Last Tuesday, the 8^th of June, the co-editors of the Stansbury Forum “attended” the first of four webinars on bridging the urban-rural divide. The remaining three run on consecutive Tuesdays, starting on the 15th of June.

The 2022 elections are coming on fast, the time to start organizing is now.  They will be overwhelmingly important to working folks – their jobs, income, health, freedoms – and to the democratic process of the country.

We must find a way to engage all in these coming fights, to connect people of common interests in both the urban and rural communities.

Anthony Flaccavento, a Virginia farmer, activist, and occasional writer for the Stansbury Forum, is hosting a series of four webinars on how we can best connect people in these two settings.

Below you will find a brief description of the series, a link for registration to the remaining three sessions and a video of the first section.  Anthony has requested, recommended, that the video should be watched first if you did not attend the first seccsion.

Peter and I hope to “see” you there.

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Future Generations University, LiKEN Knowledge, and Appalachian Voices invite you to join Anthony Flaccavento and some of the best thinkers and doers from across the nation in a deep discussion of the underlying causes of this divide and how it can be overcome. You’ll learn:

• Six underlying causes of the divide and how they reinforce each other
• How the neglect of rural development has enabled the divide and how effective, bottom-up rural development strategies can help reverse it
• Better, more accurate ways of understanding rural perspectives on regulations, the environment, and the role of government
• Much better ways to talk about and talk to rural communities
• Other tools and strategies for overcoming the divide

The rural-urban divide is deep, it’s widespread, and it’s getting worse. Liberal people from cities and suburbs think most rural folks are ignorant, racist, stuck in the past, their communities heading towards oblivion. Many in the countryside view urban people, academics, and the government as elitist, contemptuous of rural ways, and dismissive of the people living there. While race and racial resentment play major roles in this polarization, the divide between urban and rural is perhaps the most poorly understood component of our divisions. And it’s killing us, enabling the richest people and biggest corporations to dominate our democracy while the great majority of us fight amongst ourselves.How did we get here, and how do we begin to overcome the divide? More to the point, what role has those who espouse a fair and just world played in exacerbating the divide, and what must we do differently?

The Rural-Urban Divide:
How We Got into This Mess, How We’ll Get Out
Register – Here.

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