Hey, I'm Zach Silk, and I'm the president of Civic Ventures.

Many of you know that I grew up in rural America and rural issues are very close to my heart and honestly

they should be close to everyone's heart particularly because of the way that we have our political system structured in the United States,

it over indexes to rural places. That is, rural places have more power in the system than urban places.

So I think it's very important that we understand

what's going on in rural America.

And I was taken aback by this extraordinary essay

that came out last month. It's by a fellow named Bill Hoggseth. He was the chair of the Democratic Party in Dunn County, Wisconsin.

And in fact, he grew up and lives near where I went to college

in Wisconsin.

And his peace and political is titled,

Why Democrats Keep Losing Rural Counties Like Mine.

It's an awesome piece. I loved it so much that I wanted to call them up and talk about it. My name is Bill Hogseth and I am a rural progressive organizer.

Thank you so much for coming on. I think you know this, but I'm from Wisconsin. So I'm calling you today from

Seattle, but I grew up in Wisconsin. I grew up in a tiny little town. There are many tiny little towns in Wisconsin. I grew up in a place called Wild Rose, Wisconsin.

Yeah, is that like Wood County? Oh, it's actually Washera County.

Washera, okay, I'm sorry, my Wisconsin geography is off.

It's okay.

It happens to be one of the deep red counties in the center of the state just west of Ashkosh.

So we're west of Ashkosh, a couple hours north of Madison.

Where are you from in Wisconsin?

Where, I know you're from Dunn County if I read the piece right? Yeah, yeah my family is six generations deep in this area of the state that we call the Chippewa Valley

...