(Part 2) What We Must Do: Understanding and Overcoming the Urban-Rural Divide

The four-week period since the November 3rd election has demonstrated more than Donald Trump’s complete self-absorption and utter contempt for Democracy. Far more disturbing has been the willingness of nearly half of Americans to support him and to readily accept his lies that the election ‘was stolen’. Trump voters, we now know, include white women and men; the very rich and working- and middle-class people; suburban and rural. For some of these folks, Trump’s appeal is obvious, from lower taxes on the wealthy to reduced regulations on banks and businesses to the choice of judges aligned with the values of the Christian religious right.

But what about rural people? With the exception of a relatively small number of large-scale farmers who have benefitted from Trump’s massive subsidies (instituted to compensate for their Trump-driven loss in export markets), most rural communities have seen little to no benefit these past four years. The coal industry has continued its decline, new jobs in manufacturing have largely been offset by factory closings, and long-standing problems of underfunded schools, declining infrastructure and opioid addiction have been given only fleeting attention. So why is Trump’s support so strong in the countryside?

Here’s what I think: A lot of folks love Trump because of who and what he hates. The media. Academics and experts. The ‘liberal consensus’ and the language of inclusion. The Washington establishment and its insiders. And all the snooty liberals who embrace these things. These people, these norms and institutions have, in the view of many rural people, dissed and marginalized them for decades. Seeing belief systems and ways of life ridiculed for so long, and new ideas and other people embraced by the same liberal elite, many have come to feel like strangers in their own land, as Arlie Hochschild explains in her book of the same name. This deep sense of alienation constitutes our fourth underlying cause of the urban-rural divide.

I’m not arguing here that the confederate flag is about “heritage, not hate” as some bumper stickers in my area proclaim. Nor do I contend that the neglect of rural needs and communities is somehow greater than what many historically marginalized people have faced across our history.  Rather, as Ms Hochschild shows through the testimony of rural Louisianans, their own lived history is one of declining incomes and wealth, increasing health and social problems, and a steady march by the wider, dominant culture away from many of their core beliefs and values. Is their plight comparable to that of the native peoples of the Americas, or of African Americans who’ve lived through enslavement, Jim Crow, federal policies of intentional exclusion, and mass incarceration?  Certainly not.  Rural, mostly white people have been privileged by comparison.  But the history of their own lifetimes is, mostly, quite the opposite: steadily declining fortunes, stature and privilege. Rural people have never been at the front of the line in this country, but now that they see themselves falling further back in the line (paraphrasing Ms Hochshild), they’re pissed.

The broad sense of alienation from the mainstream has been furthered by two shifts among Democrats and liberals more broadly: An embrace of wealthy elites and their priorities and culture; and the steady growth in contempt for those outside the elite liberal consensus. This dramatic shift among liberal leaders, pundits, media and organizations has fueled and justified the deep sense of alienation and the “us vs them” outrage it has spawned. This is our fifth underlying cause.

For more than a decade, Thomas Frank has been documenting this shift in the culture and priorities of Democrats. In Listen Liberal, he details the more than four-decade long march that has transformed the Democrats from the party of the working class (primarily) to the party of the professional class. In Frank’s analysis, liberals and Dems have too often minimized the collateral damage of a growth-obsessed global economy of transnational corporations, instead embracing the academic and technological superstars who have either justified or been enriched by this transition.  Michael Lind goes a step further, characterizing the professional class as a “managerial overclass” of bureaucrats, academics and assorted experts whose job it is to make and enforce the rules that the rest of us must live by.  

For liberals who can’t fathom why so many rural people dismiss the warnings of experts – whether about climate change or pandemics – part of the answer is that they do not trust those whom they see as spokespersons for liberal elites.  And their skepticism is not always unfounded. We need look no further than the promises of Bill Clinton and his top economists that NAFTA would create a million net jobs within five years. The experts aren’t always right.

The parallel component of this shift has been the sharp increase in what author and activist, Erica Etelson calls the language of contempt. In her book, Beyond Contempt, she begins with the realization that her own communication was often steeped in contempt for Trump voters and others who just didn’t get it.  She provides many examples of dismissive, contemptuous language from liberals, while also quoting numerous right-leaning moderates to show how this language creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. Here’s part of one such quote, from a young white man: “I am very lower-middle class. I’ve never owned a new car and do my own home repairs as much as I can to save money.  I cut my own grass, wash my own dishes, buy my clothes from Walmart. I have no clue how I will ever be able to retire. But oh, brother, to hear the media tell it, I am just drowning in unearned power and privilege.” Speaking of the pull of right-wing narratives, he says, “It baffles me that more people on the left can’t understand this, can’t see how they’re just feeding, feeding, feeding the growth of this stuff…”. 

