Weekly Skews - S6 Ep9: Good Skews - Organizing Against Rural ICE Detention Facilities with Megan Kocher

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

 Small towns across America are being flooded by plans for massive ICE detention centers, which Andrea Pitzer, in One Long Night, describes as concentration camps. In this episode of Good Skews, Producer Matt talks with rural organizer and former state House candidate Megan Kocher about what’s unfolding in Northeastern Pennsylvania and across the country, why warehouse sites are spreading into small towns with little local input, and how recent reporting on ICE misconduct raises urgent oversight concerns. We also discuss what real organizing looks like beyond protests — from building ICEwatch networks and mutual aid systems to leveraging zoning boards, local officials, and elections to slow or stop detention projects before they take root. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp makes it easy to get matched online with a qualified therapist. Sign up and get 10%  https://www.betterhelp.com/skews 

I'm Matt Hildreth. Welcome to another episode of Good Skews. Over the last few weeks, small towns across America have been blindsided by plans for massive ice detention centers, what author Andrew Pittser calls concentration camps in her book, One Long Night. Backed by more than $75 billion in new funding championed by Stephen Miller, these facilities are already quietly being purchased in places like northeastern Pennsylvania. At the same time, new reporting from the AP shows troubling misconduct. conduct inside ICE itself. Today we're asking what this means for rural communities and what can be done about it. My guest is Megan Coker, a colleague of mine and a rural organizer in Northeast Pennsylvania and former state house candidate. She's helping build local networks of mutual aid and leading a national push to stop these warehouse detention deals. We talk about what organizing looks like

beyond just protests, how these facilities land in small towns and practical steps communities can take from zoning fights to local elections to protect their neighbors. Megan, thanks for joining us today. You and I have worked together for a while now at rural organizing, but for those who don't know you, do you want to just start by telling us a little bit about who you are and where you come from and the community that you live in now? Yeah, absolutely. My name is Megan Coker.

I live in northeastern Pennsylvania. I grew up in a town called Nanny Coke, and I live in a small town called Plymouth today. I've been organizing for quite some time now. I actually got involved in politics when I was 16 years old in the 2016 election and got my first full-time job as an organizer when I was in college, and I've been doing it since. So I've been organizing in northeastern Pennsylvania for more time than I haven't been. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit for those who do.

don't know organizer what that means. I mean, I think the first time a lot of Americans, especially older Americans, heard the term community organizer was with Barack Obama. And, you know, his bio really led with the fact that he was an organizer, a community organizer in Chicago. But what does the organizer mean to you? When you describe to people, the work that you do, how do you describe it? Yeah, I think the way that I would describe organizer has changed and evolved a lot throughout my career. So initially, when I started working, I was in college and I saw a Craigslist ad of all things that said, do you want to fight for education funding?

And I was like, yeah, that sounds great. And it was primarily just a canvassing based program where we would do an issue ID feedback loop and talk to people about the issues that mattered to them and try to organize them to vote for a specific candidate who would do good by education funding. And that was a lot of my career was working on canvassing based programs. And it has since evolved to what I consider real organizing where, you know, we're actually within the communities. We're building deep relationships and bonds. We're organizing around more than just issues. We're organizing around the community's needs. It's so much deeper than just trying to get a candidate on one side of the aisle elected. We're building real power. We're doing mutual aid events. We're meeting community survival needs. as we're organizing around the community. And when you think of like the best organizer in your mind or somebody that you look to, maybe at somebody on the national scale or somebody in your local community, who for you bodies the label organizer? I think maybe AOC or Bernie Sanders would be who I think of.

