Working Class Love Notes #9: "The Same Old Tools Don't Work Here"
A Valentine for Rural America: Notes on the Rural Defenders Union, the critical role of rural organizing, and a ton of beautiful offerings from rural folks
Dear friends,
I always say my people and my place, working class Appalachia, is the true love of my life so of course I’m thinking of us on Valentine’s Day weekend. And it’s not only Appalachia, but all working class rural people, rural organizing, and rural culture will always hold a special space in my heart so I wanted to dedicate February’s love note to us.
This edition of Working Class Love Notes is a political call to bravery about the need to invest in rural organizing and is full of beautiful offerings from rural people uplifting our dignity and power.
This month’s newsletter is based on the article “From Rural America With Love: An Invitation to Bravery” that I co-wrote in Convergence Magazine with a close friend and colleague Stephen Smith, an organizer at WV Can’t Wait and one of my fellow co-founders of the Rural Defenders Union (RDU), a network of isolated, under-resourced, anti-authoritarian rural efforts. The rural defenders are fighting a wide range of live authoritarian threats: from rural police forces weaponized against Black folks and unsheltered people; to local school boards and city councils undermining speech and democratic norms; to white supremacists and militias targeting LGBTQ+ and BIPOC communities; to routine state violence against immigrant and indigenous communities, and beyond.
After facilitating the first RDU cohort and after having 130 conversations with rural organizers and volunteers across the country, Stephen and I wanted to share what we heard from our people, share a political assessment, and make a call to action to grow and support rural organizing in this country. All of the quotes featured are from our Convergence article and I encourage you to read all of it to get the whole picture.
As you read, keep in mind some questions we hope to spark amongst progressives:
How can we adopt a more serious strategy to invest in rural, small town, and “red state” organizing projects that are led by, and work for, the working class people already living here?
What will it take to embrace the understanding that rural people are a vital part of the solution to fighting authoritarianism in this country AND to put substantial action and resources behind them?
How can we open ourselves up to seeing that rural people have valuable lessons to share about fighting authoritarianism because we’ve been living in it and fighting back for decades? What would it take to follow our lead in this moment?
I hope you enjoy the quotes, read the article, and find some sweetness in the Valentines throughout. Stephen and I got a little sassy! But that’s why I always want working class people on my team: we’ve always got a good fight in us!
For those of you interested in the Rural Defenders Union, we have plans in the works so stay tuned, but a great way to stay in touch is to follow the founding organizations listed in the photo caption above.
And, finally, at the bottom of the newsletter featured in “Things That Captured My Heart” you’ll find a list of recent political, creative offerings from rural Appalachians, all of them centered in love for our people. Find some time to immerse yourself in their art this Valentine’s weekend. Trust me, they’re brilliant. You won’t regret it! It’s just what we all need right now.
Love, Beth
Believe us when we say things are bad.
“RuralOrganizing.org conducted a survey of 847 of their members earlier this year and found that 64.5% were experiencing at least one of the following threats (and usually more): book bans, anti-LGBTQ government action, anti-immigrant rhetoric, voter suppression, or political violence. Attacks on democratic institutions merely scratch the surface of what we’re up against. 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.”
We’re Out Here and We’re Fighting Back:
“In July, we put the word out: we were looking for rural, under-resourced groups, facing a live authoritarian threat, and boasting a base of volunteers with some track record of fighting back. We wanted folks willing to invest in a leadership cohort tasked with building a new sort of support group—committing to six three-hour training and strategy sessions over six weeks. We hoped maybe 30-40 groups would answer the call, and that maybe 20-25 would fit our criteria. Instead, we had 271 apply, and roughly 260 fit the criteria. Pride groups fighting to protect their people; immigrant- and indigenous-led projects; housing and harm reduction organizations; civil rights and participatory defense groups. From every region of the country, and across age and race differences.
As we got to meet them, four things surprised us about our new comrades:
First, there were obviously a lot more of us than we thought.
Second, they didn’t come from traditional non-profits (more than 85% of our applicants worked in groups with no full-time paid staff).
