Spotlights Missouri Rural Crisis Center
Founded in 1985, the Missouri Rural Crisis Center (MRCC) works to preserve family farms, promote stewardship of the land and environmental integrity and strive for economic and social justice by building unity and mutual understanding among diverse groups, both rural and urban. MRCC members engage on the issues that most affect their communities, including the industrialization and corporatization of agriculture and its effects on clean air and water, economic livelihoods, and the health and livability of their communities. MRCC’s Justice Crossroads Communication Project invested in communication and data infrastructure that will allow organizers with a farm and rural base to build a base of support for long-term organizational power in Missouri, including: increasing our communications capacity, platforms and systems; expanding our physical communications infrastructure; furthering narrative development and integration and message framing; creating multicultural communications; and, developing content and creative media initiatives.
Who would have thought, even a year ago, that we’d be able to do what we are doing now, both from a staff and organizing perspective-having the space, the equipment and the capacity to ‘meet’ with people in so many different ways. Our capacity to reach people digitally has jumped lightyears in a very short time.
Project Objectives
- Share the voices of regular Missourians from all walks of life – rural and urban – to tell their own life stories of economic injustice, hardship, exploitation and their vision of a better future
- Elevate the historical systemic issues of racism and injustice in Missouri
- Foster the interconnectedness of challenges faced by so many hard-working Missourians and build collaboration on solutions
It’s about family farms not factory farms but it’s also about healthcare, it’s about fair lending, it’s about housing, it’s about good jobs, it’s about racial justice. It’s all tied together.
Impact
The MRCC Reflection Series that created opportunities for us to delve deep into big issues like Food Justice, Wealth Extraction & Economic Injustice (both rural and urban), Systemic Racism/Bigotry, The Threat of White Supremacist/White Nationalist Movements in Rural America, and People and Communities Standing Up to Hate (what does fighting back together look like). The reaction to the MRCC programming brought to light how hungry Missourians are for these uncommon conversations. In a time when the community was feeling more divided than ever, naming who benefits from that division and showing what radical solidarity can look like was welcomed and is something needed across bigger, new audiences. Bringing together farmers with workers from all walks of life and every part of the food chain to discuss has helped build the people power needed to drown out the corporate industrial narrative and replace it with one in solidarity for a healthy, sustainable food chain message for a stronger Missouri.
