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Rural Organizers Are Plowing Common Ground

It’s hard to hate people when you’re working shoulder to shoulder with them on things that matter.

A 94-year-old retired farmer arrives at the Loganville Fireman’s Festival on August 24, 2024.

Rural versus urban. Red versus blue. Progressives versus centrists. Trump versus the world. Extreme political polarization makes it feel impossible to address any of our many pressing problems. But rural organizers have a road map that bypasses partisan quicksand and is racking up an impressive number of people’s victories.

Rural organizers have it hard. They’re woefully under-resourced and often ignored, if not scorned, by urban liberals who see rural America as a MAGA-deranged wasteland that deserves its comeuppance. The secret to their success is their ability to reach past party labels and ideological divides and bring members of the community together around shared interests in things like housing, health services, transportation and childcare.

It all begins with listening. That’s how Lake City, Colorado, resident Cheryl Tate, 71, got started. In 2024, Tate noticed that her town didn’t have the kinds of programs for seniors that other mountain towns did. So she formed a committee and got to work. First, the committee asked seniors what services they wanted. Then, the group convinced the city and county to help pay to turn the back room of Lake City’s armory into a senior center staffed by volunteers. It was a great reminder that local people are good at finding local solutions.

Similarly, Luke Allen, a lead organizer with the group Michigan Faith in Action, recounts how an affordable housing campaign in Benzonia, Michigan, began with a potluck cohosted by a conservative evangelical church and a liberal UCC church:

We broke bread together and had a discussion of the issues affecting our own local community. I facilitated and kept it very focused. We’re not here to talk about the President or congress. What’s wrong right here, right now. What issues are affecting you, specifically. Guess what the conservative people said? Lack of affordable housing. Guess what the liberal people said? Lack of affordable housing.

We broke bread together and had a discussion of the issues affecting our own local community. I facilitated and kept it very focused. We’re not here to talk about the President or congress. What’s wrong right here, right now. What issues are affecting you, specifically. Guess what the conservative people said? Lack of affordable housing. Guess what the liberal people said? Lack of affordable housing.

That potluck gave rise to a series of listening sessions and, eventually, a housing campaign that is still going strong five years later. In 2023, pastors and congregants from eight churches convinced the Republican-controlled Benzie County Commission to spend a million dollars building 16 affordable........

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