Want to know more about Community Works and our role in bridging the rural-urban divide? Join us for this month’s introduction to who we are, what we do, and how we are succeeding in rebuilding trust across political differences in our rural communities.

Register here: Bridging the Divide with Community Works, April 24th, 6:30pm ET.

For Part 3 of RUBI's communication series, we'll hear from Ariel Volk and Kristin Wheeler from Galvanize Action. They'll provide a deep dive on who the most movable rural women voters are and how to effectively reach and move them across key issues like the economy, abortion, and immigration. Galvanize Action works at the intersection of data science, behavioral psychology, and neuroscience to find women who want progress on key issues but aren’t reliably playing a role to get us there, connect with them on their values, and impact their civic behavior.

Register here.

Senior Advisor Bobby Clark will share messaging highlights from the Winning Jobs Narrative's (WJN) extensive research with thousands of voters. WJN focuses on building connections with working class voters across race and geography to win elections and build strong majorities for a progressive economic agenda. Learn core WJN principles along with specific poll-tested messages on high priority issues for the 2024 election.

Bobby is a communications strategist who advises political, philanthropic and advocacy organizations, including the Winning Jobs Narrative and the Heartland Fund. An alumnus of Howard Dean’s presidential campaign, Bobby went on to help found ProgressNow, a network of state-based communications organizations across the country focused on driving a progressive agenda and winning elections.

Register here.

Jared Abbott, Director of the Center for Working-Class Politics, will share key insights from two major treasure troves of research: Trump's Kryptonite: How Progressives Can Win Back the Working Class and Common Sense Solidarity. Come learn more about what ordinary rural voters of all races want from candidates and what rhetoric resonates the most with them. This briefing is the first of RUBI's 4-part series on effective communication across lines of difference.

Register here.

Is there a single change that could simultaneously increase support for climate change initiatives, defuse assaults on democracy, and decrease inequality? Yes: bridging the diploma divide between college grads and noncollege grads. Wait...isn’t it true that racial resentment predicts Trump voting better than class does? Yes: but that’s not why Trump won. Williams will untangle how race and class interact, and explain why understanding class dynamics in American politics is crucial to building a rural-urban bridge.

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Described as having "something approaching rock star status” in her field by The New York Times Magazine, Professor Joan C. Williams wrote an election night essay in 2016 that has been viewed over 3.7 million times. She is the author of White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America, which was one of the three books Joe Biden carried, dog-eared and annotated, during his 2020 presidential campaign.

Thomas Frank presents an overview of the underappreciated and unfairly maligned progressive populist movement that began in the late 19th century and achieved major victories well into the 20th century. Could rural progressives reignite such a movement today? Let's mull it over with historian Thomas Frank, author of The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism, Listen, Liberal, and What's The Matter with Kansas?

Register here.

Over the past twenty years, America has become deeply divided on many fronts, including between rural and urban people. The divide, which encompasses economics, culture and politics, not only hurts rural communities like southwestern Virginia but also makes action on climate change, wealth inequality and racial and social justice all but impossible. What are the underlying causes of the divide and what can be done about it? Join local farmer, author and former congressional candidate, Anthony Flaccavento as he leads a discussion about the divide, the Rural New Deal and other steps to overcome it.

Anthony Flaccavento is a farmer and rural development consultant from Abingdon, VA. The author of Building a Healthy Economy from the Bottom Up and numerous essays published in The New York Times, Newsweek, The Nation, and elsewhere, he is co-founder and director of the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative.

With Trump likely to be on the ballot again, a burning mystery looms: What drives white working-class voters to support Trump? Can it all be chalked up to racism? University of Pennsylvania political scientist William Marble will present his brand new analysis of the role that racial resentment and other cultural and economic concerns played in white working-class vote choice in past elections.

Understanding what drives vote choice is crucial as we head into an election year. We hope you can attend this special briefing and draw your own takeaways for reaching out to rural swing voters.

William Marble is a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Program for Opinion Research and Election Studies and an Elections Analyst at the NBC News Decision Desk. His research explores how political geography, the economy, and social arrangements influence electoral coalitions and public opinion, and he develops statistical methods to improve our understanding of public opinion. His work has been published in leading political science journals and covered by news outlets including the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and the Economist. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University and previously worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University.

