Black Farmers have suffered long enough from the decimation of rural America and decades of systemic racism. Help from the USDA finally is long overdue.

You’ve probably heard that $5 billon dollars from President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue stimulus plan has been dedicated to farmers of color. 

Specifically, that designation is for “socially disadvantaged farmers,” which, according to the (USDA), is anyone who has been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice because of their identity as members of a group. 

You should also be aware that the Biden administration is being sued by several white farmers for racial discrimination, not for the government’s past actions against people of color, but because the current administration is making an effort to address racism and the historic inequalities inflicted on people of color by the USDA.

Let’s be honest for a minute, if those on the right really cared about agriculture and rural communities, rather than targeting cash payments to large-scale farmers and agribusiness firms as they chose to do these past few years, policy makers would have dedicated adequate resources to those truly in need and made a real attempt to reform the inflexible and wasteful system that currently feeds us.

Senator Warnock in Byromville Georgia with group of black farmers

The lawsuit on behalf of a group of white farmers in Wisconsin, launched by the right-wing Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, claims that dedicating resources to specific groups to which white farmers may not belong, is racist. 

What such lawsuits really show is not a concern with agriculture, but instead a shallow form of identity politics that is meant to rally poor, rural white people to the political right.

Farmers of color, especially black producers have suffered from both the decimation of rural America as well as decades of systemic racism. 

The USDA and federal government can begin to reverse the racism against Black farmers not only through debt relief, but also the $1 billion in outreach and training from the Biden stimulus bill which is necessary to ensure that current and beginning farmers of color acquire the necessary tools to produce food for themselves and their communities. 

Most importantly, to address racism it must be confronted directly. Lacking that specific intent, history has shown us that Black people are always left behind. 

There is no anti-white racism involved here, only further attempts to perpetuate decades of institutional racism against Black farmers.

It's Put Up Or Shut Up Time! Will Georgia Democrats Compete in Rural Areas, for Rural Legislative Seats in 2022?

I've always said that a Democratic vote in rural Mitchell, Marion, or Ware County counts just as much as a vote in suburban Cobb County. It’s important for Democrats to take stock of their efforts to turn out rural voters in the same way they assess their tactics in other areas of the Peach State. The party was successful last year because candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock expanded the map beyond the Metro Atlanta area and didn't take any votes for granted. Last year Democrats made significant inroads in small towns and rural areas down in central and south Georgia, and it’s crucial they keep up that effort going into the 2022 midterm elections.

Democrats have to stay competitive in rural areas of the state and that starts with recruiting a legitimate, strong candidate to take on incumbents like Austin Scott in GA-8, Buddy Carter in GA-1, Drew Ferguson in GA-3 as well as candidates for the state legislature. It’s clear that suburban and urban voters were a major driver of our victories, but they can’t forgo small towns and rural counties. If Democrats want to get things done in Atlanta and at the local level and mount a strong challenge for control of the Georgia General Assembly next year, they have to win outside of the suburbs.

Democrats can win these communities by showing up and passing policies that directly benefit rural Georgians. That’s why newly elected Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff spent the final week of his campaign on a tour through Southwest and Central Georgia. Popular Democratic priorities like Medicaid expansion, which helps fund rural hospitals and extending broadband infrastructure see some of their biggest benefits in rural communities, and it’s important that they keep working hard to support these policies.

It will be tempting for democrats to look at the results of last year’s elections and conclude that Democrats here need only win votes in suburban and urban areas to be successful. That would be a mistake. As the party has grown stronger over the past few years, they've expanded their presence across the Peach State. 

There have been a lot of great candidates that did not make it to the Gold Dome and me over the years like Marc Arnett of HD 138

Marc Arnett

who came up short of unseating Mike Cheokas, or Jack Lance who ran back in 2010 for HD 8 along with the endorsement of late Governor Zell Miller but I would not consider those campaigns to be losses. It will take time to flip some of these rural areas.

Jack Lance with Zell Miller

Democrats can absolutely be competitive in rural Georgia. They just have to get back to basics, and that will start with real conversations about community issues. I am a big advocate for localized messaging and community-based organizing. Democrats love to hire people who are out of state and expect them to know how to communicate in their new turf. That doesn’t work, especially not in rural Georgia. Rural Georgians can smell an out-of-towner from miles away. They need people who live there to have these conversations. Local people are experts in their communities and should be the ones to drive the conversation.

There are some people that will not be receptive to having a conversation because they disagree on wedge issues, and that’s fine. We are all entitled to our opinions. We all have limited time and resources. It is a much better use of time to talk with someone who is willing to have a productive conversation than someone who is committed to arguing.

 

 

Could Marjorie Taylor Greene Be The Gift Democrats Need in 2022?

