“For that money, we could buy up TV stations...not just TV ads."

March 21, 2025 4:21 PM

Via Americans of Conscience Checklist: Rural organizers and grassroots leaders in the U.S. form the Rural Defenders Union to support under-resourced anti-authoritarian actions.

"In most rural places, we are facing a generational crisis. Compared to our parents’ generation, jobs are harder to get, they pay less, and they are harder to keep. Suicide, mental illness, incarceration, divorce, liver disease, family separation, and overdose deaths are at or near all-time highs. We have been ringing the alarm bell for decades, but we were largely written off. Now, the authoritarianism we’ve been up against is coming for the whole country.

If you tell us that America is already great, don’t be surprised if we reject the premise. More often than not, politicians of both parties do not have a communications problem in rural America; they have a reality problem. "

posted by subdee (6 comments total)

I like this part.

Every week, it seems, a new group of poor or working-class people is targeted by national Democratic leaders as the reason we can’t have nice things: Black and Latino men, pro-Palestine activists, unsheltered people, transgender people, immigrant families, rural white folks, and so on. At best, they ignore us. At worst, they scapegoat, criminalize, or vote to deport us. They rarely take an honest assessment of where they went wrong, but instead blame us and run the same losing strategy again: appealing to white moderates. White moderates didn’t win the victories of the civil rights movement, and they will not win this moment. Instead, history teaches us that the only shot we have of moving the American public is this: when the most vulnerable stand up to the most powerful in order to expose a moral injustice that is too great to look away from.

posted by Lemkin at 4:48 PM on March 21 [22 favorites]

This is awesome thank you!
posted by toodleydoodley at 6:16 PM on March 21

The link is currently to a tracking service. Could that please be changed to the direct URL?
posted by criticalyeast at 6:40 PM on March 21

Here is a link to the direct URL
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 7:13 PM on March 21

Mod note: Posted edited to remove the click tracking link and replace with just the destination URL.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 8:54 PM on March 21 [2 favorites]

This article is so great: there’s an energy and political orientation here that feels powerful and new! I’ll be thinking about this one. Thanks for sharing.
posted by marlys at 6:06 AM on March 22 [2 favorites]