Report from the Urban/Rural Divide

Week before last, with four fellow political progressives, I ventured into Eastern Washington to visit and converse with political conservatives about the urban/rural divide. We found on the surface pretty much what one might expect: the divide is real; the distrust deep and damaging, urbans more Democrats and rurals more Republicans. But beneath that superficial simplicity we found fascinating complexities, ambiguities, and sensitivities. It was a rich and rewarding experience.

The trip was organized by two folks from each side, urban and rural, blues and reds, under the dual umbrellas of One Small Step and Braver Angels. One Small Step is a creation of NPR’s StoryCorps. It brings together political opposites not to argue or convert each other, but to converse, to understand the roots of political views, of how one’s political beliefs were formed by family, by upbringing, by lived experience. The goal is to restore civility, to bridge the divisions that separate us, “to” (from StoryCorp’s mission statement) ”help us believe in each other” and in our democracy. Its method is to broker formatted conversations between opposites, one couple at a time. By engaging under agreed ground rules, we learn to listen to and respect one another. I have had three One Small Step conversations and look forward to more.

Braver Angels takes a slightly different approach but its purpose, “to de-polarize America,” is fully in sync with that of One Small Step. Braver Angels is a national movement that has grown out of 16 people, eight Donald Trump voters and eight Hilary Clinton voters getting together in a South Lebanon, Ohio church basement seven years ago to see if they could talk to each other without the rancor and disrespect they agreed are so dangerously divisive. They resolved to carry on, spread the idea and took the name “Better Angels” from Lincoln’s first inaugural address, in March of 1861 by which time seven Southern States already had voted to secede from the United States. Lincoln’s inspiring passage:

“We are not enemies, but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Yes, his appeal failed; God forbid we fail again. The risk is real. 

Despite a copyright challenge that forced a name change to Braver Angels, the organization now has branches in all 50 states. Rather than One Small Step’s person by person, get to know one another approach, Braver Angels takes on issues. 

Though still small (only 12,000+ dues paying members) but growing and in alliance with over 100 other orgs, they have held over 3,200 debates, live conferences, panelist conversations before audiences, Zoom conferences, and two annual, national conventions. You want to attend the convention? You must sign up with a politically opposite: voting delegates must be evenly matched, red and blue.

Generally, both Braver Angels and One Small Step find it easier to enroll blues than reds. Are you a Red; are you worried about our increasingly disrespectful and hostile polarization? Then, c’mon – sign up to one or the other or both and help de-polarize America.

            https://storycorps.org/discover/onesmallstep/

            https://braverangels.org/ -- issues basis

With whom did we meet and what did we do?

Our trip was arranged by Judie Messier, our go-to One Small Stepper. (All five of us are members of Wider Horizons, through which we have come to know one another.) We were hosted by and stayed in the home of two Utah-raised LDSer’s. Rural yahoos, right? Wrong! They are both graduate nuclear physicists, he retired from Rickover’s staff. She is a Republican of the Milton Freidman/Frederick Hyek schools and articulate on both, a district officer of Braver Angels, conflicted over a Trump candidacy and her vote. She says they likely call her a RINO. I would guess she will not vote for Biden. Her husband, a retired Commander, I’m guessing will vote party – while taking time to help his high school grandson with their physics homework. Yes, their; the grandson is transitioning with full acceptance and loving support of his grandparents. Not so simple after all. In their own way, as elite in their rural community as we urban “elites” about whom they complain. 

The #1 issue for our hostess: water and we west-side environmentalists who want to tear out the Snake River dams. She is the activist and a delightful conversationalist; he chooses to support her and stay in the background. New friends.

All five of us blues had One Small Step conversations. Mine was with a health care navigator and consultant, a conservative red, who worked in Seattle for most of her career but chose to return to her small-town roots where she helped found the co-housing venture in which she now lives. She is well-read, incisive, a jazz promoter, and a delightful luncheon companion. Again, not fitting any shallow stereotype of the red, rural conservative. We will stay in touch.

That evening there were fourteen of us for dinner put on by our hostess and host, we five progressives and nine small town or rural conservatives, all proponents of Braver Angels. At two tables of seven the conversations about urban and rural became candid, passionate, sometimes unguarded. After-dinner we all convened in the living room to share what we had learned and felt.

