How do progressives win again in rural communities? Why have we struggled to break through? What does it look like to meaningfully engage rural voters and gain support for our candidates? In this report, RuralOrganizing.org provides findings, insights, and recommendations for progressives working to rebuild power outside major metropolitan areas. [...]
Looking to fight social media misinformation in your community? RuralOrganizing.org recently released a community resource just for you! Starting on May 30, 2020, the RuralOrganizing.org network began hearing the same rumor mentioning out-of-town “antifa” rioters bussing into various regions across the country. This guide was written with the help of dozens of leaders from across the country in response to those rumors. [...]
RuralOrganizing.org is working to provide toolkits and resources for agricultural community leaders responding to crisis situations, like COVID outbreaks. This is a brief overview of crisis response planning and crisis communications response strategies for organizational and community leaders. [...]
Between March 26–29, 2020, RuralOrganizing.org commissioned a nationwide poll to gauge public opinion on issues of critical importance to all voters. In keeping with our mission and in order to provide a comprehensive analysis of rural voters, the research included an oversample of voters living in counties designated as rural, according to the USDA rural urban continuum codes. In our analysis, we refer to these voters as “non-metro.” [...]
This toolkit s is a blueprint for a campaign that uses yard signs to engage rural progressive base voters, and help grassroots organizers identify the most vocal supporters in rural communities for issue-based or electoral campaigns. This toolkit was created based on our field experiment organizing in 45 rural Kentucky precincts during the 2019 governor's race. Even though many of the organizations in our network run campaigns on a smaller scale with smaller budgets, with this toolkit, we’ll show you how to integrate our findings and ideas from our 2019 campaign to fit your needs. [...]