The sixth and final factor underlying the urban-rural divide is the politics of incrementalism that has increasingly dominated the Democratic Party over the past four decades. This is of course hotly debated within the Democratic Party and I am sure that many liberals will disagree with me on this. Yet there can be little doubt that Centrist, ‘new Democrats’ have embraced Wall Street, investor-driven trade policies, Silicon Valley elites and a kind of monopolistic technological determinism that has little use for farmers, mom and pop businesses and rural places. Given this tide of ‘progress’, the party has essentially offered two solutions to the millions who’ve been left out or wiped out: Get with the program, either by moving to urban centers of innovation or by upgrading yourself to 21st century competencies; or grin and bear it, because, well, at least we aren’t trying to cut your food stamps or privatize your Social Security.

Incrementalism assumes that the system basically works, that it just needs a few tweaks to include more folks in its ever-growing pie of prosperity. For a party increasingly in thrall of educational and tech superstars, this makes sense.  For this mostly urban, generally affluent crowd, “the benefits of globalization are myriad, and the downsides invisible,” to quote Etelson.  Ditto that for the politics of incrementalism. That’s why, to the oft-asked question from liberals, “Why do those people vote against their own interests?”, I now respond, “Exactly who can they vote for who really has their interests?”.

These then are our six underlying causes of the urban-rural divide: 

1. An economy that has failed 80% of Americans and most rural communities

2. A hatred of elites and resentment towards those in power

3. A profound distrust of government, generally, and regulations in particular

4. The sense of alienation among rural people, of being strangers in their own land

5. The loathing of liberals and Democrats, in part because of the shift away from working people’s priorities and in part due to the language of contempt that is now commonplace

6. The embrace by Democrats of centrist politics and incrementalist policies that do little to address the deep economic and political failures that got us here.

If this is a reasonably good explanation of how we got to such a powerful divide, what can we do to overcome it? Or more to the point, what can we progressives, liberals or Democrats do to change course and begin to win back working folks and rural communities? This is exactly the challenge we are now grappling with in workshops and community forums we’re doing with a range of liberal and progressive groups around the country. The content builds on the writers quoted in this series, some of whom have joined me in this effort. For our purposes here, I’ll share the rudiments of the three-pronged strategy we’re recommending to change course: 

Think differently

                                    Act Differently

                                                                        Talk differently

Thinking differently begins by getting outside of our echo chambers and deliberately challenging the assumptions we bring and conclusions we’ve drawn. That can, and should happen in conversations with neighbors, co-workers or family members. But it probably won’t happen just by following our Facebook feed, or from the pundits with Daily Kos, MSNBC, the New York Times, or the Washington Post. Even NPR rarely explores this issue in depth. One place to start is with the articles and books cited in this series, or by linking on any of a number of articles in the Urban-Rural Divide GuidebookI’ve assembled. This is just scratching the surface, but it’s a great place to start reconsidering long-held beliefs and gaining a bit of empathy. 

Acting differently can take many forms, but in this context I’m suggesting something quite specific: Join or launch local community development projects, and do it as the liberal or progressive organization of which you’re a part. All kinds of incredible things are happening to revitalize local economies, to build healthier food systems, to transition to clean energy. Many are happening – or could be – in your local community. What would happen if the local Our Revolutionchapter joined with community banks and independent businesses in a buy-local campaign supporting home grown companies? What if the county Democratic Committee helped launch a “farmacy” program, through which prescriptions are written for fresh local produce, helping people eat better while expanding markets for farmers? Or a peace and justice organization worked with local contractors to make energy efficiency improvements more affordable for working families and lower-income households? At a minimum, important things will get done in your community. If enough of us take this approach, we might even begin to change the image of liberals among rural people. Think of it as an outreach strategy with short term tangible benefits.

Talking differently begins with a simple but challenging rule: Talk less. Much less. We liberals and progressives are a wordy bunch. We contextualize; we reiterate our reiterations; we love nuance and complexity and avoid simple, direct statements. Our desire to be inclusive and our embrace of the terminology of academia and tech too often plays out as vague, non-committal pronouncements. We talk about “co-morbidities” and “the community of health care professionals” rather than just saying “health problems” and “doctors and nurses”. I get it; we want to be accurate in our representation of reality. But I assure you from more than 40 years in rural communities, it ain’t working. People tune out when we go on and on; and if we let a little contempt seep into our erudition, the door slams shut. Maybe it’s time to start talking like a neighbor rather than an advocate.