Third, folks had an overwhelming hunger for camaraderie —with each other, with national groups, and with movement elders who could offer practical advice and training.
And finally, they were employing a much broader range of tactics than we were used to seeing from larger non-profit community organizing groups.”
The Same Old Tools Don’t Work Here:
“The most common thing we heard from organizers was some version of “the same old tools don’t work here.” It makes sense. When authoritarian forces take hold, institutions crumble, faith in government falters, elections become less competitive, and folks rationally grow suspicious of powerful interests. Add all that up, and it’s no wonder that traditional issue advocacy and electoral campaigns just don’t work so well.”
“While we pride ourselves on being scrappy, what if we didn’t have to be? As one activist put it when a national funder approached them offering to pay for an information campaign around abortion rights, “For that money, we could buy up TV stations or newspapers – not just TV ads.” And this is exactly the level of funding for bold new strategies we need. Our right-wing opponents have been serious about investing in organizing rural communities for generations. It’s time progressives are serious, too.”
Quit Punching Down and Running to the Right
“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.”
and
“When supposed pro-democracy leaders offer authoritarianism-lite as an alternative to real-deal authoritarians, it hurts all of us in the long run and loses elections in the short run. Working people are smart, and we know this country isn’t working for the vast majority of us. It may seem clever to appeal to conservatives or win celebrity endorsements, but anyone who wants our votes is better off fighting for the things we want instead—like healthcare for everyone, stronger labor unions, and affordable housing.”
“This is not the first existential authoritarian threat in American history. Rural people stood at Standing Rock this decade, led by Native American elders. Black rural people were on the frontlines of the movement for civil rights 50 years ago in the South. Fifty years before that, Black, white, and immigrant miners formed a Redneck Army and fought authoritarian coal companies in Appalachia. Freedpeople, many in the countryside, built democracy and fought the resurgent Confederacy during Reconstruction.”
An Invitation:
“So often the people with the least are made to risk the most. But it doesn’t have to be that way. What if we never had another conversation about rural America without rural Americans? What if foundations transferred wealth (buildings, newspapers, land), not just temporary salaries or program costs? What if big donations were made as a match to local membership dues, so that money power and people power both effectively came from the base? What if the lion’s share of attention and resources went to groups led by the people who have the least? What if boards and coalitions and leadership teams were majority-led by people without college degrees? What if our calendars were overrun by meetings with working-class folks facing live threats?”
Read my friend, fellow Haymarket Books author, and member of the inaugural Rural Defenders Union, Rae Garringer’s book Country Queers: A Love Story from Haymarket Books. “While media-driven myths suggest that big cities are the only places queer folks can find love and community, Country Queers resists that trope by centering rural queer and trans stories of the joys, challenges, monotony, and nuances of their lives, in their own words.”
Check out my friend Belle Townsend’s new small press Backwoods Literary Press. Purchase the first anthology Discarded: A Rural Anthology featuring creative works by rural writers across the country. LOVE IT. One of my favorites is a poem by my friend and Kentucky Peoples Union organizer Elliot Frederick titled “I Still Have Work To Do.” Buy it, read it, share it!
The new podcast Mountain Laurels: Appalachian Women created and produced by the brilliant Jessica Miles. So far, episodes feature badass Appalachian women having conversations about our ancestors and role models in the region, like Eula Hall, Lois Scott, and Ollie Combs. More episodes are coming up weekly and you can look forward to an episode on Mother Jones featuring one of my favorite people Stacie Fugate from Appalachians for Appalachia. I’ll be on soon talking about Anne Braden. Listen wherever you listen to podcasts. It’s truly such a gift.
The Appalachian Spirit Oracle Deck created by Emily LaDouceur and illustrated by Jessica Holly. You better believe I was one of the first to support their kickstarter and I love this deck so much. It’s beautiful for fans of folk magic, those seeking some good country wisdom, and a great resource to learn about Appalachian culture and history.
Beth, thanks so much for this. I recently moved to rural northeast PA and resonate with a lot of what you share. I'm excited to dig into all of these resources.