You Are Going to Have to Tell Them the Truth

Speaking in the Heartland

Let me say this upfront…I never meant to be a public speaker.

I was an American Literature teacher for a long time. I was a Middle School English teacher before that. I taught for a total of sixteen years. I taught children and young adults. I had only a few occasions to speak in front of adults and I didn’t like it.

Public speaking sparked instant panic.

I have a fair complexion and I embarrass easily. When that happens, it looks like I am breaking out in hives. The red creeps up from my chest to my neck to my face. I end up with massive splotches that dot my body. I also tend to get shaky when I get nervous and my voice cracks when I feel under duress. My heart beats quickly and my breathing is labored and quick.

Public speaking made me feel panicked.

I did it anyway.

The People’s Rally, Columbia, Missouri. 2025

I have now been speaking regularly for over two years and it is much easier for me. My panic usually doesn’t rear its nasty head often and I have been able to keep the creeping red blotches from attacking me during my talks.

One thing has become more difficult, though — the act of inspiring hope for the people who gather to hear me speak. The act of keeping myself together when others can’t.

I spoke in Liberty, Missouri a few weeks back and I always scan the crowd looking for signs of boredom so I can adjust my talk or wrap it up. That’s an old teacher trick I used to keep kids engaged when they’d rather be on their phones.

When I looked out across the room, I saw several women wiping their eyes. They were silently crying while listening to me speak. Now, I am known to hype up a crowd, but I have never induced such raw emotion in my life. I thought about it for days afterward.

I don’t think it had much to do with me.

I talked about rural Missouri and our lawmakers who don’t give a shit about us. I talked about the minimum wage and sick leave guarantee proposition we gathered 180K signatures for and passed by 57% in November only to have the GOP House throw it out with a vote.

I talked about Missourians gathering hundreds of thousands of signatures to give women the right to abortion, how we were the first state to overturn a complete abortion ban, and how the very first bills the Missouri GOP heard this session were on overturning the right we had just established.

I talked about how we have lived under the boot of authoritarians for 20 years and how it has now spread country-wide. How we had been warning folks that Project 2025 was already established law in Missouri, and we knew it would spread like wildfire if Trump was elected.

We knew. And now we live in the aftermath.

I talked about getting active in local Democratic groups or Indivisible groups and finding and funding candidates. On how we can’t do anything but draw a line in the sand now. How we link arms. How we fight back. Get in the streets. Boycott. Refuse to bend.

Tears streaming. They needed to hear it out loud even though it was painful. They know what they are up against with Trump because we have already faced it with our own Missouri legislators, but this will be worse.

Much worse.

I was in Iowa last weekend speaking when I heard an audible sob. A sob.

I didn’t want to call attention to the audience member so I kept going and I heard her sob again. What was I talking about at that moment?

The Trump Executive Orders. I went down a list and landed on immigration. The town I was speaking in is very diverse — there are members of that community who can disappear in the night from an ICE raid. There are children and elderly folks and disabled people who could be taken away in broad daylight. The woman sobbing in the audience knew this. She knew everything I was saying, but hearing me say it was too much.

Now is the time to use our muscle memory to fight back…to drag those sea legs back out and show others how to find their own.

I'll tell you what I tell mostly rural red-state Democrats in the rooms I visit: we are uniquely qualified to help stand up to Trump and Musk and the Oligarchs. We already know the game — we have seen it play out so many times that we can guess their next move. As a rural friend just said to me: we have a crystal ball.

Case in point: Social Security.

I know that Musk and Trump can’t just rip money away from people, but I knew what move they would use to get at it— destroy the system from the inside. Just like what Missouri Republicans did to Medicaid.

A headline: Missouri faces federal review over worst-in-nation Medicaid application delays.

The federal government told Missouri it is concerned the state is not doing enough to achieve and sustain compliance with federal rules on Medicaid. In Missouri, 72% of insurance applications took more than 45 days to process — the worst in the U.S.

Missouri GOP lawmakers opposed Medicaid and Medicaid Expansion. While they couldn’t keep folks from obtaining health insurance by blocking the program outright, they could keep people from qualifying by not answering the phones. And, when people are able to stay on the phone for hours, and finally reach someone to help, that worker is so overwhelmed that application delays still go on for months.

It’s not a new tactic. Defund an agency. Claim the agency doesn’t work. Privatize the agency.

That is the plan with Social Security. And Medicaid. And Medicare. And the Department of Education. And the FAA. And so many more.

We knew this administration would do this and we fight it at the federal level like we’ve fought back at the state level.

Since the Trump election, people joining me in libraries and wineries and churches and basements across the heartland are looking for an action item and relief. Looking for a way to stand up and a way to not feel alone. Looking for someone to tell them that what they are seeing is actually happening. To be able to let the tears roll while finding their spines.

This can’t be happening.

It is. And now we face it.

I feel confident being in the front. I don’t want my children or grandchildren on the front lines of this fight, but it will likely come to that.

We have reached a tipping point and that is why there is such raw emotion in the rooms I am in. They know what they have to do and so do I.

Don’t look away or disengage.

Give the Republicans and Trump and Musk no peace. No quarter. Talk about them and show up where they are.

Back to Iowa. A woman asked me what she should be doing and I was conservative in my advice to her. Join up for 5 calls. Join your local progressive groups. Write your lawmakers. Start a local Indivisible. Et cetera…

A Vietnam Veteran came up to me afterwards and thanked me for coming and then took my arm and said, “You are going to have to tell them the truth. You know the truth. We have to be in the streets.”

I don’t disagree.

To the streets.

~Jess