More Unites Us Than Divides Us, and That’s What Scares Them

Rural America and the working class are under assault by a system rigged to benefit the wealthy and powerful at the expense of everyone else. Despite decades of rising worker productivity, wages have stagnated while the cost of living has soared. Healthcare is unaffordable. Housing is out of reach. Education is buried under mountains of debt. Even food is increasingly priced beyond what families can afford. Small towns are hollowed out and big cities are priced beyond reason. Whether you’re in a farming community, a suburban neighborhood, or a working-class district in the city, the story is the same. Through it all, the richest have taken more and more, while the rest of us are told to fight over the scraps.

Everyday people are constantly told to blame each other for this trouble. Blame immigrants. Blame welfare recipients. Blame rural voters. Blame urban activists. See your neighbor as your enemy and blame anyone but the billionaire class. But they’re the ones who have hoarded wealth and power while gutting the protections and institutions that once gave ordinary people a fair shot. This message is not an accident, it’s the playbook. Keep people distracted. Keep them angry at each other. Keep them from realizing they share the same struggles, and the power to solve them if they work together.

Divide and conquer is as old as greed. Throughout history, those in power have sown division to maintain control. They pit people against each other by race, religion, region, or party. They fund media that stokes suspicion and fear. They bankroll politicians who vilify the vulnerable. They push narratives that make people feel isolated and hopeless. Why? Because unity is dangerous. Hope is dangerous. When people come together, not just in protest but in real partnership for something better, they become a force that can challenge the status quo. That’s why building a broad coalition of working-class people is so powerful, and so scary to them. It’s not about chanting slogans. It’s about creating solidarity.

Too often, specific communities are blamed for problems they didn’t create. Rural towns are dismissed as backward. Cities are painted as unsafe. Immigrants are scapegoated. Young people are called lazy. But the truth is every community is full of people who work hard, care deeply, and want a better future for their families and the country.

We are not the problem. We are the people who keep this country running. We are the people who fix what’s broken and build what’s needed. We are the people who show up for each other when things look bleak. We are the solution. All of us, together.

The forces that divide us want us to forget that. They want us to believe we’re too different to even get along, let alone work together. But when we recognize our shared struggles and our shared values, we can build a coalition strong enough to take on the real challenges: corporate greed, political corruption, and a system that puts profits over people.

No matter where we live or what we look like, we all have a role to play. We all have something to contribute in building an economy, and a country that works for everyone. That means living wages, universal healthcare, affordable housing, strong public schools, clean air and water, and a democracy that cannot be bought. Because when we rise together and work across race, religion, and background, we become a force that can rewrite the rules, rebuild the country, and reclaim the future. And that future belongs to all of us. Not just to the powerful and wealthy few, but every single person who has ever worked hard, played fair, and dreamed of something better.