There are no easy answers to how we got to this place of profound division and animosity. There are no simple or fail proof strategies for how we get out it.  But surely we can agree on this: What we’ve been doing clearly has not been working, and almost surely has been making things worse. If we acknowledge this, and then begin to try new ways of thinking, of acting and of communicating, maybe we’ll finally begin to undo and reverse the urban-rural divide.

(Read it on the Stansbury Forum here)

(Part 1) What We Must Do: Understanding and Overcoming the Urban-Rural Divide

I live in the southwestern corner of Virginia, the Appalachian part of the state that borders North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia. Like all of these neighboring states, we went overwhelmingly for Donald Trump on November 3rd, with margins in most of our counties between 75 and 80%. Five days after the election, comments on the Facebook page of our primary daily newspaper ran about seven to one that the election was fraudulent, stolen from Trump.

A third or so of this region is ‘coal country’, communities whose economies have been dependent on the coal industry for generations, even as it declined inexorably for more than forty years.  Trump’s pledge to bring coal back has, like most of his boasts, proved to be an empty promise. There are fewer coal jobs now than there were in Obama’s last year in office.

The many thousands of small farms throughout the region don’t do a lot of exporting to China, so they’ve missed out on those federal payments that have kept bigger farms afloat. A fair number have embraced new enterprises or shifted to selling local food at local markets. Still, the last four years has been a struggle for small farmers. But then, there’s nothing unusual about that.  

Several efforts to diversify local economies – from downtown revitalization in Bristol to an “ecological education campus” in the tiny town of St Paul – are beginning to bear fruit.  Most of these have been helped along by a range of investments, including grants from the Appalachian Regional Commission. ARC is popular among businesses and economic developers and has continued in spite of Trump’s repeated efforts to zero out its budget.

You’re probably starting to get the picture. My part of the world is full of people who, according to most of my liberal friends, “vote against their own interests”. It is true that this once-Democratic stronghold has shifted to Republicans over the past dozen plus years, and that Trump has cemented that support to a degree we’ve never seen before. It’s also true that a region whose people are known for their neighborliness and readiness to pitch in for whomever needs help, is increasingly defensive about its guns, deeply suspicious about government and ready to believe the worst about people with different views or politics. Which is to say, Democrats, liberals, progressives.  Me. Us.

All of this is true, and it’s pretty damn depressing, especially when you realize that southwest Virginia is not the exception to the rule. This is the reality in most of rural America.  

So, how did we get here?  How did we get to such a strenuous divide, one that has many dimensions, but is in large part geographical? How did country people come to see themselves as so alienated from and dissed by their fellow citizens, to feel like, as Arlie Hochschild put it, “strangers in their own land”?

One major reason, of course, is the relentless campaign on the right to fundamentally change our view of what it means to be an American, a citizen, a neighbor; and more specifically, to denigrate and even demonize liberals, progressives and Democrats. From Glen Beck to Tucker Carlson, from Sarah Palin to Marjorie Taylor Greene, right-wing politicians and pundits have been remarkably successful in building an alternate world view in which liberals are actively working to destroy the nation, a worldview held by nearly half the population. Trump’s remarkably loyal base comes in part because he’s so uncompromising in his attacks on these nefarious liberals.

Another major contributor to the urban-rural divide, and to the enduring allegiance to Trump is of course race and racism.  Our sordid history of state-sanctioned racial exclusion has been interrupted by periodic efforts to reduce systemic racism. Every one of these periods precipitated widespread backlash among white people, both those in power and everyday folks. Clearly, we are in yet another period of this backlash.

Race is deeply woven into the right-wing narrative of grievance and together, these two elements have propelled and exacerbated the urban-rural divide.

But everyone on the left already knows this. What I’m asking us to do is to look closely at our own role in fostering this divide, our own failures of policy, action and words. Having worked for almost four decades to build stronger local economies in mostly rural areas and having run for Congress – twice – in rural southwest Virginia, this issue has become something of a preoccupation for me.  I’ve come to believe that there are six underlying causes of this divide, which I’ve described in much more detail in The Urban-Rural Divide:  A Guidebook for Understanding the Problem and Forging Solutions.  In this two-part series for Stansbury Forum, I’ll briefly touch on each of those underlying causes, and then offer what I hope is a way forward.

One last caveat:  As you read these two pieces, I ask you to consider the possibility that many rural people who support Trump may simultaneously have both a greatly exaggerated sense of grievance and real and long-standing grievances that have not been addressed; disproportionate rage and plenty of reasons to be angry. White privilege and almost none of the trappings of privilege. 