The next morning, we five watched a national Braver Angels Zoom conference on rural/urban relations moderated by Sue Lani Madsen, one of our dinner group the night before. Sue Lani is a very articulate journalist, activist, Republican leader, volunteer fireman (fireperson?) and skilled EMT. She also blogs. A recent entry: The party whose nominee is under 70 and does not have a worm in his brain wins.

After the Zoom session, we went out to the Madsen goat ranch in Edwall, WA. After 14 years as Range Management Specialist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, Craig Madsen tired of bureaucracy and founded Healing Hooves, a weed control, vegetation removal, and ecosystem management company -- using goats, what else? He and his 250 goats serve individual households and land owners, and also have contracts with towns, school districts, hospitals, and so on throughout the state.  

Rural goats confront urban progressives (without revealing their political leanings.)

What did we hear?

It’s not just a Washington problem, of course. Like Seattle, Austin, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Chicago, Columbus, and countless other blue cities are afloat in seas of red. And the more urbanized the state, the more frustrated the rural dwellers. The most urbanized states: Cal @ 94.2%, Nev., N.J., Fla, Mass @91.3%. The Least urbanized: Vermont @ 35.1%, Maine, W. Va, Miss, Montana @53.4% (Where our kids and grandkids live: NY, @87.4, Washington @83.4, Michigan @ 73.5, Minn @ 71.9, Ark @ 55.5%) Perhaps this helps explain why some Oregonians (80.5%) want to secede and be annexed by Idaho (69.2%.)

It’s nothing new. The derogatory term “city slicker” is from the 19thC; “country bumpkin” dates back to the 17thC! Country folk have long been suspicious of and alienated from city dwellers; it’s deeply ingrained. My mother was an upstate NY, tiny-town girl. I recall my Grandmother’s outrage when my orphaned cousin, whom they raised as their son, brought home an “Eye-talian” girl.

We heard grumping about “elites.” Yet Sue Lani and Craig Madsen are elites; our physicists host and hostess are elites; the guy with a Masters in Agronomy from WSU farming and managing by computer hundreds of acres of wheat in the Palouse, he is an elite; the John Deere dealer with $4,000,000 of inventory on his small town lot is an elite.

We heard about rural areas not getting their Fair Share, whatever that means. In fact, most rural counties receive more state support for roads, schools and so on, than they pay in to the state in real estate and sales taxes. But that does not make the rurals feel any better.

The myth of the self-reliant homesteader is powerful. That they relied on the Federal government’s subsidies to the railroads, on the government to break treaties and confiscate native Americans’ lands, on government grants of homesteading rights and free land, are conveniently left aside: how the west was "won".  

Insights

Phil Gerson, one of we progressive urbanites, offered an important thought: people who are rooted in place – farmers, small town business owners, people who prefer their tight, comfortable community – are naturally cautious, read conservative, about changes to their place, whether it's changing government regulations, environmentalism, influx of immigrants, whatever. Their place is their identity. Little wonder, observed Phil, that people rooted in place are more likely than not to be conservative by nature.

By contrast, those of us whose identity has to do with skills and talents, are more mobile. We likely cluster in cities among a diversity of people and encounter a diversity of ideas. We can more easily than our rural cousins move from one city to another as the market for our skills and talents change. (I, for example, was raised in Washington -- the other Washington, schooled in upstate New York and Boston, raised my family in Minneapolis, and worked in Seattle, Southeast Asia, and Brig, CH. Now retired, it is I who is rooted in place, by choice.) 

Sue Lani observed that partisanship can be a healthy route to solutions. What we need, she said, is better partisanship, to which I would add, pragmatic rather than ideological partisanship. Sue Lani and Phil are working together to create a state-wide conference on urban/rural collaboration and cooperation, a worthy effort deserving of our support.

I come away impressed . . .

. . . by the values and character of those we met. These folks value honesty, enterprise, mutual support, and bonds of respect and community. They are likeable. If we can allow our and their better angels to prevail, we will bridge the natural divide between rural and urban, and truly make the American idea work again for all of us. If . . ..