Rural Caucus

Join rural Indivisibles across the country in building local organizing power!

  • Join
    • Illustration of a rising sun

    Join the Rural Caucus!

    Whether you've been organizing in your rural community for decades or just getting started, our rural program provides space to connect with one another, engage in rural electoral and advocacy work and celebrate rural resistance and powerbuilding.

    Join the Rural Caucus!
  • Funding

  • About

    • What is the Rural Caucus?

    From the Northeast to the Deep South, from the Great Lakes and the Great Plains, from the desert to the Alaskan tundra, Indivisibles and friends organize in rural areas to win our communities back. We organize in traditionally forgotten areas, and we’re at the front lines of the fight for our democracy. Indivisible leaders in rural areas are smart, brave, and resourceful. At Indivisible, we’re proud to support our rural leaders and allies. If magic is bending the forces around you according to your intent, then rural Indivisibles work magic every day. We can’t wait for you to join us. 

    When you join the Raucous Rural Caucus, you get access to: 

    • Our monthly calls
    • Our annual Rural Summit
    • Messaging guidance and tailored support 
    • A community of progressive rural activists who want to help you succeed.

    Rural is winnable.

    We can organize in our communities to change hearts and minds, neighbor to neighbor. We aren’t as polarized as we have been led to believe.

    • 46 million

      As of 2021, more than 46 million Americans live in rural communities.

    • 52 percent

      52 percent of rural voters have received abortion care or know someone who has.

    • 62 percent

      62 percent of rural voters worry that we will not have a functioning democracy in the coming decade.

  • Community Spaces

    • Join our Facebook Community!

      Share ideas, questions, and best practices for activism and engagement.

      External

    • Flyover Foods

      Check out our online cookbook of specialties, brought to you by rural Indivisibles!

      External

  • FAQs

    • Maybe! Do you live in a community with less than 100,000 people in it? Do you live in a red, often gerrymandered district? Does your community have a strong history of extractive industry (think: tourism-dependent economies, big agriculture, mining, or ranching)? Are you in a college town seemingly in the middle of nowhere that relies on the higher education industry to help sustain your local economy? Do you find yourself having to drive long distances for necessities? If you answered “yes” to more than one of these questions, you just might be “rural!”

    It’s a common myth that “rural” = white, straight, and more homogenous than the rest of the country. This doesn’t hold up to even the slightest scrutiny. 1 in 4 rural residents are people of color, and that ratio is often higher, especially in the Deep South and the West. Rural areas are also diversifying rapidly. Queer activism, multiracial labor movements, and movements for the liberation of people with disabilities, migrants, Black and brown people, women, and every intersection therein, are core pieces of the rich history of rural America.

    We can help with that! If you’re looking to start a group, you can fill out our group registration form. After that, you’ll hear from a member of our staff to help you get started. You can also email rural@indivisible.org to get some pointers on how to get a group started in a rural area. 

    Have you done your research? Are you aware of your own biases and assumptions about rural? Are you ready to listen rather than lead?

    You can look at local news stories in rural areas near you, build rural-led representation into your Indivisible state structures, and talk to rural progressives. We strongly recommend this guide from Anthony Flaccavento at Rural Urban Bridge Initiative as a foundation to build up your knowledge and challenge your assumptions. 

    Sometimes. Make sure you keep up with our email list and use your best judgment. Remember that you’re a guest in this space, and our programming focuses on folks who work in rural areas. Be a gracious guest, and make space for rural groups to talk to each other. 

    Times where you might want to join a rural call: 

    You know your community best, so when in doubt, don’t go out. Rural leaders have successfully put on events without a single hitch. They’ve written letters to the editor, held rallies, been published in local news, canvassed, and called around their neighborhoods without incident. They’ve also faced a lot of pushback at times. All of them have weathered the storm. 

    YES. Your members of Congress and state legislators may not listen, but your friends and neighbors will.

    Many of the votes taken by representatives in rural areas are deeply unpopular in those areas. It’s been proven time and time again that GOP leaders consistently legislate to the right of the people they represent, but constituents can find it extremely cumbersome to track what decision-makers are doing. 

    We believe when we organize on issues where MAGA extremist positions are unpopular and ours are popular, we can pull more of your friends and neighbors away from the MAGA agenda. When no one fights against MAGA’s preferred narrative, folks can mistakenly assume that those positions are popular, when in fact, those positions (and politicians that peddle them) are extreme. As we tackle these issues over time, we can demonstrate that these leaders are not actually representing rural communities’ values and hold them accountable.  

    It’s our job as Indivisibles to make unpopular decisions by MAGA extremists as public as possible and show the world who they are, and to remind our friends and neighbors that we are better than the politicians that enact massive harm every day. We have plenty of guidance, slides, and recordings from past calls in our public-facing agenda and resources. Give them a read! You never know what you will find. 

    Your life as a rural champion for progressive change begins in one click! You can sign up for the Raucous Rural Caucus at https://bit.ly/JoinRural, and get call links, recordings, slides, and updates from the team (we do not spam your inbox, we stay on topic, and we keep it brief). You can also reach out to us any time by emailing rural@indivisible.org.