Thread by @jordisunshine

My life's work is now to undo all the damage that @JamesCarville did when he coined "#Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburg with Kentucky in between"

Sounds clever. Pithy. Folksy.

Here is the problem:
a) The image crystallizes the rural-urban divide so that

all the clever, worldly city folk can laugh at how backward, racist, and redneck those of us who LIVE here are.
b) It erases all the diversity of towns and landscapes that are the REAL #ruralpatchwork. Does he know that Monroe county went for Biden in 2020? That West Hazleton

elected it's first Dominican-American officials in 2020? That Montour county moved several points towards Biden?
c) That the rural-urban divide is a lynchpin of the racist #dogwhistle politics that pits us against each other and paints rural as authentic "real" people while

urban voters are the other that is Black people or immigrants or some other unAmerican.
d) The path to vibrant, prosperous towns and farms across the #ruralpatchwork comes not from minimizing losses in commonwealth-wide races on our backs, but in ORGANIZING people today to win

on issues and to win power to use power in local, county and state races.

I love where I live, not blindly, but a tough love of lookin' it square in the eyes and saying you did wrong here, but you can get up and do it better.

His pretty words may have paved a path to

CNN wealth and fancy champagne toasts in the backs of liberal limousines, but I, and we @HubProgress and so many others are still drinking Yuengling OR amazing artisanal beer like Troegs or Bullfrog Brewery and doing the work of listening, and talking, and connecting so

we can make the road that we need to a tomorrow that is #bettertogether for the hills, hollers, boroughs, and cities of ALL of PA, White, Black, Brown, with local accents or immigrant accents and plucking banjo or DJing.

I heard how you coined that phrase way back in 1982?

when you were helping John Showers run for PA house. John is my friend. And shit, I'm as jealous as a hungry dog eyeing your bacon about how smart and clever it WAS.

But you left. And you did some good stuff. But the people to build the rural progressive movement are here

and we have to build a movement to undo all the backasswards assumptions baked into your clever, deceptive aphorism.

Hey, and I'd love to chew the fat with you too. I talk PhD. I also talk redneck. I ain't woke. But I'm awake to how we all need an America that MLK dreamed

of, one with a Pennsylvania full of bustling towns, and healthy farms, and hipsters making cider, and VFWers serving up chicken-n-waffles, and rivers our grandchildren can fish, and towns that defunded police and refunded helping addiction, and preventing sex trafficking, and

loans to freed marijuana sellers so they can build cannabis farms, and farms and hunting lodges selling power back to the grid, and co-ops making hemp clothing to sell to our Philly cousins...

Because that is a REAL place

instead of a catchy cartoon that makes some pundits chuckle.

What the hell do I know, though? I'm just a little dog nipping at your giant ankles. I don't have MSNBC's ear, or the Clintons', or any yelp bookmarks for cool DC eateries. I'm just a scruffy organizer out here on

the banks of the Susquehanna, on the land of the Delaware, finding Nazi graffiti, with 3 kids, making a podcast @BarnstormingPa .

Give me a holler. Let's talk about what really needs to be done which ain't dropping $100 million on ads.

We need help. Plus, you kinda owe us.