Rural organizers champion powerful policy at Summit 

People-powered solutions for working families

Set against a backdrop of threats to rural people, the 2025 Rural Policy Action Summit in Des Moines, Iowa gathered representatives from more than 50 grassroots groups. Paramount among our priorities were removing barriers and investing in our communities, while also taking on corporate consolidation and the undue influence of the ultrawealthy. Hosted by Rural Democracy, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, American Federation of Teachers, Black Appalachian Coalition, Native Organizers Alliance, Northern Plains Resource Council, State Innovation Exchange, and Wisconsin Farmers Union, the 2025 summit built on the successful policy advocacy built from the previous two Rural Policy Action Summits in 2021 and 2023. 

“Rural people are leading with creativity, grit, and vision,” said Caitlin Cromwell, Director of Organizing at Northern Plains Resource Council. “This summit showed what’s possible when we come together to share what’s working and fight for the future we all deserve. Across the country, we face many of the same challenges, and just like we do in our local communities, we’re here building relationships to make our work stronger.”

Leaders from rural and small-town organizations worked together to build momentum for policies that return power and resources to rural people. Participants emphasized the need for renewed public investment, not private takeover, in schools, hospitals, and other public institutions that buttress rural communities. The summit also convened advocates who will fight for policies that reflect real rural conditions many of us experience every day, like the importance of Medicaid access for rural healthcare and jobs. 

This year’s summit also featured a site visit to Marshalltown, an Iowa town that has relied upon small businesses and immigrants to weather challenging conditions. 

The 1980s farm crisis, widespread disruptive detentions of immigrants in 2006, and a destructive windstorm with 99-mile-per-hour gusts in 2020 all impacted Marshalltown residents in serious ways, but they chose to lean into hard work and care for each other to support their successful small businesses, family farms, cultural programs, and educational success. 

“Our rural communities are critically important, and folks hold a deep connection to these places too often overlooked by folks in D.C.,” said Lisa Whelan, Executive Director of the Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement. “Iowa CCI was honored to help host this powerful convening that reinforced the power of everyday people to take control of their neighborhoods and towns, and that across race and place we share more in common than what might seem different. We all want and deserve a say in policy that impacts the people and places we love, and that’s worth fighting for.”