14th Congressional District Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s rhetoric is offensive, harmful, and dangerous. We’d all be better off if she were gone from politics. But since the House Republicans refuse to expel her, the democrats at least use her to win the midterms.

Don’t you see? Greene is a huge gift in my opinion to the democrats. All they have to do is use her extremism, her outside of the mainstream views against every House Republican who’s running for re-election in a moderate district in 2022. Greene has three centrist

democratic challengers in Holly McCormick (D-Ringgold), Marcus Flowers (D-Bremen) and Lateefah Connor (D-Dallas)

The media keeps spinning Greene as spelling doom for the Democrats, but they can never say why. That’s because it’s not true. In every district where Greene helps the republicans in 2022, they were going to win anyway. Greene hurts the republicans in numerous moderate/swing districts.

Greene is probably good for handing five to eight moderate House districts to the Democrats in 2022. That could decide majority control right there. Throw in the upcoming indictment of fringe Congressman Matt Gaetz, and it potentially could be Christmas morning for the Democrats.

The republicans just got done proving this strategy works, when they used fictionalized exaggerated versions of The Squad to win moderate House districts. In 2022 the Democrats just have to use the real versions of Greene and Gaetz to win moderate House districts. But democrats don't know how to fight fire with fire. We'll see next year.

 

The Weight of the letter "D" in Rural Georgia

Democrats are losing rural votes not because of what they propose but because rural voters identify more with the Republican Party. “Democratic” ballot initiatives do well in rural, but Democratic candidates don’t.

In politics these days, it’s not as much what is said as who says it. Urban voters are getting more Democratic and rural voters more Republican.

What we can see now, however, is that Democratic candidates are paying an “identity penalty” in rural counties, they are losing votes not because of what they propose but because of the “D” that sits beside their name on the ballot.

Party is largely about identification these days, not policy. Okay, here's an example...Imagine walking down a hall of a large building. There are gatherings happening in two separate rooms. You can look through a door and see the people in each group. You size them up, seeing what kind of clothes they wear and imagining whether they would be the kind of folks you’d want to spend time with or have your children visit. You make a judgment, pick a room and go in. You join a team.

That’s how political parties are chosen. It’s about identification and social solidarity, not issues. And that identity is strong and divided by geography. Rural residents went in one door and urbanites went in the other.

Identity is not something that people easily give up. (Have you ever convinced a sports fan to change his or her team?) Like someone asking me to switch being a Georgia Bulldogs fan to a Florida Gator fan. Not happening!

And so the “identity penalty” Democrats pay in extremely heavily Republican areas might be too great to overcome. Candidates might do better if they run as independents rather than as Democrats in particularly “red” states.

What Happens to Rural Areas After Trump Leaves, whether it's in 2020 or 2024?

If one word can capture the sentiment of rural and small-town dwellers in recent years, it is resentment.

Residents of rural and small-town communities believe they are not getting their fair share of government attention and vital resources compared to urban dwellers. They believe that America is moving away from them.


People in rural areas like feel as though they are being ignored by urban elites and urban institutions like government and the media at a time when they are struggling to make ends meet.
They believe their communities are dying, the economy is leaving them behind, and that young people, money and their livelihoods are going somewhere else.

They think that major decisions affecting their lives are being made far away in big cities (which is true). And perhaps most importantly, they feel that no one is listening to them or their ideas about things that are important to them. Most distressing to those living in this situation is the belief that no one, and especially no one in government, really cares.

To date, the phenomenon of resentment has been responsible for adding another layer of heightened division among Americans, including an increase in political polarization.

That makes it much more difficult for federal government officials, as well as those at the state and local level, to reach consensus on important issues of the day

It is this frustration and anger of small-town and rural area folks has resulted in increasing political support for Republican candidates, generally, and for Trump, specifically.

Given their intensifying feelings of resentment for being ignored and left behind, rural and small-town folks were particularly receptive to the slogan touted by Trump in his campaign “Make America Great Again!”

Trump won the country’s small town and non-metropolitan areas by 63.2 percent to 31.3 percent, with his largest vote shares coming from the most rural areas.

Like other Republican presidential candidates over the last 10 years, Trump garnered a large majority of the vote in traditional rural areas like Appalachia, the Great Plains and parts of the South.
Surprisingly, however, Trump also won a substantial proportion of the traditionally Democratic small town and rural vote in several key Midwestern industrial areas
 
Other appealing policies were tax cuts for both businesses and individuals; significant reductions in the regulation of business and industry; and import tariffs on foreign goods that compete unfairly with American-made products.

People living in small towns and rural areas who supported these kinds of policies were more likely to vote for Trump rather than Clinton in 2016 and they did.

Above all, Trump promised a shift in the focus of the national government so that much more attention would be directed to rural areas and small towns and the challenges they faced.
This evidently buoyed the hope of Trump supporters in these areas that they would be getting something closer to their fair share of government attention and resources.