Just the power and the movement that they've been able to build, despite not really being on, you know, the inside circle of the Democratic Party, I think is really powerful and something that I would like to build it, you know, in my own community. And talk a little bit more about your community. You said it's a nanny Coke. And just for those that may have not been there, how big is it, you know, how many stoplights, where, you know, just help us picture the community a little bit. Yeah. So I grew up in nanny Coke. I think we had two. two stoplights. And I live in Plymouth now, which is about 10 minutes away. So I would describe my community as a cluster of small towns that run along the same main road. And the one I live in Plymouth, we have maybe three stoplights. I think we have a population of just around 6,000 people. We're probably better known for something called the Kobasi Fest, which is a festival that happens

once a year where the main road is lined with food trucks and a lot of them sell kibossi. And, you know, there's live music and it's a big thing. Yeah, I think we're a cluster of small towns running along the main road. And once you get off the main road, we have the more rural areas kind of branching off. And you mentioned that you got involved in politics when you were 16. That seems pretty early for, I mean, you couldn't even vote yet. But talk a little bit about why. you got involved when you were 16, what was happening and what motivated you to get involved?

I think it started a little bit earlier than that. I took action for the first time at 16, but when I was in fourth grade, Hillary Clinton was running against Barack Obama in the primary. And I didn't know enough to really take a side in things, but I remember another girl in my class made a comment that America isn't ready for a female president. and I remember being outraged because my teacher was a girl and, you know, she's leading the class and she's a woman. And I just remember thinking how unfair it was. And that same year was the first time I decided that I wanted to join the wrestling team. And I was met with strong opposition and told, you know, girls can't wrestle.

And I just started to reconcile in my mind that the world isn't fair for everybody. And as I've got older, obviously, I realized it's so much more unfair. than I initially even thought it was. But yeah, that kind of got me interested. I started paying attention. When I was in middle school, I actually joined the wrestling team. So, you know, I, again, I started seeing more of the unfairness in the sport and paying attention to the unfairness in the world. And now my high school actually has a girls wrestling team, which is amazing.

But when I was 16, Donald Trump was running for president for the first time. and I saw a strong shift in a lot of the boys that I was growing up with and going to school with who, you know, I thought were normal one day and now they have Confederate flags on their truck. And I just really started to see a change in a lot of the people that I grew up with. I immediately noticed how dangerous Donald Trump's rhetoric was. And I just started to think that, you know, if this guy wins, my life is going to change for. the worse. I'm going to lose my rights. I'm going to lose my right to receive adequate medical care if I need it. And I decided from there to get involved with the local Democratic Party. And I think my job was registering voters for the most part. And I can't say I was very successful

or good at it. I was 16 years old. But that's why I started volunteering. And you ran for office. Yes. Do you want to talk a little bit about running for office? Yeah, I ran for office in 2024 for state representative. Like I said, I started volunteering at this point. I worked on some political campaigns and I worked for the Democratic Party in 2023. And I guess that was the first time that I actually interfaced with candidates and elected officials. And I just, I think when you're younger, you hold politicians to a certain standard. And then when you start working with these people, you kind of realize that they're just people. And, they make mistakes and some of us are in it for the right reason. Some of us aren't. And when I started working with candidates, I realized, like, I always had a goal and a dream of running for office, but I thought that I'm too young. Nobody, you know, wants to vote for me. I don't have the right qualifications or history. And working with candidates made me realize that caring is enough and being the person who wants to fight for your community and wants to do the right thing is enough.

So I made the decision to announce my candidacy for state representative. I ultimately didn't win. And this is going to sound so corny. But I think that everything worked out exactly how it was supposed to. Because I'm just doing so much more to organize my community now. I hold so much more power than I did before I announced that I was running. I have such a larger, more impactful network now. And I kind of feel like with everything going on in the world,

If I was constrained right now just to passing legislation in the state house, I probably wouldn't be able to make as big of an impact as I am. And northeast Pennsylvania right now feels a little bit like it's the center of the political universe. Once a month or maybe a couple times a month, J.D. Vance and Donald Trump or other mega Republicans tend to be showing up in your backyard. Let's start, you know, as we're talking about what you're doing right now with, these ICE detention facilities. Let's maybe start by laying the context for what's been happening in Northeast Pennsylvania with mega Republicans over the last several months and actually,

