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Based on your experience in rural America, whether there are lessons that
progressive organizations can draw from,
from
conservative or right-wing organizations? Not that we would want to emulate them
but maybe there are
insights that could be gleaned from their successes lately. And
if so, could you give us an example of a couple? --Well, you know I've certainly been
lurking on a lot of internet sites of late as I get ready to launch the
mapping phase of rural counties in four states: Colorado, Nebraska,
Idaho and Washington. And one of the things that's just very very stark is that if you look on
the website,
of Americans for Prosperity,
and try and get a sense of where they're meeting,
you are just going to just see the, have an immediate access to a very
compelling,
up-to-date,
any county that you want, you know where in that month
they will be meeting next and who to communicate to.
Unfortunately if you go up to a kind of Internet-based organization on the left,
if you will, you're going to find some fairly dated entry points.
You're going to find that three years ago,
there was a really compelling group in this county,
and five years ago in this county, and you know, I mean it just seems much more
stagnant and much less attractive to say well,
is this a historical website, or is this a current point of entry for me as
Joe Schmo living in this community to actually find some allies.
So right there you see some real differences.
I think the advantage of organizing in rural communities though, is you can see
some really amazing results fast, in terms of people having a much more
recent memory of community,
and a much stronger kind of methodology for teaching
people that are not part of a community
how to be vibrant, how to be neighborly, and how to create some politics within
that.