Reframing our relationship to rural is essential to changing outcomes for the whole nation. Sixty million of us live in the countryside, and far more grew up there or identify as rural. Rural Americans reflect the full diversity of the country in who we are, what we do, and what we want to achieve. Yet, rural Americans are sicker, poorer, and older than the rest of the country. They experience higher rates of child and family poverty, addiction, and mortality, and they lack access to essential services and obstacles to opportunities to thrive. In many cases they are also dealing with historical traumas, from colonization to generational poverty.
And yet we know rural America is more than its trauma and more than the convenient stereotypes and stories that dominate public discourse. It is a place of innovation, tight-knit communities, and civic participation. It is fire departments and schools and local organizations making a difference. There is an opportunity right now to draw the connections between rural and its counterparts, to name the roads, fibers, and futures that connect us. To craft a future of us and ours.
The Rural Assembly exists in this space, tending relationships and changing perceptions in service to healing a divided nation.
Reframing our relationship to rural is essential to changing outcomes for the whole nation. Sixty million of us live in the countryside, and far more grew up there or identify as rural. Rural Americans reflect the full diversity of the country in who we are, what we do, and what we want to achieve. Yet, rural Americans are sicker, poorer, and older than the rest of the country. They experience higher rates of child and family poverty, addiction, and mortality, and they lack access to essential services and obstacles to opportunities to thrive. In many cases they are also dealing with historical traumas, from colonization to generational poverty.
And yet we know rural America is more than its trauma and more than the convenient stereotypes and stories that dominate public discourse. It is a place of innovation, tight-knit communities, and civic participation. It is fire departments and schools and local organizations making a difference. There is an opportunity right now to draw the connections between rural and its counterparts, to name the roads, fibers, and futures that connect us. To craft a future of us and ours.
The Rural Assembly exists in this space, tending relationships and changing perceptions in service to healing a divided nation.
Assembly activities, campaigns, and events are driven in part by rural leaders in the field, who identify a need and seek support from the Rural Assembly to address it as a national convener, amplifier, and communicator. This looks like roundtables, advocacy, or issue-based working groups of cross-sector folks coming together to name and claim issues and solutions that can then be amplified through the Assembly.
Other times, we organize diverse voices around a critical moment or framing opportunity that speaks to our foundational principles as champions of equity and inclusion. This can look like partnerships and collaborations, gatherings, interviews, profiles, and other media, sourced by practitioners whose stories and experiences disrupt stereotypes and harmful narratives about rural America.
The Rural Assembly is a coalition of people and organizations across the country dedicated to building more opportunity and better policy for rural communities. Learn more about the team powering this work behind-the-scenes.
Vice President of National Programs
Program Associate
Communication Specialist
Associate Producer
Fellow, Center for Rual Strategies
Director of Multimedia
The Rural Assembly
is a program of the
