Sowing a Rural Insurgency - The American Prospect

[justaprogressive]

Regardless of whether one casts economic hardship, nativist bigotry, or coastal elitism as the primary cause of the Democratic Party’s disrepute in small factory towns and the farm belt, the resulting sense of alienation in rural America remains the single biggest obstacle to broadening the party’s regional power. And it has mostly stifled whatever impulse there might be to rally low-income Americans of all stripes against the crony capitalism now enveloping the American state.

Until Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) began holding rallies in Republican-held districts to address DOGE’s destructive impact on federal workers and programs, most progressives had not dared to dream of rural America as fertile ground for a backlash. But it’s central to the concept of the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative (RUBI), a group determined to breathe new life into rural organizing strategies.

Conceived in early 2020 by Anthony Flaccavento, a small farmer, former Democratic congressional candidate, and community organizer in southern Virginia, and Erica Etelson, a political writer and former public-interest attorney based in California, RUBI is kindling a new way to approach—and ultimately advance—rural concerns within the progressive movement. Through training sessions, reports from local experts, policy development, and traditional volunteer work, RUBI hopes to depolarize rural politics and persuade other activist groups to engage in good faith with the needs, fears, and aspirations of rural communities.

RUBI’s most prominent effort to date is its campaign to convince the Democratic National Committee and the broader fundraising network on the left to devote substantially more resources to rural causes. Since Ken Martin, chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, was elected in February to head the DNC, RUBI has lobbied him to allocate $400 million—10 percent of the Democratic ad buy for the 2024 general election—toward rural districts and candidates.

https://prospect.org/politics/2025-03-21-sowing-rural-insurgency-democrats/

[UpInArms]

1. Ad buys are going to do very little in rural America

If the dnc doesn’t get vested in putting people power into it, it will wither even further.

I could tell hundreds of personal stories about the rural community I live in and how the dnc has abandoned it