‘Trump resistance’: Washington Post features local progressive activist

Aug. 20--JEFFERSON -- The Washington Post recently featured a local progressive activist as one of several women leading a burgeoning "Trump resistance" across America.

The day after President Trump's inauguration, Jessica Leveto caught a midnight bus from Erie County, Pa., to Washington, D.C. On her first trip to the nation's capital, she joined more than two million women marching in protest of the Trump presidency.

She returned home energized, she told the Star Beacon, and scanned social media for others craving change, hoping to join a progressive activism group. Instead, someone urged her to start her own.

Moving Forward Together -- a Jefferson-based branch of the national progressive policy group Indivisible, founded on the Women's March ideals and now headed by Leveto -- hosted its first public forum in May in Jefferson, where a mostly local panel fielded questions on health care, immigration and the opioid crisis.

"I was afraid it would be three people and a sign," she told the Washington Post, which recently interviewed Leveto and other women leaders of progressive movements.

Today, Moving Forward reaches more than 100 people through email, and close to 300 have joined its private Facebook group, Leveto told the Star Beacon. And with the Washington Post's coverage, membership is growing again, she said.

According to a Gallup poll cited by the Washington Post earlier this month, Trump's national approval rating hit 39 percent in late July, though he garnered 60 percent of rural voters in the 2016 election; in Ashtabula County, that was 57 percent.

A recent Washington Post-funded Kaiser Family Foundation poll shows 30 percent of rural voters strongly disapprove of Trump's presidency -- about as many who strongly approve.

Rural women reported a slightly higher disapproval rating than rural men -- perhaps one reason the new activism groups are headed by women, the Post article suggests.

MEET THE RURAL AMERICANS WHO FEAR THEY'RE BEING FORGOTTEN

Hear from voters in Ashtabula County as they describe the most important issues to them. Video produced by the Washington Post.

McKenna Ewen, Whitney Leaming, Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post

Leveto, a sociology professor at Kent State University Ashtabula who hails from Pennsylvania, said her political interests hearken back to age 16, when she participated in mock political clubs and debate. At one point, she met peers from Philadelphia's inner city.

"Their experience in life was so vastly different from my own in rural Pennsylvania. I think that was the moment I became a sociologist," she said. "I was seeing the environment does shape what people become."

Though many involved in Moving Forward and Indivisible are Democratic Party members, the groups themselves aren't politically aligned, Leveto said.

Moving Forward is rather a platform for all manner of progressive ideals like reproductive rights, civil rights, worker's rights -- an "unapologetically progressive movement of inclusion and citizenship," according to its public Facebook page.

Earlier this year, the groups' voices reached 14th District U.S. Rep. David Joyce, chiding him for refusing to host in-person public town halls, and urging him to vote against the controversial repeal of Obamacare -- which he did.

"(Joyce's office) said there were all these calls that came in. When he voted, the phones didn't stop because so many people had called back to say 'thank you,'" Leveto said.

"All the groups in District 14 will make him a better congressman -- not just for progressive issues ... I think it will make him a better congressman because (he will) have to pay attention to what they're doing."

Though Leveto said a host of issues are causing the local movement to swell, health care concerns resonated in the region.

"A few months ago and even currently ... a lot of people are not really satisfied with the way it's been implemented," she said. "But a complete repeal (of Obamacare) would be devastating, to people in rural areas, especially."

The Washington Post cited health care revision as a "dominant issue" for rural activists. In its Kaiser poll, 95 percent of rural respondents said Medicaid is "very or somewhat important to their communities."

During the group's May forum at First United Congregational Church along East Jefferson Street, a retired nurse who is a diabetic said she went without health insurance since her employer dropped its plans in the 1990s -- until Obamacare was installed.

"I am what a pre-existing condition looks like," she said. "I remember that day I got health insurance. I went out and took a picture of myself -- 'Look at me, I get to go to the doctor.'

"I've become a single-payer person. I think there's no reason why this country with all its glory can't provide its people with the basic right of health."

Lately, Moving Forward has worked to tackle gerrymandering at the Congressional level. The group needs 300,000 signatures to get a referendum on the 2018 ballot.

"So that we're not looking at a map and turning our head to understand why one area is included with another area that's 150 miles away," she said.

Moving Forward Together meets the last Saturday of each month at 11 a.m. Though the location changes often, meetings are usually held at the Ashtabula County District Library, 4335 Park Ave., Ashtabula. The group's public Facebook page can be found here.

The next meeting is set for Aug. 26. Leveto said the group plans for "coordinated action" regarding racial tensions emanating from the recent violence in Charlottesville, Va.

Though she said the group can be "reassuring" for those feeling "apprehension and anxieties" regarding the Trump administration and policies, its main goal is inclusion and open discussion -- no matter the party affiliation.

"One of the things I've heard of a lot is 'How do I talk to my neighbor? How do I have these conversations with people in my community that have voted for Trump?' Ultimately, he's been the impetus for a lot of this," she said.

"I think in this day and age, a lot of people are so nervous to even speak politically because it becomes hostile," Leveto said. "I think in an area like Ashtabula where we are relatively rural, we have to be open and inclusive to a variety of these issues that are coming to the surface."

Justin Dennis covers southern Ashtabula County for the Star Beacon. He can be reached at (440) 998-2323 ext. 124. Follow him on Twitter @JustinDennis.

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