frankly, a couple of years. Yeah. So I think this starts with the 2024 election. We lost a lot of races in northeastern Pennsylvania. First of all, we had a Democratic Congressman Matt Cartwright. We lost that seat by, I think, 1.5 percent. And the same thing happened in the seven. district. They had a Democratic rep, Susan Wilde, and I think she lost by one percent of the vote. So the congressman who took over in my district was Rob Reznihan and in the seventh, Ryan McKenzie. So these two races are very, very tight. But McKenzie and Breznihan ran on a platform that they certainly do not embody in office. And I think the Republican Party, Donald Trump, you know, J.D. Vance, all of these high-ranking officials know that we are ground zero,

that these are two of the tightest races in the country and that the community is ticked off about the lies and the broken promises that, you know, these men have consistently done. They say, you know, I would never do anything to cut Medicaid. So many of my constituents rely on it. And they consistently vote to gut Medicaid. So I think it's just been so clear that the community's outraged, that these are two of the tightest races in the country. and I think that high-ranking mega officials feel that if they focus all of their firepower on Northeast Pennsylvania, that they'll be able to win the area back. And I think the shift that I'm noticing on the ground is that that's very unlikely. And one of the things that I've seen that's happening in Northeast Pennsylvania with the work that you're doing is that, yes, people are having the no kings rallies and they're having the kind of the mass protests. People are showing up in these small towns and rural communities in ways that they might not have done that in the past doing really good work.

But you guys are taking things to the next level. And I think that might be something that folks are interested in is what do you do in your community that goes beyond just having another rally, another protest? Because I think people are activated and engaged now more than ever, but might not feel like the protests are. are having any real impact. Yeah, I'm really happy you asked that. This is a whole segment that we've been trying to do that focuses on the idea of protest as like a doorway. And it's more of an entry point into more meaningful and impactful actions.

So, of course, it's impactful to say, you know, five million people stood in the streets today to say that they don't like what's happening in the world. But I think I view protest as a means to bring people together. to find like-minded people who are ticked off but are willing to do more than just that. So in my community, it started on Labor Day. That was one of the 50-51 days of action. And Rob Reznihan had just voted to cut spending for SNAP, which so many community members in northeastern Pennsylvania rely on. And we decided to turn that day of action into a food drive,

which was so much more successful than expected. We ended up collecting 17,000, pounds of food that day. And it just, you know, really evolved from there the idea that protest is a great way to bring people together. But if we're not organizing our community in a way that meets our needs of survival and fills the gaps that the failing federal government is creating, then we're really not going to be able to organize beyond that. So the idea is that if we can bring people together to start and then get them to do more things to organize each other and their communities and lay these systems of survival out, then we can meet those needs. And, you know, if you can't put food on the table, you can't go to a protest and organize, right? So if your needs of survival aren't meant,

you really can't do anything else. But at that point, once those needs are met, we can ask people to do more resistive things, like participate in a strike or a spending blackout, or boycott Amazon, which is really difficult for a lot of people who live in rural communities when sometimes the things you need are if only available on Amazon. But if you have the ability to rely on your community members to meet those needs, then you may be able to participate in those more impactful actions that as a country we haven't gotten to yet. But we're seeing a lot of that too in places like Minnesota where they're relying on these mutual aid networks. And I really would encourage anybody who wants to organize their community now to start laying the foundation of these

systems of support. Because when ICE gets to your community, you're going to need to support each other one way or another. And having that two week or two-month head start could really mean so much. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about the specific work you're doing around supporting immigrant folks in your community. I think there are, I would say probably three main lanes that I'm thinking about right now. And there are probably so many more than this that we have to occupy and that, you know, one person can't fill every one of these jobs. So it's really important and that you're building your team and your network of people who can meet all of these needs and fill all of these lanes. So the Ice Watch groups are so important.