It begins with a failed economic system, or more accurately, an economic system that has worked pretty well for roughly 20% of the population, but mostly failed the other 80%. Our trickle-down economy, obsessed with the GDP and global ‘investor confidence’ has failed plenty of people in New York and Chicago, to be sure. But among the 20 percenters who’ve done pretty well the past four decades, the great majority are in cities. The vast, vast majority of country folks are among the 80 percent of people who’ve either lost ground economically or simply tread water to stay afloat. Stagnant wages, outsourced jobs, depressed and declining farm incomes, and the flight of young people to cities have become the norm in many rural places.

I know, I know, the average income of Trump voters is higher than the national average. But that’s the average, a figure inflated by the very wealthy people who commonly support Trump. In truth, the biggest economic commonality among rural Trump supporters is economic insecurity, the terrible uncertainty about what the future holds, for themselves and for their children. Seeing your own economic situation stagnate is bad enough. Recognizing that the future may yet be worse lays the foundation for mistrust of those in charge, the politicians and experts who claim to be making your life better.

Declining prosperity, household insecurity and heightened economic inequality have proven a powerful foundation for mistrust of ‘the system’, helping to foster the second underlying cause of our divide, a deep and pervasive anti-elitism. In The Politics of Resentment, Katherine Cramer shares the stories of scores of rural Wisconsinites, most of whom supported Scott Walker in large part because he disparaged ‘elites’: Academics and intellectuals, urban liberals in Madison and Milwaukee, government employees overseeing environmental regulations, even public school teachers. For many of the rural men – and it was mostly men – who spoke to Cramer, they felt disrespected by these elites.  Speaking of how these folks saw the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cramer says “…it was not that UW-Madison ignored their communities but that it ignored the knowledge and the norms of the people living in their communities.”

When most liberals think of ‘elites’, they focus on Wall Street executives, corporate CEO’s and other economic elites. For many people in the countryside, elites are cultural snobs, intellectuals who talk a lot but don’t say much, city folks with desk jobs who’ve never picked up a chain saw; and they are also the ‘experts’. Cramer discovered, as have I, that many rural people are sick and tired of these folks telling them what to say, how to eat, shop and think, how to manage their own land, and what they need to do to catch up to the innovators in town. It should be clear that politically, this caricature of elites fits the modern-day Democratic Party and most of its best-known leaders.

The third underlying cause grows out of the strong anti-elite sentiment but is a critical factor in and of itself: a profound distrust of government, generally, with a particular contempt for regulations. This regulatory aversion, as I’ve come to call it, is not limited to rural people, but it is especially commonplace in the countryside. It’s not surprising that people who don’t trust the government would view government regulations with skepticism. But there is also the widespread belief that regulations are intrusive, cumbersome, even ridiculous.  And that they protect the powerful, not the little guy.  

Liberals and Democrats often try to persuade rural working folks that regulations are necessary, that they protect all of us. When we do that, we miss the point. If you fundamentally mistrust the government and if you view experts and academics as out-of-touch elites, you’re very unlikely to be moved by the argument that more government involvement in your life is a good thing.

An economy that has failed so many rural communities, a sense of being routinely disrespected by urban and liberal elites, and deep mistrust of government, especially regulations, these comprise the first of three underlying causes of the urban-rural divide. In the second segment, we’ll explore three more underlying causes, and then discuss what we can do to change course.

…

This is the first in a two-part series. 

Read it on the Stansbury Forum here.

Griffith Should Admit Biden Won

An Open Letter to Congressman Morgan Griffith

Congressman Griffith,

You have the privilege of representing the citizens of Virginia’s 9th Congressional District. It is long past time for you to do your duty and publicly state the truth: Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election by sizeable margins in both the popular vote and the electoral college; claims of widespread election fraud or even irregularities across the country have been repeatedly and decisively refuted; and that enabling President Trump, through your silence, to spread the lie that this election was stolen by Democrats undermines the incoming administration and exacerbates the deep and destructive divide in our nation.

You know this is true, Mr Griffith, because you are smart, a lawyer, a student of politics and history. It could not be more obvious that the preponderance of evidence clearly shows that this was a fair election, one in which the inevitable small errors and problems were caught and quickly rectified.

You know this is true because state and local elections officials in virtually every state, including many Republicans, have attested to the integrity of the election.

You know it is true because President Trump’s top election official at the Department of Homeland Security, Christopher Krebs, found that “The Nov. 3 election was the most secure in American history”. Mr Krebs was nominated to his position by Donald Trump.

