Don't Bite the Hand That Feeds You

It's not that simple

Mimi, did a tornado hit this town? It is all torn down. It looks bad.

My granddaughter was sitting in her car seat in the pickup as we drove to a friend’s birthday party in a small town not far from my own. My granddaughter was only five at the time — she has lived in Kansas City her entire life.

I was a little surprised by her question, but once I thought about seeing that town through the lens of a five-year-old, I understood. I saw what she saw.

An old bar with shutters that slap the windows in the wind. An old depot without steps to a platform to nowhere. A couple of stores on Main Street with broken glass and duct tape covering what looks like a bullet hole. Destruction as far as the eye can see.

Abandoned small town. Stock photo.

No. A tornado did not hit that town, but bad policies and neglect and the defunding of basics for rural communities has hit hard. So hard that it looks like a natural disaster has decimated many of our towns, but it is anything but natural.

The federal government currently has no comprehensive rural economic policy or strategy. While policymakers often equate agriculture policy with rural policy, agriculture is responsible for just seven percent of the jobs in rural America.

Ag policy does not adequately cover rural spaces. Most folks in rural America are not farmers. This misconception keeps us from moving forward.

We need more than ag policy.

Indulge me for just a minute…this is related.

I haven’t written about it yet, but I left Twitter and 160,000 followers a few weeks ago. Cold turkey. I didn’t download anything or take anything with me. I deactivated my account and never looked back.

It was a very difficult decision. Yes, Elon had thrown a wrench into the app a few years back, but I was able to still say what I needed to say to the folks who still wanted to listen. It became more difficult when the Nazis took over the site.

I would post and then mute replies because I knew most of them would comment on my weight or age or intelligence or threaten to kill or rape me. And that was the final straw with me — I had grown accustomed to the death threats, but the rape threats pushed me off the platform for good.

Most women know there are worse things than death.

The reason I tell you about Twitter is because I had amassed a large following for my rural progressive views. Folks knew me and my message well. They knew I was always in the ring fighting for rural people and schools and roads and hospitals. Some of you reading this may have found my Substack because you followed me on Twitter.

In the absence of Twitter, I joined Blue Sky. It has been a good experience for the most part.

When I joined the new site, I had people follow me who did not know me or my work in rural spaces. I’ve noticed when I talk of rural spaces on Blue Sky, I get some guff and it’s not from the Nazis or MAGAs…it’s from liberals.

I was taken by surprise. I should explain something that I may have taken for granted — something I should have said from the beginning — all rural folks aren’t racists or homophobes or indoctrinated or uneducated. We all aren’t white or straight or Christian. Some of us have degrees, even advanced degrees. Some of us are artists and writers. Folks of every demographic live in rural spaces. Farmers to laborers to teachers to engineers to doctors.

We all exist in rural spaces.

I speak on rural issues not just because I live here, but my neighbors do too, and they deserve the same treatment and representation as any other American.

I have never said rural folks should get special treatment or should be coddled. I don’t coddle anyone — just ask my kids. Or my husband.

I am asking my party and my Democratic colleagues to remember rural people not just because it is fair, but because it is politically wise. We don’t have to shift the thinking of the majority of rural people to win statewide and national elections. We just need to gather 3% more rural voters and turn them out.

To win, we just need to lose rural areas by less. That’s low-hanging fruit if you ask me. The lowest. Just reach up instead of punching down.

“They vote against their self-interest.”

Who are we to decide what is in someone else’s best interest? And how could rural people possibly vote for a Democrat when the ballot only has Republican nominees? I couldn’t vote in one single county election last August because I pulled a Democratic ballot and not one Democrat ran for a county office.

If you look at my county data, it would appear we all vote against our self-interest.

“They get what they vote for.”

I didn’t vote for Missouri Republicans any more than the majority of urban dwellers voted for Trump. They were elected without our consent.

We can’t abandon whole communities because the majority of the community voted in a way we don’t like. A full quarter of the folks in my district voted for me — a progressive. How can we look these rural folks in the face and say they deserve bad policies?

“They bite the hand that feeds them.”

i.e. rural people take more than they give. The rural folks I know are employed or retired. They have paid or are currently paying taxes for their Social Security and also contributing to their roads and schools — contributing to their communities.

You can say that rural folks aren’t contributing enough to sustain their communities and I would steer you back to the fact we have no federal rural economic policies and our state GOP supermajorities have stripped us of union wages and good-paying jobs. Bring back the work…rural folks will contribute as they have always done.

“They are not special.”

Agreed. Rural folks are no better than people who live in cities or suburbs. There is no reason to try to work any harder at convincing rural people to vote for Democrats, and therein lies the problem — we don’t work very hard to convince rural people to vote at all, much less for Democrats.

My entire district, HD1, lacks a field office. And so does HD2. And HD3. And HD4. In fact, there was only one Democratic field office opened in the past election in my entire congressional district and it was in Kansas City. The top 1/3 of the state with over 769,000 people had one field office…and it was in the city.

We have to build coalitions to claw our way back to democracy. We have to work within every community and the easiest way to do that is to work with organizers already in each space. People already on the ground.

Are there bigots and racists and homophobes and sexists living in rural America? Of course. Are these things limited to rural America? Of course not.

We can’t rub an entire demographic’s nose in shit and tell them they deserve it when they didn’t make the mess in the first place. Proximity to poor voting habits is just that. It’s proximal. Nothing more.

This is our moment to get to work in every community. To find the helpers and send them the resources to help. To fund the organizers and the candidates and the field offices.

Friend, I am not writing about rural communities for sympathy. I’m writing about rural communities to gain company. To gain allies. To gain solidarity.

To win elections and move forward.

~Jess