"Rural America today is not a political force," Ali Webb, deputy director of programming for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, chief sponsor of the event, said at the opening session. She said the compact is intended to be "an inclusive policy agenda that can make rural America a force to be reckoned with."
The compact already exists in general form, and has a long list of endorsers, including the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues. It needs to be short on specifics in order to build the broadest possible consensus, cautioned Bill Greener, a Republican pollster who studies rural voters. He advocated "an approach that can create and maintain bipartisan, non-ideological support." He pushed one specific idea, universal high-speed Internet service, or broadband.
That and other specific policy ideas were raised at the final afternoon session, "Speaking Rural American Truth to Power," featuring 10 rural advocates. Connie Stewart, a California legislative aide, called for a national broadband policy of bringing fiber-optic lines to every home and not relying partly on wireless, which has some promise for rural areas but, Stewart said, lacks the bandwidth needed for economic growth. Edyael Casaperalta of the Center for Rural Strategies, which is staffing the assembly, said education should not be promoted as "a ticket out" of rural communities, but an opportunity to bring knoweldge and skills to them.
Advancing broader approaches, Jeff Yost of the Nebraska Community Foundation promoted the idea of tapping the huge transfer of wealth in coming years as Baby Boomers die and leave their rural estates to heirs, many of whom do not live in rural areas. Sharon Walden of Stop Abusive Family Environments talked about her group's work in McDowell County, W.Va., and got a big hand by saying "Non-profits are front-line change-makers in rural America."
Tonight, the focus was on politics, with Greener, Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg and a "pundit panel" moderated by Bob Edwards of XM Radio. Laurie Ezzell Brown, left, editor of The Canadian Record, a weekly newspaper in Canadian, Tex., said she endorsed Barack Obama in the Texas primary after visits from two elderly Democrats who asked her, "What are we gonna do about that n-----?" Brown said she hadn't heard that word in Canadian since the 1960s, and said the two men were "a symbol of the dying old guard of the Democratic Party" in the Panhandle. "There's a change occurring," she said, adding, "George W. Bush was our guy. We came out in force for him, and people don't like to talk about him anymore."
The assembly continues Tuesday, first as a joint meeting with Stand Up for Rural America, including remarks by representatives of the presidential candidates, followed by small-group sessions focused on education, health, natural resources and community investment. It concludes Wednesday with regional sessions to develop advocacy ideas, reports from the breakout sessions and a lunch focused on activating the compact.
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