You know it is true because the president and his allies have only claimed fraud in states that he lost, even when other races were much closer. North Carolina, for instance, went for Trump by 74,500 votes, less than half the number of Joe Biden’s win in Michigan.

You know it is true because Georgia, where both the governor and secretary of state are Republicans, hand counted every single ballot that was cast, and found only a tiny discrepancy with the original total, far too small to alter the outcome of the election.

You know it is true because nearly three dozen lawsuits, claiming everything from dead people voting to manipulated voting machines, have been reviewed by courts and dismissed for lack of any evidence to support their claims.

You know it is true because even your outgoing Republican House colleague, Denver Riggleman has stated that we must “stop with the ridiculous conspiracy theories and understand that the institution is bigger than any man or woman.”

You know it is true because when Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 by far smaller margins in Wisconsin and Michigan, Ms Clinton conceded the election within 24 hours.

And you know it is true because this entire campaign to undermine voters’ confidence in our election was engineered by President Trump, his media allies and your party. There is no doubt that a strong majority of Republicans believe this election was illegitimate, but we also know why: Because the president has been loudly claiming election fraud for most of 2020, with nary a Republican voice to challenge him. And because Republican state legislators in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania passed laws prohibiting the counting or even pre-processing of mail-in ballots prior to election day (in Michigan, some counties could begin the day before), with full knowledge that this would delay and likely misrepresent the final result, helping them cast doubts on the election’s integrity. The “Stop the steal!” campaign precisely follows the script that Trump and his allies have been writing since the beginning of this election cycle.

Read via the Roanoke Times here.

APEC Urban/Rural Divide Forum, part 2

APEC Urban/Rural Divide Forum, part 1

Amendment 1 to the Virginia Constitution: How Should We Vote?

In addition to a presidential vote we could fairly call existential, there is another highly consequential choice Virginia voters will make on November 3rd:  Whether or not to amend the state constitution to change the way that congressional and state legislative districts are drawn.  On our ballots, it will appear as Amendment 1.  The full text of the Amendment and an explanation is here on the Department of Elections website, but this is what you’ll see on your ballot:

Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to establish a redistricting commission,
consisting of eight members of the General Assembly and eight citizens of the Commonwealth,
 that is responsible for drawing the congressional and state legislative districts that will be
subsequently voted on, but not changed by, the General Assembly and enacted without the
Governor's involvement and to give the responsibility of drawing districts to the Supreme Court
of Virginia if the redistricting commission fails to draw districts or the General Assembly fails to
enact districts by certain deadlines?

Let me begin by saying that I am no expert in this arena, and that I am sharing my opinion on the matter only because several 9th District Dems (and a few others) have asked me to do so.  There are many other people writing about this, including a goodly number of Democratic leaders, elected and otherwise, who oppose the Amendment.  I’m weighing in, based on a fair bit of research on the issue, and rather extensive exchanges with two people who support the amendment – Delegate Sam Rasoul, and Brian Cannon, Director of Fair Maps, Virginia – and one who opposes it, a very astute, long-time activist and colleague from here in Washington County.  Each of these three people steered me to multiple opinion pieces and analyses of the Amendment, which augmented my own search.  Based on all of this, here are the reasons I will be voting “Yes” to Amendment 1:

1.     I deeply trust several of the individuals and groups endorsing Amendment 1, folks who are savvy and completely committed to real democratic reform.  Among a long list, this includes the Brennan Center for Justice, Common Cause, the ACLU and the League of Women Voters.  Of critical importance, several African American Senators in Virginia’s legislature, including Jennifer McClellan, Mamie Locke and Louise Lucas also support the amendment.  And Sam Rasoul, whom I know personally and deeply respect. 

It’s true that there are very smart folks on the other side of this issue, including my colleague in Washington County, Jennifer Lewis and Linda Perriello, among others.  Their opposition has given me pause and pushed me to dig deeper.  Democracy advocates most definitely don’t all agree on this; but to hear some of the critiques of Amendment 1, it is ‘enshrining gerrymandering into our constitution’, ‘blocking real reform’, and making the redistricting process worse than what we currently have.  Really?  Why would Common Cause and the Brennan Center support such a thing?  Or Senators McClellan, Locke and Lucas?   When I personally don’t have a significant amount of experience or expertise on an issue, I look for guidance to the people and organizations that do, and in this case, most of them support Amendment 1.