And that's something that I'm not leading in my community. But there's a really great dedicated group of people who are leading the local Ice Watch group. In addition to that, there's the mutual aid work. And this can be done in so many different ways. And there are so many different needs that need to be met. So food drives in my community. and this was through a different hat that I wear with the NEPA Young Democrats. But we found out that our representatives in the state house voted against a bill that would give women,

well, it would amend the state constitution to protect our right to choose. And we hosted a period product drive to bring accountability to their bad vote and to shine a light on period poverty. It's a thing that these guys don't want to acknowledge that. They just want to vote to control our bodies and have that be the end of it. So hosting, you know, period product drives and food drives and baby formula drives is just absolutely essential. And I read an article the other day about a 16-year-old in Minnesota whose mother was deported and she was breastfeeding. And she has a newborn baby sister now, the 16-year-old girl. And, I mean, that baby is literally only alive because another woman, who is an overproducer of breast milk, was able to donate so that that baby could have something to eat while her mother was taken.

way. So that's another lane, is occupying the mutual aid and finding a way to meet people's needs because a lot of people aren't going to be able to leave the house. And like you said, we need to focus on that year round. And if we don't have those strong networks, then we're kind of going to be caught, you know, flat-footed when ICE does get to your community. And then the third lane that I'm thinking of is stopping the development of additional concentration camps or the mega warehouses that ICE is looking to turn into concentration camps so that they could hold even more people than we already are. And that's something you've been talking a lot about lately in some of the videos you're posting on social media and on the substack over at rural organizing and a few other places.

But can you just set the stage on what's happening with these detention facilities that are put in these massive warehouse facilities in rural America? Yeah. So I have a list here of there was a Bloomberg article. published probably about two weeks ago now that listed 23 locations for planned warehouse jails. Out of these 23 locations, and we'll get to this a little bit after, but I think five have been canceled at this point the sales. So what we did was try to identify as many people as we can who live within, to start 35 miles of these facilities. And then we just had a call to bring people together who lived within 60 miles of any of these proposed facilities so that we can resource,

share, information share, and create a plan of action to stop or delay the sales and development of these concentration camps. I've also gotten a lot of questions about that. Can we call them concentration camps? Historical experts like Andrea Pitzer, who wrote the book on concentration camps, are saying that these are concentration camps. Additionally, something that I learned in doing the research for all of these is that in the United States right now, we hold more immigrants in detention facilities the Nazi Germany did in 1939 just before the start of World War II. So, you know, concentration camps aren't coming to the United States. We have them. We are doing this. I have a ton of resources that we've been gathering on some of the things that we could do to create

administrative burdens or public pressure campaigns that would, again, stop the sale or development of these facilities. And that's our main goal right now is building community in each of these areas so that we can take everything I learn in northeastern Pennsylvania, where we've had two sales go through without community knowledge or approval in cash during a partial government shutdown and take everything that we're learning in our journey to push back against this and share that with other communities across the country. And what kind of people are showing up to this campaign? You've been working with local leaders in, sounds like a couple dozen different communities already.

Just talk a little bit about the motivation for people getting more involved. Well, first of all, all types of people are showing up. Of all ages, backgrounds, elected officials, community leaders, people who probably didn't have a very prevalent role in their community beforehand are showing up now. It's really just a different thing to disagree with what you're seeing on national news and then to hear that it's coming to your backyard, right? So we've been coalition building just a really diverse group of people across the country to come together and strategize this. Do you want to just talk a little bit specifically about the article? What was it titled? How can people find it so they can go check and see where it's at?

Yeah, I think it was titled Mega Warehouse. detention centers. And it was published towards the end of January in Bloomberg. It lists, and I don't think it has been updated to reflect the changes in developments that we've seen, but it lists 23 facilities in states like Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Maryland. A lot of them are really heavily focused on the East Coast as well, New Jersey, New York, which I think ultimately stems from the lack of cooperative prison infrastructure on the East Coast with ice. But you can look up Bloomberg mega warehouse detention centers and you'll see the article. And it gives some details too on some of the really appalling and disgusting details about some of these places.

So for instance, in Tremont, which is about an hour away from where I live. And I actually used to live in Pine Grove, which is even a smaller town than where I live now, about 10 minutes away from Tremont. they're already dealing with pollution issues. If you drive down the highway past Traymont, you gag because the air quality is so poor. So these residents are already dealing with almost being unable to leave their houses a lot of the times. And now have a proposed concentration camp 300 yards away from their local daycare. So, I mean, like these children would literally be looking at, whatever atrocities are happening at this old big lots that they want to make a detention center.

