I’ve been out there organizing for 20 years. I have never seen this level of public activity by white supremacist groups. Guest op-ed by George Goehl @ NYTimes.com, Oct. 30. Goehl runs a federation of community-based organizations across the country that bring poor and working-class people together to win economic and racial justice.

[....] our organizers had over 10,000 conversations with people in small towns across the country over the past year. We spoke with neighbors in Amish country, visited family farms in Iowa and sat on front porches in Appalachia — communities that have experienced hard economic times and went solidly for Donald Trump in 2016.

Although these communities may be fertile ground for the Trump administration and other white nationalist organizations, they are also places where people can come together across race and class to solve the big problems facing everyday people. That starts by recognizing one another’s humanity — and with honest conversations.

At a trailer park home in Michigan, a white man told canvassers from our local affiliate group, Michigan United,[....]

For those who have given up on rural communities: Please reconsider. So many of these places need organizing to win improved conditions. Despite the stereotypes, rural people are not static in their political views or in the way they vote. Single white rural women and young rural white people represent two of the greatest leftward swings in the 2018 midterms, moving 17 and 16 points respectively toward Democrats. They played a key role in Democratic wins across the Midwest.

In front-porch conversations, the most common thing we hear is, “Nobody ever asked me what I think.” That’s a problem. Because white nationalists are filling that vacuum. They’re organizing around people’s pain and using racism to help make sense of changing economic conditions and racial demographics. We are also up against the outsized influence of Fox News and right-wing talk radio, as well as the white nationalists online [....]