2.     I believe that the Amendment itself, for all of its flaws, moves us to a considerably better place than what we have for drawing our state and congressional districts.  The flaws are not insignificant: legislators have too much power, both as half the membership of the Commission charged with drawing district lines, and indirectly as the ones who put forth names of 64 private citizens, from whom 8 will be selected by a panel of retired circuit court judges.  Would it be better to take legislators out of the process altogether?  No doubt.  From my understanding, however, a truly independent commission with no politicians involved had too little support from either party to have a chance of passing, in 2019, 2020 and likely for some time to come.

The other legitimate concern is that, should the Commission be unable to reach a supermajority consensus on redistricting after two attempts, the ball is handed off to the Virginia Supreme Court.  The SCOVA then selects a “master” to draw the lines, and what they come up with is then considered and, presumably approved by the Court (Planned legislation in the 2021 General Assembly will require two such masters, one a Democrat, the other a Republican).  That’s hardly a citizen-led outcome, and the consistent rightward leaning of this court is undeniable.  But…

3.     The Virginia Supreme Court will be bound by multiple criteria designed to ensure that district lines will be drawn based on fairness, racial justice, minority community representation and reasonableness at the level of preserving neighborhoods and communities of interest.  These specific criteria are in Virginia law now, thanks to Senator McClellan’s SB 717, passed in 2020.  Whether it’s the Commission or the SCOVA, the redistricting criteria are the same, and they are binding.

4.     Another critique is that it does not go far enough to ensure protection of minority voters and communities, or by some people’s telling, actually makes racial gerrymandering more likely.  I frankly just don’t get this.  Not only do I trust Senators McClellan, Locke and Lucas on this, but both the Amendment and SB 717 include language mandating racial fairness and minority participation.  SB 717 put protections for minorities into our law, with multiple, very specific requirements designed to ensure this.

5.     Perhaps most important of all, the Amendment mandates a transparent process, including public hearings and the opportunity for citizens to read and comment upon the Commission’s proposals throughout the process.  We’ll also know which Commission members vote to support the body’s recommendations and which vote against them, creating disincentives to extreme partisanship among the legislators on the Commission.  Of course, given that the Amendment requires six out of eight legislators and the same number of citizens to support the recommendations, the potential for just two partisans to block sound redistricting, and punt to the Court, is certainly real.  But it is by no means a foregone conclusion.

6.     Finally, there are a couple of arguments from folks opposed to the Amendment that, IMO, don’t hold water.  First is the claim that because ‘gerrymandering’ is never mentioned in the Amendment, it doesn’t fight the problem of gerrymandering.  Accepting the limits and flaws to the Amendment as they are is one thing, but there is no question in my mind that the whole point of a Commission with 50% representation of citizens, specific criteria that ensure fairness, and mandatory transparency throughout the process is to fight gerrymandering.

The second argument that is floating about is that ‘dark money’ is pouring into the ‘vote yes’ campaign.  There is money coming in from outside the state in support of the Amendment, roughly equal to the amount that over a thousand grassroots Virginia residents have donated, but it is hardly ‘dark’ and certainly not nefarious.  According to Brian Cannon, ED of Fair Maps Virginia, it has come from three sources: Unite America, the Arnold Foundation and a private individual, Jay Fayson, associated with the Arnold Foundation.  Unite America is a non-partisan group that has been working on pro-democracy reforms for several years.  It’s true that their money comes primarily from Kathryn Murdock, one of Rupert Murdock’s children.  But she is in many ways a black sheep in that family, having fought against much of which the elder Murdock embodies, including her work to promote real democracy.   Unite America also supports Rank Choice voting and Mail-in voting, hardly the darling causes of the right.

John and Laura Arnold are Republicans and Republican donors.  But the focus of their foundation’s work is and has been on lowering prescription drug prices, reversing mass incarceration and supporting redistricting reform.  Unless we subscribe to the belief that only Democrats can honestly support and seek real reform in our electoral politics, support from groups such as this should not constitute a fatal ‘contamination’ of the effort.

Amendment 1 has flaws.  I have my reservations.  But I’m convinced that it represents real progress in the drawing of electoral maps, and a significant step in the broader fight against gerrymandering.  That’s why I’ll be voting “Yes” on November 3rd.

Second Amendment ‘Sanctuary’

As anyone who followed my campaign knows, I am a gun owner and I support the right of citizens to own guns.  It’s been disturbing, nevertheless, to see a recent wave of “Second Amendment Sanctuary” declarations passed in a number of places, including Lee County and Washington County, Virginia.  In Washington County, where hundreds of people turned out for the Board of Supervisors meeting, the vote was unanimous, including two Democrats and one Independent.  While these declarations are purely symbolic, the symbolism is clear and defiant:  Guns are safe here.  Don’t try to control or limit them in any way.  If you do, we won’t cooperate.  The county’s newly elected Commissioner of Revenue, a self-described “Trump Republican”, testified to the supervisors that “we need our guns to defend our religious freedom”.  