Another one proposed in Social Circle, Georgia, again, right next to an elementary school. And I think this one was canceled in Oklahoma City, but again, I think it was two miles away from the local elementary and high school. So I think that just goes to show that first of all, they're not trying to house the worst of the worst here. nobody would try to house the worst of the worst criminals next to the local toddlers, first of all. Second of all, it shows just a complete disregard for our rural communities. They don't care what they're doing to our children psychologically from having to watch what they're doing. They don't care what they're doing to the communities. They don't care that we don't have the infrastructure in many of these places to support it.

they're truly just working for, looking for, I guess, any warehouse that they can piece together and retrofit in probably a way that won't actually meet the needs of the detainees there based on what we've seen in other holding facilities, just to quickly find somewhere to put people to meet their inhumane agenda. And the first time that I ever saw our immigration system kind of up close and personal was in 2008. in Postville, Iowa, which was a small, small town that had a meatpacking facility. And this was, I think, actually, during the George Bush administration. And it was a kind of militarized raid like we're seeing now. And they collected a couple hundred immigrants that were working at a meatpacking facility. And they put them in what was called the Cattle Congress in Cedar Rapids, which was basically a big expo building.

And they had, you know, chain link fences and barbed wire fences within this, you know, expo building type thing where you would go to see some sort of industry, you know, industry convention type space. And it was just so jarring to see people housed in these conditions where you don't have bathrooms for, you know, these are warehouse facilities that have loading docks and are built to, you know, move big pallets. They don't have showers. They don't have bathrooms. They don't have cafeterias.

They don't have any of that infrastructure. And so all of that sort of infrastructure that you need to house people suffers. And it's done very quickly and haphazardly. And I think that's where things really go south with these types of facilities. I mean, any sort of private prison complex in your community creates a lot of negative effects in your community. But when you're trying to do something as fast as they're trying to do it with this. I mean, their DHS has put out tweets saying they're going to deport 100 million people, which is way more people in the United States than immigrants.

And, you know, they might say they're just trying to taunt or own the left. But it's clear that we're just seeing the beginning of Stephen Miller's immigration agenda. And it's kind of hard to believe where we'll be in two or three years. And I'm just glad you guys are starting on this now because I can't imagine where we're going to be in the next couple of years at the rate that we're going with the agenda that they're planning. The good news, I think for me, though, is that ICE and immigration officials are really not impressing the American people. I'm wondering if you've seen that in your community. For those of us that have been working on immigration-type issues or immigration-related issues over the years, we've always been frustrated with ICE and immigration and customs enforcement and the infrastructure around DHS that was created after 9-11.

but I'm curious what you're seeing in your own community in terms of the people that are showing up because I think people are showing up now from communities that I would never expect. I was just reading an article the other day that Ammon Bundy, that like notorious sovereign citizen, libertarian, cattle rancher that is notorious for going toe to toe and armed conflicts with the federal government is now coming out and saying ISIS, you know, an unconstitutional or acting on. unconstitutional and threatening our rights. But are you seeing that in your community? Are you seeing that there's a decline in support for Trump's immigration policies that people may have supported in 2024 when Trump was saying we're going after the worst of the worst, but now they're seeing what they actually mean? I would say yes and no.

I've definitely seen a significant shift in involvement and just people who care where, you know, I'm being connected with a ton of people who weren't really involved in efforts a year ago, but are really trying to step it up and take on a role in organizing today. I haven't yet seen a shift in people who supported Trump, you know, taking that back and saying, actually, this isn't okay. And I'm wondering if that's something that we won't actually see until it's here in, you know, ICE is in Pennsylvania. but, you know, until they're full throttle in Pennsylvania, putting people in these warehouses, I don't know that we'll see the change until then, until people are actually seeing up front that this does affect them.

