6. A Way forward: Deeper understanding, straight talk and real action on the ground
What would it take to shift the debate in and about rural America, to overcome the urban-rural divide that underlies so many of our problems? At a minimum, we’re going to have to shift our priorities (and the policies that reflect them), to dramatically improve our communications and messaging, and to support effective, tangible action from the bottom up. In short, we need to think differently, talk differently and act differently. Making these changes won’t happen overnight, but they are urgent nevertheless.
The starting point for this change, I’d suggest, is the recognition that rural America is not hopeless, economically or politically, as so many commentators suggest. There is, in fact an extraordinary ferment of bottom up experiments in economics, culture and media, community development and civic engagement. Most folks know nothing about this, nor about how bad national policy – including the demise of anti-trust efforts – have undermined these local efforts. If liberals and progressives in particular begin to see the real and progressive change emerging in rural communities, the window for self-reflection and a new understanding of the urban-rural divide is more likely to open.
The other essential element of strategies to overcome the urban-rural divide will be the integration of race and class at all levels: How we understand our problems, the policies and solutions we propose, the language we use to talk about it all, and the people doing the work. Ian Haney Lopez’ work provides an excellent starting point for this.
RECOMMENDED READINGS:
Ian Haney Lopez, “Beating Trump at His Own Game”
Claire Kelloway, “How to Close the Democrats’ Rural Gap”
Anthony Flaccavento, “Krugman’s Rural Despair Misses the Mark”
Austin Frereck, “To Revive Rural America, We Must Fix Our Broken Food System”
Anthony Flaccavento, “Three Ways Progressives Can Re-connect with Rural America”
George Goehl, “If Progressives Don’t Try to Win Over Rural Areas, Guess Who Will?”
Tara Ritter, “Commentary: A Rural Community Considers the Complexities of Wind Energy”
Antonia Noori Farzan, “When a Deep-Red Town’s Only Grocery Closed, City Hall Opened its Own Store. Just don’t Call it ‘Socialism’”
FOR A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING:
Ian Haney Lopez, Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America, 2019, The New Press
Anthony Flaccavento, Building a Healthy Economy from the Bottom Up: Harnessing Real World Experience for Transformative Change, 2016, University Press of Kentucky