VIENNA — “There is an uprising across the country. A movement by the people to take back control of the direction of America. This movement is populated by a full spectrum of voters, left, right and everything in between.”

Those are the first words visitors to The Back Forty Podcasts website see. The media company, founded earlier this year, is currently fundraising to kick off its podcast and showcase an alternative perspective on politics in rural America. As part of the campaign, founder Will Westmoreland is speaking in rural communities around the state. One of his recent stops was at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Vienna on June 11.

About 80 people attended the community meeting organized by “concerned citizens of Maries, Osage, Gasconade and Phelps counties.” Westmoreland, a longtime farmer and political consultant who grew up and again resides in southwest Missouri, was the event’s featured speaker.

Westmoreland described himself as a social media follower until last summer. Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, he noticed a trend that people were speaking about rural America as a singular unit and ignoring the nuance of the individuals who lived there.

“They were painting all of us with a very broad brush,” he said.

Although the perception that the majority of rural America supported President Donald Trump in the election was true, Westmoreland said generalizing rural people ignores that nearly 40 percent of them did not vote for him.

“It really aggravated me that people didn’t understand that there are a lot of people out in rural America who believe in good policy for our hospitals, our schools and for rural economies,” he said.

Westmoreland, who acknowledged he is a lifelong Democrat, also criticized the party he supports. He said Democratic messaging often focuses on winning a small percentage of rural votes to guarantee wins in statewide or national elections, but that messaging tends to overlook the importance of local races.

“If you ever want to get another (Democratic) county commissioner, or a school board race or an alderman in your city, we have to do a lot better than just win back 3 percent,” Westmoreland said. “We really have to change some minds.”

Keeping those criticisms in mind, Westmoreland decided that at 57 years old, he would start making videos to share his own experiences of living in rural America.

“We talked about a range of things,” he said. “Not just politics but what it is like to grow up in rural Missouri on a cattle farm. And we grew a social media following up to about 150,000 people.”

One of Westmoreland’s viral TikTok videos earlier this year was his response to Franklin County farmer Skylar Holden, whose financial troubles after having his Natural Resources Conservation Service grant funding frozen by a Trump executive order gained national media attention. The number of people replying to Holden and telling them they hoped he would lose his farm left Westmoreland disappointed.

In Westmoreland’s response to Holden, he pointed to the Federal Communications Commission’s elimination of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 as the primary factor that led to Holden voting for a politician who would put his farm’s financial future in danger. The doctrine required broadcast license holders to cover controversial topics with equal time for opposing viewpoints.

“That went away intentionally, and when it happened, it introduced an era in this country of 35, 40 years of right-wing talk radio,” Westmoreland said. “You used to go out in the barn or to a job site, and it was Paul Harvey and the Ag Report. Well, for 35, 40 years, it was Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. It’s turned almost every blue hub red in rural America.”

After connecting with Holden, Westmoreland helped to connect him with many people in powerful positions. Holden eventually received his federal reimbursement. Although Holden returned to supporting Trump after receiving his money, Westmoreland said he was glad to have raised awareness of the administration’s effects on rural farmers.

“We let people know from The Back Forty that if you’re at the point where you realize you made a bad decision in this election, and those chickens are coming home to roost, I’m not asking you to admit you’re wrong,” Westmoreland said. “I just want you to admit you were lied to and come join us in the fight for better agricultural policy.”

As a political strategist in a rural area, Westmoreland said he knows that winning support means he has to change minds. He often asks himself how to meet people where they are and improve their ways of thinking.

Westmoreland also addressed the current state of rural America, including the shrinking of the country’s top agricultural counties. Their remaining population continues to grow older on average, and what were once thriving towns have been reduced to decaying buildings with little to no businesses. Data published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in January indicated that non-metro areas had a poverty rate about 3.5 percent higher than metro areas.

Throughout the presentation, Westmoreland shared many experiences from his youth that helped to shape his perspectives on policy. When he was a child, his mom received food stamps to keep him and his sisters fed while she worked a full-time job and went to college to become a veterinary technician. Since growing up and benefiting from social safety net programs, he and his sisters have had successful careers.

A reconciliation bill passed by the U.S. House in May would reduce federal contributions to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funding by up to 25 percent, which would be nearly $300 billion over the next nine years.

“Do we have any confidence at all that if SNAP goes away on the federal level that our state government, with the things they’ve been doing lately, is going to pick up that funding and make sure kids get fed?” Westmoreland said.

The speaker shared another personal anecdote to illustrate the necessity of rural health care. When he was 12 years old, his left arm caught in the power take-off of a tractor.

“It ripped off my thumb and two of my fingers,” Westmoreland said. “It broke my arm in 11 places. It broke my elbow. It ripped the flesh off my arm.”

The ambulance took nearly two hours to arrive at the farm in Bolivar and another 50 minutes to reach the hospital in Springfield. In the 45 years since the incident, the response time decreased to 36 minutes thanks to improvements in rural health care access.

When Westmoreland arrived at the hospital, the first doctor who saw him said his arm was likely too far gone and would require amputation. By coincidence, a limb-reattachment specialist was visiting from Iceland the same day as the farm accident. He was able to save Westmoreland’s arm and after more than a year of rehabilitation, the boy regained some use of his arm.

Westmoreland said the impending closure of hundreds of rural hospitals around the country was wrong because rural people already face a much greater risk of dying in a medical emergency due to their distance from health care providers. Potential Medicaid funding cuts could also have a noticeable impact on rural health care.

Another concern Westmoreland shared was about the consolidation of public schools and the push for more resources for private schools. He spoke about the opportunities he received while competing on the Bolivar High School debate team, including national tournament appearances that led to him facing off against opponents from big-city preparatory schools.

“Why should kids today not get the same opportunities I got as a kid that opened up a whole world to me that I never would have gotten had they not supported me?” he said. “I don’t forget where I came from, but we have a lot of politicians who have.”

Westmoreland concluded the discussion by asking the attendees what they could do to fight back against unwanted policies. Again, he focused the conversation on meeting people where they were. He directed them to a QR code that linked to The Back Forty’s newsletter as a starting point for how to get involved. He also encouraged them to send letters to their government representatives to ensure their voices were heard in Jefferson City and Washington, D.C.

Another piece of advice Westmoreland gave for how to communicate with people who disagree politically is to “have a little grace.”

“I’m not talking about meeting people who hate people halfway,” he said. “You know who I’m talking about. You’ve known them their whole lives, and they’d give the shirts off their backs to anybody that needed it in any situation and yet somehow they voted the way they did. And now they figured out it was a mistake.”

Westmoreland said people he knows from around his hometown have discreetly approached him to acknowledge that they had regrets about their votes or they agreed with points he had made in videos. In those situations, he suggested offering an open ear to listen to what the person has to say and creating a line of communication to share ideas independent of political affiliation. He shared a series of statements he uses to get people thinking when he speaks to large groups. He asks them to raise their hands if they are any of the following: against rural hospitals, against strong rural schools and in favor of corporations buying agricultural land.

“Then the last question I ask is, ‘Who thinks political party is more important than those three things?’” he said. “I don’t care if it’s a Republican running in a primary who believes in good rural policy. I’ll take that right now. I’ll take that if it prevents these hospitals from closing and these schools from consolidating and all the young people from moving away and all the farms being bought up and rural America drying up and going away.”