And I hope that that will change. And I know a lot of people nationally have seen like the shooting of Renee Good and changed their minds. And I hope that we see a lot more of that. But I haven't actually seen anybody outspoken in my community saying, you know, actually I take it back. This is wrong. This episode of Good Skews is sponsored by Better Help. Listen, y'all, Valentine's Days here, how about that? Isn't that fun? Little candy hearts.

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Betterhelp. com slash skews for 10% off. Better help. Do it. It's really hard because oftentimes people change their minds when it's too late and those of us that are kind of committed

to making our communities better, see things early. And I think we carry this like burden of um of early insight um right but it is you know the thing i will say is the the the polling is shifting um i i think there's this quiet shift that's happening um that unless you're watching the polls you might not see it so in my community you know uh in 2024 i live in a little rural community and and um right around the election all the trump signs go up all the you know um

you know, make America great. Again, flags go up. And those have quietly been coming down in a way that I don't think they came down in 2017 and 2018. And then when you look at the polling, especially like, I don't know that everybody's paying attention to it right now. But the AP had an article out that was saying all of these different ICE officials were arrested for, for different things, domestic violence or drunk driving or misuse of funds. And I think the more that people are seeing what ICE is up to and seeing that these are untrained law enforcement officials, these are the types of people that, you know, in 2021,

we're storming the capital and now they work for the federal government. I think people are really starting to turn on that. And I'm starting to see it with, like I said, the Ammon Bundy's of the world. They're not personal friends of mine, but, you know, for those of us that are kind of reading the news clips. And then also, you know, a lot of folks within the military community, other law enforcement officials who have actually gone through training are watching these videos. I just saw a video on Instagram the other day of somebody's security camera footage, catching the ICE officials walking around a house with a gun. And one of the supervisors was like trying to coach these other people who didn't even know how to hold a gun. as they were like walking around somebody's house.

So I think the more that people are seeing that, I think that things are going to change. But one of the things I've also heard you talk about is not only how this is like a horrible, proactive agenda to try and round up and deport all of these people, but also it doesn't feel like the mega Republicans have anything else for rural America. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, absolutely. our communities have been ignored for so long, where I think, you know, you probably experienced this at home as well.

Our infrastructure hasn't been invested in. We have a local bridge, for instance, near me that we knew had to be shut down for years and years. And the plans to fix it never came through. And our infrastructure was lacking. I remember when I lived in Pine Grove, I drank tap water. And I actually got really sick at one point. And we looked into it and found out that there was an issue with the, you know, water pipes nearby. And so our infrastructure's been ignored.

They have, they, you know, the government elected officials have consistently refused to invest and get involved in our local communities. And now they're saying, you know, that we are essentially the dumping grounds for concentration camps and AI. data centers and as if that's all we have to offer rural communities have a lot to offer we are just as important as you know more populated areas but we haven't historically been treated like that and now we're being told you're going to get this concentration camp you are going to lose all of the revenue that you would have gotten from property tax for these facilities because the federal government isn't going to be paying property taxes you'll get a small tax up front for the transfer fee, but that's it. So your school districts are going to suffer even more

psychologically, obviously, because of the atrocities and the trauma that this will bring to our small towns, but they're also going to suffer financially. And they're already suffering financially, of course, because we're trying to cut the Department of Education and education funding, you know, just doesn't matter for whatever reason. So, yeah, I definitely feel like the communities that have been ignored are now being treated as just dumping grounds for atrocities. that people don't want happening in their communities. And we're also being told, you know, your infrastructure may not be equipped to deal with all of these things that we're going to bring to your community. So you're probably going to have to pay for that as well.

So are we going to have to pay to, you know, fix the sewer systems to bring them up to code to sustain an additional 3,000 people in the town? Are we going to have to pay to repair the roads when their influx of trucks creates more issues that northeastern Pennsylvania is very well known for our road issues to begin with? Are we going to have to pay for that? So yeah, I mean, it feels like we have been ignored and now we stand to lose everything and gain nothing, maybe a handful of jobs that aren't good for the community. And we just have to deal with that, probably in silence, preferably for the people making these decisions. And I think that's a really important point because the people who are making the decisions are not the people in small towns and rural communities. When you talk to rural folks, they are very concerned about increasing their paycheck, their wages. They are wanting solutions to decrease their daily expenses.

