I have lived in Virginia’s Ninth congressional district for 40 years – the one we call the Fighting 9th, and others dubbed “the effing one” during the redistricting campaign. The “one” was in reference to the 9th being the only district in the new map that would remain, overwhelmingly, rural and Republican. But, believe it or not, the 9th was not always reliably red. We used to have a good mix of Democrats and Republicans in the state House and Senate. And from 1982-2010, Democrat Rick Boucher represented us in Congress.
Boucher earned that longevity. Known as a friend to farmers, coalminers and small business owners, Boucher successfully advocated for resources and policies that actually helped people down here in southwestern Virginia. He was a moderate when it came to gun rights, and his District office staff focused on addressing the concrete needs of his constituents. Boucher’s down-to-earth, bread-and-butter approach won him the respect and votes needed from both sides of the aisle to keep him in Congress for 28 years.
So, when Rick Boucher now says “Community Works is the best idea I’ve heard for how Democrats can gain traction in rural areas,” we believe him.
Community Works was founded on a straightforward premise: rebuilding trust and respect among neighbors is the first step to any positive political change. Before Persuasion, before Get Out the Vote, Democrats need to be working year-round in our own communities to build meaningful relationships. Not just saying we care, but showing up day-to-day to make things better.
For three years now, Community Works volunteers in Virginia and across the country have been doing exactly that. Working with hundreds of churches, veterans’ groups, businesses, schools, and other local partners, we’ve undertaken over 600 events to tackle the needs we’ve identified in our home communities.
One such effort took place in far southwestern Virginia, where Scott County Community Works partnered with the Red Cross to install fire alarms in the homes of people living in the small Appalachian towns of Dungannon and Nickelsville. Along with volunteers from the local Democratic committee, Community Works was joined by the American Red Cross, the local Food Lion, Fire and Rescue crews, American Legion, and United Methodist Church. With an 83-17 red to blue split in the most recent election, it’s safe to assume that many to most of those folks were not Democrats.
But after spending the day with local Democrats and learning they were instrumental in implementing Community Works in Scott County, the other volunteers embraced the program even more. Instead of distancing themselves, as some had feared might happen, they switched to wearing Community Works t-shirts, suggested other locations, and signed up for additional projects. Positive relationships were formed, trust and respect grew.
Further up the Appalachian Mountain chain, local residents in Page County identified the community-wide need for water testing in the Shenandoah River. Despite being mostly Democrats, Community Works leaders in the town of Luray were able to secure unanimous support for the project from their mostly Republican Town Council. Since then, they’ve enjoyed an ongoing partnership that serves their community while circumventing political partisanship.
With local chapters now thriving in eight different states, Community Works is demonstrating that when people come together to solve local problems, the party they belong to becomes secondary, if not irrelevant. What matters is that they are serving their communities and getting things done.
And now we have the statistics, as well as the stories, to prove it.
When the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative (RUBI) launched the Community Works pilot project in Virginia in 2023, and a year later in Georgia, surveys were developed by RUBI’s academic partners and distributed in each of the Community Works counties, along with nearby counties without the new program. The surveys were structured to see what people think of and feel about Democrats and Republicans, to “test the temperature” of perceptions about the two political parties. In September of 2025, two years after beginning in Virginia and just one year after the Georgia launch, RUBI ran the same survey again and assessed the results.
According to study author, Professor Nick Jacobs, “Across six counties within two states and across multiple outcome measures, Community Works consistently reduces the intensity of partisan polarization.”
The “multiple outcome measures” Jacobs refers to include:
First, “Partisan Affect and Feeling Thermometers” where the study demonstrated that residents of Community Works counties were statistically less likely to view members of the opposing party with hostility or “coldness.”
Second, “Community Works and Partisan Evaluations” where Community Works counties became less likely to get swept up in growing national partisan divides, with residents relying more on their local experiences than party labels when judging who they trust or who cares about their community.
Third, “Changing Perceptions of Party Characteristics” where the study showed that residents of Community Works counties were statistically more likely to judge parties based on how well they actually govern and respond locally, rather than simply following the broader rural trend of giving Republicans more credit across the board.
Fourth, “Party Attributes and Ideological Distance” in which we saw residents of Community Works counties were more likely to see their local Democrats as distinct from national Democrats, judging them more by their role in the community than by national political stereotypes.
An initial goal of Community Works was to change the way people in conservative rural areas viewed Democrats, both the party and its people. Our statistics and on-the-ground experience confirm that when working shoulder-to-shoulder with a fellow volunteer one day, it’s hard to turn around and demonize them the next. National depictions of Democrats as pedophiles, baby-killers, and literally, the devil, just don’t hold up when those same folks are standing next to you collecting diapers, handing out school supplies, preparing food for homebound seniors, even picking up trash.
What we did not foresee is that Community Works would also change the way rural Democrats viewed and interacted with their communities. When asked to describe the personal impact of Community Works, one Democratic volunteer said that participating in a local food distribution had “changed the way I view the local Baptist Church.” Another, who helped to hand out gun locks to parents at a rural Back-to-School event, reflected “I was bowled over. They totally agreed with me about gun safety.”
Two more stereotypes defeated. It makes you wonder who exactly wins or benefits from all the stereotypes – rural/urban, conservative/liberal, white/black, red/blue – that divide working people on the local level. Certainly not those of us who live here. Which brings us back to Boucher.
Community Works activities are strictly nonpolitical – no attempts to persuade, campaign, or proselytize allowed. Focused solely on building relationships and trust, we see ourselves as a critical first phase that Democrats have been missing. However, if through Community Works Democrats are able to recognize our own bias and gain some new-found respect for our more conservative neighbors, it can only enhance our efforts to, respectfully, persuade and ultimately win back the rural constituents lost since the Boucher days.
Whichever way you look at it, Community Works is working.
To find out more:
Attend RUBI’s monthly Building Trust with Community Works introductory session every fourth Wednesday at 6:30pm ET
Visit our Website or Facebook page
Email meredith@ruralurbanbrige.org
Meredith Dean brings 40 years of Appalachian community and political organizing to her current work as National Director of the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative’s Community Works program. She and her husband have raised a son, 13 cats, four dogs and a horse near her family’s southwest Virginia homeplace of eight generations.
