majority-black constituency. The Pie Lab is full of white people from out of state. (They're here on a temporary basis.) And so a familiar question arises: How do you reduce racial inequality without drawing on the talent gap it has created?

Half of Deborah's GED class is white, half is black. In a month, it will all be stimulus-funded. "What does this remind you of?" she says as she points to the trapped dog again, trying to get the kids to connect its plight with their own lives. Some murmurs go through the room in response to her question. "What about women who are abused?" she says. All of a sudden her line of questioning has turned into a call-and-response sermon. "Mmhmm" yelps one student while heads shake across the room.