They want to improve their local quality of life. And all of this stuff that's happening right now with the detention facilities, the concentration camps, is coming out of the, the $75 billion that were allocated for this type of stuff in the 2025 spending bill, that big, ugly bill that Republicans passed. And it's, I think, really frustrating for me when you look at rural folks who are always left out of the conversation and you have all of these, you know, politicians and their donors and the, you know, billionaires that fund the campaigns. deciding what they want.

And, you know, there's going to be billions of dollars made by Palantir and other Peter Thiel corporations when it comes to the surveillance software and the surveillance programs that ICE is using. There's going to be tons and tons of money for the for-profit detention facilities. Also, when you look at things like the AI data centers, those are the types of things that are making billionaires into, they're turning billionaires into trillionaires. and they're costing us jobs, you know, as AI is taking jobs away from Americans. And it's, you know, frustrating to me because unless you're really paying attention, unless your job is to read the news all day, every day, and see how these things are connected, I think it's really hard for people to see that we have a real opportunity here to improve our small towns and rural communities. if we get involved like you're saying,

if we get organized, if we come together, we can pass policies that actually benefit our communities rather than take money and wealth and resources out of our communities and send them off to billionaires. You know, big billionaires in big cities.

Maybe talk a little bit more about your recommendations for people who are just, tired of listening to the news all day, every day, feeling depressed, getting another New York Times notification on their phone and feeling helpless. What are small steps that you would recommend that people can take to start to get involved, even if it's not something big and bold and grand, like trying to stop a facility like you're trying to stop? But what would be the first step? Let's say you've gone to a no king's rally, you kind of, you know, you had a fun time. You felt like you made a difference or you've been standing out on a corner holding up a sign. What would you recommend as the next

step? I think if you've already gone to a no king's rally, then you have a really great opportunity where we've been saying if you can't organize your community if you don't build it first. So if you've already went to a no king's rally, that means there's already somebody organizing in your community. There's somebody who hosted that event, and I would recommend trying to get in touch with them, get in touch with the organizers and see what you can do from there. And there may be an opportunity for you to do something creative and make the next protest something that would benefit your community. Combine it with mutual aid in some way. So you don't have to start from square one. There's already some sort of local infrastructure that you could tap into that you could get involved with.

And instead of having to think through the steps of how am I going to build my team, you could jump into an already existing team or, you know, maybe it's only one or two people who put on the last protest. But you're not really starting from square one in that point, which is amazing. In addition to that, there are a number of local organizations who are doing incredible work across the country that I've been in touch with the past couple of weeks. So in a lot of these areas that we've seen new protests that, you know, the towns that have a population of 900, that had over 100 people show up, you probably don't have one of those local organizations to tap into, but you at least have the existing infrastructure of whoever hosted the last No Kings. And from there, you know, you're just building your team, you're building your network. You're bringing other people into the team who may be able to bring something to your community organizing efforts. And I would just keep it at the forefront of my mind that everything you're doing is ultimately, it has a goal of just creating more resistive and more impactful actions within your community. So think through that as you're connecting with these people, what can I do to lay these foundations of support so that we can be more resistive? You know, come May Day, 2026, maybe we'll participate in a general strike. And what am I going to be able

to do now to support my community through that? And it's an election year. And you've for office. So let's assume that, you know, we will still have election. If we don't have elections in 26, we got other much bigger things to worry about. But right now, we're planning to have elections in 26. What's your recommendation as somebody who has ran for office or has run for office in a small town for people who want to support candidates like you? Should they get involved in the local Democratic Party, should they get, should they reach out to the candidate directly? Because I think a lot of folks will live in a community where it's either very, very blue. And they have a Democrat that, you know, kind of is the dominant elected official in the house or in the, if at the state level, you know, in the Senate.

