Organizing when there is more land than people

I had the pleasure of chatting with two of this year’s Kairos Fellows, Tori and Ruby from We the People Michigan. They are both organizers in rural parts of the state working with indigenous communities and LGBTQ+ folks in the Upper Peninsula. 

Before I sat down with these folks I thought I had an idea of what a rural community looked like, but turns out: nope. I learned so much about the joys and the challenges of rural organizing and it was amazing to hear how these Fellows, after just one session, have already started to think about using digital strategy in their existing campaign. Ok, I’ll let Tori and Ruby give y’all the real tea. Read on:

Jelani: I'm excited that We the People Michigan is a part of the Fellowship. Kairos has worked with We the People a bit over the past couple of years. So it's good to continue that relationship and also just hear what other organizers in the group are working on. Can each of y'all introduce yourself, names, pronouns, and then what work you do at We the People?

Ruby: Ruby Miller, I use she/her pronouns. And I'm an organizer up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. 

Tori: Tori McGeshick, she/her/kwe pronouns. And I'm the other Upper Peninsula organizer for We the People.

Jelani: Can you explain what the Upper Peninsula is for people who might not know?

Ruby: Yeah, so maybe I'll start with some more overview about the Upper Peninsula (UP). As I understand it, if my statistics on this are right, UP is a third of the total landmass of Michigan, but contains only 4% of the population. I live in the biggest city, which is Marquette. Last time I checked, the population of Marquette is 22,000 people. So this is a very rural area. Tori and I are four to five miles apart driving wise. I'm in charge of leading a team here in Marquette and also another one over in Houghton, both of which have universities in them: Northern Michigan University here in Marquette, and Michigan Tech is over in Houghton. So these cities have larger populations but there's a lot of land. And it's gorgeous.

Jelani: Is there a particular type of community that you are working in?

Ruby: Rural working class. I'm specifically looking at the LGBTQ community up here, but that also encompasses a lot of folks that are left-leaning. Again, there's simply not a lot of people, so being values aligned matters a lot. And so does having a real visceral understanding of a shared fate. For example, the weather is massively impactful on our lives. 

Tori: I'm leading a team in the Gogebic County region in the Upper Peninsula. And that's on the west side of the UP, closer to Wisconsin. But the community that I have specifically been organizing in is within indigenous communities in the UP. So currently, I'm organizing within Gogebic County, but also within the Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians community as well. I’m mainly working with a lot of indigenous folks but not exclusive, like Ruby said.

Ruby: Tori and I are on the same campaign broadly. It's called Wasamowin, which is the Ojibwe word for lightning. And it's an energy justice and energy democracy project. But we're far apart and working with different types of teams. They all run in tandem with a lot of agency for the individual teams on the ground, if that makes sense.

What I've been looking forward to is being able to reach people, like Tori was saying, across these big geographic distances. I'm trying to treat the big geographies as a design parameter that requires a solution instead of just a reason we can't do X, Y, and Z like they do downstate because it's a really long drive. It's really far away and there's not a lot of people.

I want to find a kind of a more elegant solution and I think digital is going to be pretty massive in that. Also, the way Tori was talking about the trouble with finding the indigenous population up here, it's kind of similar with the queer community.

And part of that is because the Right really has control of the narrative in rural spaces. Like you drive a truck like this, you wear a hat like this, these are the activities on the weekend, it's hunting and fishing and whatever. And I'm not anti-trucks and ball caps and hunting and fishing, those are free to everyone, but it makes some people nervous to show up fully as themselves in their communities.

I hear over and over again, “I'm the only one.” But I'm hearing this a lot, which means they're not the only ones. There might not be many, but they're there.

And so my bet is that it is worth it to contact and activate those folks in these small communities. Their voices are worth lifting up, they're worth bringing into the team. I think reaching them digitally is going to be a big piece of it and using that digital connection to give the community more of a presence and more of an identity so that folks don't end up feeling like they're the only one. That's where you start building people power and using that people power to make the changes we want to see in our communities. Digital organizing is going to be big.

Jelani: How do you see digital organizing winning for your communities? And Ruby, you brought up the campaign that you're working on. So it would be great to hear about that campaign.

Ruby: So for this election year, the three different teams, the two that I've got and the one that Tori has, they're all kind of working on slightly different chunks of the project. My teams are in two different Michigan Rep. districts and Tori is focused on local elections right where she's at. And I see the digital piece of it as giving Wasamowin that cohesiveness that we're going to need.

The digital organizing piece of it within We the People includes another team called Semisaic Downstate, which is in southeast Michigan. They are also working on energy justice, energy democracy stuff. And so they're kind of, they're doing it in their own way, you know, and they have a different target down there, because they have a different energy provider. But we are running kind of in tandem with them in some ways. And digital organizing makes it possible to work as a team across the state.

Tori: Although we're all working on energy democracy as a chapter, our crew in the Gogebic County region is doing a Get-Out-The Native Vote. That's our focus this year. And we're hoping that within the local township with the increase of indigenous representation and people running for those spots on township and school board that we can amplify the tool of voting and how it's defending our sovereignty and our rights as indigenous peoples within our community. By utilizing digital organizing, not only will I be reaching within my community, but I'll also be reaching out even further to other tribal communities and even urban natives.

Jelani: I like the use of digital to find other people. But what you were saying Ruby around unifying Michigan and not breaking up different communities is also not allowing right wing narratives to drive wedges. 

Ruby: Yeah, totally. You touched on something that's relevant that I forgot to mention, Jelani. So one of the things about Michigan's Upper Peninsula and being on a statewide team — there's definitely a narrative that rural areas, northern rural areas and the UP specifically is in a tug of  war over resources with the more populated areas further south, like Lansing and Detroit. The line that gets fed is: if they get something, we don't get something. And this is a racist dog whistle. It's the majority white population of northern Michigan versus the majority Black and brown population down south, which in itself erases the Native presence up here too. So I just wanted to mention that as another unique thing about the geography and part of how that geography informs the political narrative here.

Jelani: So my last question for y'all: what is the internet good for?

Ruby: Seeing cute videos of other people's pets. It's a good source of information and resources and community that isn't otherwise available, especially for the LGBTQ community. That's often enough. The internet is people's lifeline to folks that are like them and ways they can find support. It's a way that people find support and community that they wouldn't otherwise find.

Tori: There's so many things that it is good for. But I would say that the internet is good for connecting with relatives. And then I would also say that it's good for advocating for the issues that we care about and amplifying stories from people in the community. I think it can make everyday people's stories go a lot farther than they otherwise would.