Residents of small towns and rural areas are much more supportive of the Republican Party and its candidates than people in urban and suburban areas.

In addition, the most ardent supporters of Republicans are among those small-town and rural folks who are white and male, have less than a college education and vote on a regular basis.

I believe that the urban-rural/small-town divide will continue to act as a major force in politics for the remainder of the Trump era and probably longer.

Small Town Voters like Democratic inspired ideas, just not Democrats

In politics these days, it’s not as much what is said as who says it. The reports on last year's Nov. 6 election have been largely about the growing political divide between rural and urban. Urban voters are getting more Democratic and rural voters more Republican.

What we can see now, however, is that Democratic candidates are paying an “identity penalty” in rural counties, they are losing votes not because of what they propose but because of the “D” that sits beside their name on the ballot.

Rural voters both rejected Democratic candidates by close or in some cases, by wide margins but, on the same ballot, voted for Democratic (if not downright liberal) positions in nonpartisan propositions and amendments.

Party is largely about identification these days, not policy. Its like being a sports fan than a policy wonk.

Imagine walking down a hall of a large building. There are gatherings happening in two separate rooms. You can look through a door and see the people in each group. You size them up, seeing what kind of clothes they wear and imagining whether they would be the kind of folks you’d want to spend time with or have your children visit. You make a judgment, pick a room and go in. You join a team.

That’s how political parties are chosen. It’s about identification and social solidarity, not issues. And that identity is strong and divided by geography. Rural residents went in one door and urban/suburban dwellers went in the other.

Second, identity is not something that people easily give up. (Have you ever convinced a sports fan to change his or her allegiance?) And so the “identity penalty” Democrats pay in heavily Republican areas might....MIGHT be too great to overcome depending on the candidate.

What Can Georgia Democrats in White Working-Class Districts Must Do

Given the reality that simply proposing programs and policies that are objectively in white workers’ interests is insufficient to win their support, Democratic candidates must instead visualize the method of appealing to these voters as a two-stage process.

Dubose Porter

First, they must develop a specific communication and persuasion strategy designed to break through the conservative “bubble” and become accepted as a legitimate part of the political discussion that goes on between the different sectors of the white working-class community. Second, once this is accomplished, they can begin to debate and challenge their Republican opponents regarding specific social and economic policies and programs.

Historically, most Democratic candidates who succeeded in white working-class, small-town districts have followed this kind of approach and always tended to display two major characteristics:

First, they firmly asserted and embraced many key traditional values and cultural markers of the white working class even as they staked out relatively moderate or liberal stances on these subjects.

They would endorse common-sense gun regulations, for example, but also consider gun ownership legitimate and categorically support the rights of citizens to own guns. They would reject the notion that America should impose Christianity on all Americans, but they would assert equally firmly that Christian faith is a positive force in many Americans’ family life, including their own. They would support a variety of populist economic measures but at the same time endorse the virtues of small business and individual initiative that are a part of working-class culture.

Second, they frequently embodied white working-class values in their own personal life and history. Many attended church on Sunday; others had served honorably in the military or had a background in a working-class occupation or as the owner of a small business. Many went hunting on fall weekends, listened to country music in their car, and were able to talk with firsthand knowledge and personal experience about the day-to-day problems of the white working-class people in the neighborhoods and communities they represented. In their personal lives they refuted the accusation that they were educated elitists with no connection to or understanding of ordinary peoples’ lives.

Democrats running in red-leaning districts whether its in South Central Georgia or Northeast Georgia need to spend time in places where people disagree with you. Reach out. Show up and make your argument. People will appreciate it, even if they are not inclined to vote for you. Sometimes you may spend days among crowds where there are almost no Democratic voters in sight. Listen to them, work with them and try to persuade them.

But if a Democrat is on the progressive side or leans that way, one should combine a reassuring cultural style with a practical progressive message on issues that people care about.

It is critical to recognize that the approach many Democratic candidates are taking cuts across the conventional centrist-progressive divide that now so obsesses the media and dominates debate within the Democratic coalition. Some successful Democratic candidates will frame their policies in relatively moderate (though still clearly Democratic) terms, as Lucy McBath did in Georgia 6th Congressional District, while others will campaign on more robust progressive terms like Stacey Abrams did in her bid for Georgia governor. But the success of all the new Democratic candidates will ultimately depend on whether they can win recognition and acceptance as sincere and authentic representatives of their predominantly working-class districts, rather than on any differences in the exact details of their platforms and policies.


In Trump-friendly districts, the central challenge Democrats face is to penetrate the conservative ideological cocoon and convincingly demonstrate to voters that Democrats can once again be their most effective and genuine advocates and representatives.