I called four different Supervisors, including the two co-sponsors of this declaration.  I was only able to speak directly to one, who admitted the effort was “not worth the paper it’s printed on”, but who supported it nonetheless, expressing that we need to be sufficiently armed to be prepared to fight a tyrannical government.  Given the recent shift in Virginia’s balance of power, and the vulnerability of Trump and a handful of Republicans in the US Senate, a potentially tyrannical government presumably is always one led by Democrats.

Five years ago in Washington County, Kevin Palmer shot and killed his estranged wife, his teenage son, and his mother-in-law before killing himself.  This happened just days after his wife and son had fled and secured a protective order, based upon his repeated abuse of both mother and son.  Kristin Palmer, a beloved local school teacher, told police that she feared for their lives.  A ‘red flag’ law, if we had one in Virginia, would have allowed local law enforcement to temporarily remove the guns that Kevin Palmer owned, based on the clear threat he posed to his family.  I brought this up when speaking to the supervisors (by phone message in some cases). “What if it was your daughter who was facing such a lethal and immediate threat?”, I asked.  “Would you not want the sheriff’s office to be able to do something to protect her?”.  Obviously, that argument did not move them.

Every right in our constitution has limits.  None are absolute.  The right of free speech does not allow us to shout “fire!” in a crowded theatre, causing panic and injury.  The right to assemble freely does not allow me to bring a hundred unwanted visitors onto your private property.   If all of these basic, constitutionally-guaranteed rights have limits, why has the Second Amendment become, in the minds of many, so absolute, so fundamental that even the most modest and life-saving proposals are met with such fury? 

For one, it is the fear of government tyranny, made plain by speakers at the BOS meeting and at least one supervisor with whom I spoke.  This ‘threat’ was promoted relentlessly on right wing media during the Obama years, including the conspiracy theory that FEMA was setting up concentration camps for those who disagreed with the President, and that the military was preparing for an invasion and take-over of Texas.  The fact that none of this crazy shit happened seems to have done little to reduce the fear of government.

But it’s more than that.  The defiant stance for Second Amendment sanctuaries is also part of a widespread culture of grievance, stoked relentless by President Trump, Fox News and countless right-wing media outlets.  The sense that good, ordinary people, are having things taken from them by liberal elites; that our most basic values are under threat.  This is why so many white Christians in rural communities believe that their religious freedom is under threat, even as churches freely operate and evangelize, as prayers to Jesus bless food at non-religious civic and public meetings, as students hold prayer meetings in their schools and as more and more people sign off with “Have a blessed day”.  This culture of outrage and grievance has persuaded more than half of white people to believe that they are the most frequent victims of discrimination; that their values, religion and culture, which utterly predominate, are under assault; that their very life, demonstrably safer than the life of an immigrant or a person of color, is most endangered.

The political right has succeeded in embedding fear, outrage and grievance in the minds of many Americans.  The left has failed to offer a persuasive counter narrative, in word or deed. The only thing I know to do is to keep working for a better world, locally, nationally and across the globe.  A world where a sense of common cause and mutual support undercuts  “us” vs “them” fear and loathing.  It may well take a generation, but it is essential to our survival.

CUNY Urban Food Policy Forum

Virginia's Swung Blue, But It Hasn't Trickled Down To The Countryside

For Democrats anywhere in the state, Tuesday’s election results were cause for celebration.  For the first time in more than two decades, we now have a real opportunity to change the rules of the game – our laws and policies – to the benefit of working people and everyday folks, while ensuring that all people get both necessary protections and a fair shot.  Congratulations to all of the newly elected Democratic House and Senate members, and to everyone who held onto their seat!

While we share the excitement about flipping the legislature Blue, those of us in places like Abingdon and Clintwood, Danville and Chatham still face a sobering reality.  Our political map remains completely unchanged, almost universally Red.  With the exception of Del. Chris Hurst, not a single Democrat from southwest or southside Virginia won their race.  In fact, most got creamed, in spite of some great credentials and strong campaigns.  Believe me, I know what that feels like.

Here’s the point:  Unless Democrats are content to become a party solely of cities and suburbs, we’ve got a long way to go.  The work to build a party that meaningfully includes farmers, working folks and rural communities – a “town and countryside” strategy – is long term, of course.  But it’s every bit as urgent. What the Democratic majority does in this next session will in part determine whether or not any candidate from rural Virginia has a chance at being elected for another 10 years.  And beyond that, the choices made will either further exacerbate the rural-urban divide in our nation, or begin to undermine the narrative at its foundation.

