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, 4th Wednesday, 6:30pm ET.

Meet the man who "brought the class war to the DNC." John Russell, a self-described "dirtbag journalist", is a labor and class politics reporter for More Perfect Union and has his own Substack called The Holler ("class politics for rednecks and hippies"). An Appalachian, Ohio Valley native who ran for Congress, John made his way to the 2024 DNC mainstage where he gave an electrifying speech calling on working class Americans to come together for control of our government and workplaces. John has also produced a viral video where he interviewed Trump supporters at a rally in Erie, PA. 

We'll screen John's short, powerful speech and the fascinating ten-minute video during the briefing.

Register here.

Karuna Koppula will show us how to create simple, non-partisan voter guides. These guides can be distributed in local and statewide races as a non-polarizing means of informing disengaged voters of the candidates' positions on key issues of importance to local voters. This is something we hope RUBI supporters will form teams and try out during this electoral cycle. If you are part of an Indivisible chapter or other local group with a neutral-sounding name, voter guides are an underutilized, very impactful thing you can do to help move vote margins. Come learn how to do it --it's not that hard!

Karuna Koppula is Vice President of Administration at the Center for Voter Information. Before joining CVI, she was the Deputy Director for Political Engagement at the Analyst Institute, where she worked with internal and external partners to deploy evidence-driven strategies.

Register here.

RUBI's own co-founder and Communications Director, Erica Etelson, will share highlights from two new RUBI resources: The Back Road to 2024: 8 Ways to Depolarize Rural Electoral Campaigns and Talk Like a Neighbor: Communication Tips for Rural Candidates. In this era of peak polarization, left-leaning candidates who can defuse partisan hostility stand a better chance of appealing to soft Republicans, swing voters, and the "exhausted majority" of the electorate. Erica is the author of Beyond Contempt: How Liberals Can Communicate Across the Great Divide and co-writes the Rethinking Rural column for The Nation.

Register here. 

Join the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative (RUBI) at this year’s Rural Assembly Everywhere for a training about the origins of the rural-urban divide. At the training, you’ll engage with information and suggestions for how to navigate and lessen the divide. The objective of this workshop is to gain the skills to find mutual understanding and common ground, defuse hostility and contempt in conversations and relationships, and build multi-racial working and middle-class rural solidarity between rural, suburban, and urban dwellers. RUBI’s practical solutions are based on research by our own and other scholars, as well as the personal experiences of rural progressive organizers.

Register here.

As we get closer to the November election, many progressive and Democratic strategists advise a focus on “turning out the base,” while others prioritize persuading independents and other potentially movable voters. But what if “the base” for progressive and Democratic candidates is shifting? And what if one of the biggest blocs of potential voters for Joe Biden and Democratic candidates – working class and rural people – is showing signs of shifting their votes away from MAGA Republicans towards more populist progressive representatives? In this presentation, Sarah Jaynes, Founder and Executive Director of the Rural Democracy Initiative, will provide an overview of fascinating new rural polling and the work of more than 100 organizations and initiatives making headway in rural America. Sarah will also highlight some candidates running in rural districts with a strong chance of winning.

Register here.

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, June 26th, 6:30pm ET.

In 2000, Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly told a Washington Post reporter, “We’re the only show from a working-class point of view.” Liberals and progressives found this laughable. O’Reilly’s show and Fox News constantly boosted a party inflicting deep wounds on working-class people: undermining unions, blocking more affordable health care, and starving public services through tax cuts on the rich. How could he possibly represent a working-class audience? In this presentation, communication scholar Reece Peck explains how conservative media producers learned to effectively brand political conservatism as blue-collar by appealing to working-class taste, knowledge, and morality.

Register here.

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, May 22nd, 6:30pm ET.

Mike Lux, political consultant and founder of American Family Voices, teams up with Anthony Flaccavento, co-founder of Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, to bring you this valuable workshop on how to win back rural voters on May 22nd at 1 pm ET. 
Register here.

Sharon Strand Ellison will demonstrate how to engage in productive discourse with people across the political divide. She will show how, even in high conflict situations, we can defuse defensiveness, understand other people’s point of view, and effectively share our own.

This special 2-hour briefing is the fourth and final of our communications series. During the first hour, Sharon will present core Powerful Non-Defensive Communication™ principles. For those who can stay on, the second hour will be devoted to Q&A and role playing in response to your specific communications dilemmas.

If you’ve been putting off that hard conversation with your sister or neighbor—or if you plan on campaigning this Fall--this one’s for you!

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Sharon Strand Ellison, author of Taking the War Out of Our Words, received a Kaplan award as a pioneer in the field of communication. In addition to dozens of clients in the education, government, corporate and non-profit sectors, she has coached hundreds of political activists and politicians, including Oregon Governor Barbara Roberts, in how to effectively debate and engage without getting into power struggle. 

Register here.

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.

Register here.

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.