💥the "Rural Urban Bridge Initiative" 💥

#RUBI's emergence alongside similar organizations like
🔸"Contest Every Race",
🔸the "Center for Working-Class Politics",
🔸"More Perfect Union",
and🔸 "Dirt Road Democrats",

comes at a precarious moment in national politics.

Not only is the Democratic brand now routinely described as “toxic” outside of deep-blue cities and college towns,

but the meaning and purpose of 21st-century progressivism seems uncertain,
with many supporters believing it has deviated,
at least partially,
from its populist and #New #Deal origins.

Some activists are beginning to entertain the nonpartisan path taken by independent #Dan #Osborn,
who since losing to Republican incumbent Deb Fischer in last year’s U.S. Senate race in Nebraska,
has started a "Working Class Heroes Fund"
to back future insurgents.

But harrowing political defeats do create a window—at least temporarily—to take aim at ossified party structures and discredited strategies.

For organizers like #Flaccavento and #Etelson, these candid assessments are essential to mapping a recovery.

Though #RUBI aims, in part, to overhaul the activist PR-speak that typically puts off rural and less-educated workers,
Flaccavento,
who is steeped in rural development issues,
is frank about the big picture that most D.C. consultants and their paymasters evade.

⭐️“Even the most down-to-earth language ain’t going to cut it until we address why so many people are pissed,” he says.

A significant part of RUBI’s work involves exploring how Democrats and the modern left went wrong with rural Americans.

That’s what “really differentiates us from almost every other rural group out there,”
says Flaccavento,
“which are more either trying to find better candidates
or just trying to make the case that the Democratic Party is the right party.”

Flaccavento is adamant that progressives have to comprehensively recognize that they have been in a losing battle to
“persuade [blue-collar rural] people that we really are for them when they don’t buy it anymore.”

RUBI’s work is about more than dissecting the weaknesses of contemporary progressivism, however.

Its major policy document,
“A Rural New Deal,”
co-published with "Progressive Democrats of America",
champions and expands upon the best aspects of President Biden’s domestic legacy,
particularly in the areas of antitrust enforcement
and re-establishing regional supply chains.

But unlike many D.C.-based think tanks,
RUBI and its allies are not trying to graft a left-leaning technocratic agenda onto rural workers based on an abstract assumption of what they most need.

Instead, RUBI is concerned with reimagining what
✅ “bottom-up prosperity”
looks like
in this age of regional inequality,
-- and retrieving the policy tools that give local communities “the capacity,”
as Flaccavento puts it,
“to solve many if not most of their problems.”

https://prospect.org/2025/03/21/2025-03-21-sowing-rural-insurgency-democrats/

#RUBI
#AnthonyFlaccavento #EricaEtelson
#KenMartin
#RoKhanna #ArlieHochschild #JimHightower

Already, since Sept. 1, 2025,
ICE has spent nearly $8 million on new equipment
— including simulation rounds,
junk cars,
sniper training gear,
and a model building
— for various training courses,
including for its tactical training at #Fort #Benning,
per The Lever’s review of contracting records.

To train its sniper teams and special response groups,
ICE has also inked deals with military contractors and obscure security firms.

In July, ICE awarded a first-time, $23,000 contract to
#Reticence #Group #LLC,
a Texas-based armed security firm,
for “specialized law enforcement pistol and rifle” training.

The company, led by two SWAT officers in Texas,
advertises that it offers “covert and confidential armed security contractors”
for the private sector,
as well as
“firearms training that pushes limits.”

Another sole source contract in July for $35,000 was awarded to
#Path #Consulting #LLC,
a Virginia Beach-based firm that, according to a contract notice,
provides
“[close-quarter combat] live fire training”
and would help an ICE special response team
“develop new standard operating procedures.”

Although the contract notice indicated that
Path Consulting LLC had worked with ICE in the past,
no other online procurement records mention its name.

A call to a phone number linked to the company went unanswered.

In September,
ICE issued a no-bid contract to
Target Down Group,
a company owned by Dan LaLota,
the brother of Nick LaLota,
who has served as the Republican U.S. Representative for New York's 1st congressional district since 2023.

(Dan LaLota denied his brother had any role in the award when asked by Wired in September.)

Most of Target Down Group’s leadership are veterans of the U.S. special forces;

the company’s president,
#Dan #LaLota, is a former U.S. Marine.

The company’s website advertises
“elite firearms instruction,”
drawing from
“years of experience as veterans from U.S. Military Special Operations.”

In the Department of Homeland Security’s September justification for the no-bid contract,
officials wrote that ICE had an
“immediate requirement to procure precision fires and specialized observation capabilities for the national 'Special Response Team' (SRT) #sniper #program.”

“The law enforcement officers of ICE have a very challenging job to conduct,”
LaLota wrote in response to The Lever’s request for comment.

“Target Down Group is honored to have provided training to them in order to assist them [sic] perform their duties.”

The other ICE training contractors mentioned in this story did not respond to inquiries, nor did ICE.

https://www.levernews.com/shadow-contractors-are-training-ices-attack-teams/

#JonathanRoss #ReneeGood
#TargetDownGroup
#deportation #spendingblitz #LionheartAlliance #StrategicOperationsIInc #urbanwarfare