So, here’s a bit of unsolicited advice for the 53 delegates, 21 senators and the party leadership in Richmond:

First, deliver.  You’ve got two years, and no doubt it will take every bit of it to get some things through.  But 2020 is critical, for our state and our nation.  Be hares, not turtles.

Second, put ‘incrementalism’ aside.  We can always resurrect it when, if at some point in the future, we’ve built an economy and a politics that actually works for people, communities and the land.  If we ever get to that point, there will still be need for tweaking the system.  But at this moment, tweaking is not only insufficient, it’s utterly counterproductive.  It fuels the resentment so many people feel and helps corroborate their belief that we’re out of touch.

Third, put “an economy that works for people” at the top of your policy list.  Sure, the unemployment rate seems low, but in reality, the economy still sucks for millions of people.  Raising the minimum wage is part of the answer, but the bigger challenge is building widely shared wealth, real wealth in the form of savings, productive capital and the ability to care for your family and community.  Subsidizing Amazon or big boxes doesn’t build real wealth. Investing in infrastructure, skill building and businesses that enable people to eat better, live healthier lives, access safe and affordable housing, dramatically reduce their energy needs, generate power close to home, and use land productively in perpetuity, that’s building real wealth.  And that’s the essence of the Green New Deal.

Fourth, commit yourself to breaking the power of the elites, both economic and political. The twenty-year-long bipartisan consensus that Wall Street, monopolists and big donors know what’s best for the rest of us must become utterly partisan, singularly associated with the other party. Democrats, every one of us, must be unmistakably on the side of everyday people, their communities and the livable world we all need.

And last, come on out to the countryside, not as tourists, but as representatives hoping to learn.  I’ll be glad to help organize that. We’re not all batshit crazy out here, folks. In fact, there are many innovative doers and thinkers leading the charge for healthier communities, for a just and sustainable economy. They’ve got a lot to teach our party leaders and elected representatives, but almost no one ever asks.  Let’s change that, starting now.

Read it at Blue Virginia

"Justice is What Love Looks Like in Public"

“Never forget that ‘justice’ is what love looks like in public.”   Cornell West

These are perilous times.  I, like many of you, have spent much of my life “trying to make the world a better place”, and as such, it is very hard not to feel like a complete failure (This is not a plea for sympathy or a solicitation for ego-boosting support – just a fact of life these days).  Donald Trump’s extreme narcissism, self-aggrandizement and complete disregard for the truth have not only put our nation and the world at grave risk; his unique compilation of sociopathic traits has made him almost impervious to those who would hold him to account. 

Of late, Trump has ramped up his very public demonization of Democrats, liberals and media figures trying to hold his feet to the fire.  Building on a narrative that has been growing within both conservative Christian circles and extreme right media and websites for some years now, he regularly attacks those who challenge him as traitors, spies, savages, anti-religious, anti-American and more.  Most recently, he charged that the impeachment inquiry is a “…coup intended to take away the power of the people, their vote, their freedoms, their Second Amendment, religion, military, border wall and their God-given rights as a citizen of the United States of America!”   

In other words, we Democrats – or progressives, or those fighting for social and economic justice, etc – are enemies, not just of Trump, but of America, of everyday people, including our neighbors.  All the more so for those of us who are not white.  Trump increasingly incites violence, and he may well succeed.

I have no brilliant ideas about what to do or how to break through such a cascade of lies and tidal wave of hatred.  But I do know this:  Our world view, our ethics and our everyday work is founded in love, and in the pursuit of a more just, fair and sustainable world, not just for our family, friends and allies, but for our neighbors near and far, including those who vilify us.  Because we know that justice is the public expression of love.

As we work and support efforts to hold Donald Trump and his rapacious administration to account, let’s stay focused on at least these two things:  First, the local and state elections now less than five weeks away, elections that will help determine if we begin to move our communities, state and nation towards a new economic and political path, based on love, empathy and justice.  That’s a very long-term challenge, but each election either moves us closer to or further from that goal.

Second, let’s fully use the opportunities we hold every day to work towards a better world, not just as individuals, but through collective action to make our communities better, healthier, more resilient, and yes, more loving.  We may shake our heads about the loyalty towards Trump, no matter what he does; we may be incredulous about the right wing media’s complete inversion of the truth.  But we can’t deny that millions of our fellow citizens are angry for real reasons.  The only path I see forward is a relentless commitment to empathy, truth and community.  Hang in there, friends and please redouble your work for justice.