A message to rural America
Why is it so hard to be a Democrat in a rural county? Why are Democrats you know afraid to even say they’re Democrats? Why are you a Democrat?
Being a Democrat is about wanting to make things better, your community, your state, and your nation. Our identity is what we believe. Our identity is about who we are, why we got into this in first place.
Jim Purvis, the author and founder of Democrats 101, explains that "Our identity is powerful because it’s American. Our core beliefs come straight from the Declaration of Independence.
But, that powerful identity doesn’t exist until we make it exist. That, is why the Democratic Creed exists. That is why the specific definitions of Freedom, Justice, and Opportunity exist. That is why the book, Democrats 101, was written. To take back our identity. To make Democrats proud again.
The urge
America was born into an ideal: that all people were created equal. That ideal was immediately submerged in a world that was very unequal. In 1776, most injustice wasn’t even considered injustice, just the way of things. But that founding ideal of innate equality persisted. It endured, and it spread, because it represented a very human urge to seek Freedom, Justice, and Opportunity, the same urge that had caused so many of those early Americans to come in the first place.
This idea of the innate equality of people spread rapidly among the common people during the Revolution. Few of us have even heard about this, just how many people began to look at the lofty Enlightenment sentiments being voiced by the elite white men leading the revolution, and began wondering “why not me, too?”