Virtual training with Sierra Forward, a civic organization based in California.

On September 12 th the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative and Progressive Democrats of America jointly released the Rural New Deal, a wide-ranging template for transformative federal action that would spur investment in bottom-up approaches to building rural prosperity and turn back corporate concentration and control. While the Rural New Deal is broad in scope, it is grounded in community-based strategies that work. On Wednesday, October 4 th at 4pm Eastern, join RUBI co-founder, Cody Lonning as he discusses the RND with the primary authors, Anthony Flaccavento of RUBI and Alan Minsky, Director of Progressive Democrats of America, along with Marilyn Wrenn from Coalfield Development utilizing some of the strategies the document recommends.

Register here.

George Goehl led People's Action for 15 years. Currently, he is helping launch new organizing projects to engage working class people who are not progressive, training organizers how to do the work, and telling the story of what's possible when we reach beyond the choir and engage a "bigger we."  George's Working Class Campaigns training debuted in July and will be offered again this Fall, along with a 2-hour "Keep It Simple" workshop designed to help organizers locate the common sense language that once made organizing so powerful.

George will give us an overview of his new training initiative, why he launched it, and a bit about its core principles. If you're not familiar with George--or even if you are--this presentation promises to be inspiring, insightful and useful.

Register here.

Four decades ago, swayed by dubious economic theories and neoliberal ideology, conservatives and liberals alike embraced corporate concentration. Policymakers stopped enforcing our antitrust laws, sidelined concerns about monopoly power, and reconfigured banking, tax, trade, and other policies to favor the biggest corporations.

The results of this forty-year experiment have been dismal. Nearly every industry is now dominated by just a few giant corporations. As a result, our economy has become less resilient and productive. Inequality has risen sharply. Small businesses and family farms have been wiped out. Rural communities especially have suffered, drained by agribusiness giants and stripped of hospitals, grocery stores, banks, and other essential services. All of this has contributed to a widespread sense of powerlessness and put extraordinary strains on democracy.

The good news is that there’s a growing anti-monopoly movement that is making remarkable progress in recovering our strong antitrust laws and building new political will in Washington to break up concentrated corporate power. Anti-monopoly politics is popular, especially in rural America, and offers a promising pathway for building a durable, multiracial, rural-urban progressive majority.

Stacy Mitchell is Co-Executive Director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a research and advocacy organization that challenges concentrated corporate power and works to build thriving, equitable communities. ILSR has been a pioneering leader in the anti-monopoly movement and has a long track record of working alongside grassroots groups to create better alternatives, from community-owned broadband, to independent businesses, to distributed solar. Stacy has published several influential reports on corporate concentration and small business. In 2020 she was profiled by the New York Times for her work on Amazon. She’s also the author of the book “Big-Box Swindle” and has written for The Atlantic, New York Times, The Nation, and Washington Post, among others. She lives in Portland, Maine.

Register here.

The Democratic Party finds itself in a highly precarious electoral position. Even in “good” election cycles, Democrats struggle to translate their typically impressive aggregate vote totals across the country and within states into governing majorities. Core to the party’s struggles are its weaknesses with rural and working-class voters. To effectively address these problems, Democrats need to institutionalize a proper faction within the party that has a platform and brand that differs from that of the big city- and college campus-dominated national party establishment.

Robert Saldin is the Director of the Mansfield Center’s Ethics and Public Affairs Program and a Professor of Political Science at the University of Montana. His most recent book is Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites (Oxford, 2020), co-authored with Steven Teles.

Register here.

Sage Lawrence will be presenting on his recent report: The Rural Campaigns Guidebook- Best Practices for Progressive Candidates Running in Rural and Small-Town America, based on the findings from over 60 interviews conducted for his Master’s thesis. Focusing on what is unique about running for office as a progressive candidate in a rural district, he will unpack: 1) where effective strategies in rural areas differ from traditional campaigns, and 2) how candidates can craft a unique brand and a winning message in their district.

Sage got his start working on campaigns in the community where he grew up in eastern Washington and has worked as an organizer and campaign manager in rural areas for the past 6 years. Most recently he served as the Western PA Regional Organizing Director for the Pennsylvania Democrats where he helped Senator John Fetterman increase support in rural areas by 2.4% from Biden’s 2020 numbers.

Register here.