Or they live in a very, very, very red congressional district or state where they feel like there's nothing they can do. but even if you live in a red area or a very blue area, there's probably local candidates, maybe even for things like sheriff, which it always feels weird that progressives sometimes engage on sheriff's races. But right now, there's a big difference between sheriffs who are cooperating with ice and sheriffs who are not cooperating with ice.

I live in a county. I live in a pretty blue county, actually. I live in a red area of a blue county. county. And our sheriff is crazy and has said that he does not recognize the authority of the state legislature and things like that. And it's just always been really interesting to me that he is able to, you know, kind of do whatever he wants because not a lot of people are paying attention to that race. But that's true at the school board level. That's true at county commissions. council, mayor. So for those who might not be able to really impact their congressional race or

their state races, talk more about how candidates can be supported at the local level. Yeah. There are so many different answers and lanes that we could go down for this question. To start, you ask, should you get in touch with the candidate or your local Democratic Party? And I mean, it really depends on your community. So in my community, when I ran in 2024, our Democratic Party infrastructure is just, you know, it wasn't there to support state rep candidates adequately in the way that I needed. So it really depends on your community and the state of your local Democratic Party. I'd recommend both. I have since decided that, you know, my local Democratic Party didn't support me well enough. And I'm going to change that so that we

can support great candidates better in the future. So you have the opportunity to get involved with your local Democratic Party or get in touch directly with the congressional campaigns or statehouse campaigns. It also depends on the type of race, which group you're going to get involved in. So, for instance, to get involved with the congressional campaign in my area, I would probably be interfacing more with that campaign manager as they're working more through the D-Triple C, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. So you can get in touch with the local candidates, your local Democratic party. You could also run for office depending on what the office is, our school board seats and are like you said, our sheriffs, our county councils, all of these local seats are so important.

And I think that's one way that the Republicans really in past years have had Democrats be, is that they focused on this hyper local office infrastructure in a way that we haven't. And I think it is maybe she should run, who said this, if you carry you qualified. And that's true for so many of these offices. So running for local office, getting in touch directly with local candidates is so important. You may be able to work within your Democratic Party or rebuild your Democratic Party's infrastructure because I'm noticing that in so many rural and small towns and counties, the Democratic Party's presence has dwindled significantly over the past couple of years. And that's the way I view it is whether or not your local Democratic Party or even statewide or nationwide,

if you view it as an effective avenue to organizing, the Democratic Party kind of feels like a vehicle right now that doesn't have somebody actually steering it. And you could be that person. So you could run for Democratic Party infrastructure. You can run for state committee. You can run for your local county party chair. And you can take this organization that may not currently be effective.

And you can change it and steer it in the right direction to make it something that is more effective and impactful and focuses on the issues that actually matter to your community. So there are so many different ways that you can get involved. All of them are important. Canvassing, making phone calls for candidates is so important. Helping them raise money, attending events and fundraisers, organizing mutual aid events. There are so many important avenues to take. And no one person can take all of them. But I mean, as many as you can, as many gaps as you can fill is so important right now. And that's, I think, an important thing to remember, especially as you look. at pushing back against these concentration camps is that the communities who will be able to stop them are communities who have township trustees, mayors, city council members, zoning board officials, all of these obscure small or seemingly obscure, and they're not obscure, they're

important, but seemingly obscure elected officials who care, who ran and have the ability to to make decisions to stop things at kind of all levels of government. And the reason why they were elected is because they got frustrated and they decided to run. And the reason why for folks who live in a community with an effective local Democratic County Party, the reason why it's effective is because somebody looked at it maybe years ago and said, you know, this county party is a disaster. I'm going to put a ton of time and effort into it to build it up. And those are the communities, I think, that are going to be best able to respond when things like the ICE immigration surges show up or when the detention facilities, the concentration camps, show up.

And it's, I think, good for us to remember that if we have, if it's not working, we should get involved and fix it. And if it is working, we should get involved and support it because somebody somewhere at some point made it work. These things like local Democratic county parties don't just exist in the world functional. It takes a lot of work and effort and people who dedicated time to make it work. And I think your point about the Democratic Party not having a real strong leader right now is so important because if you look, the last several elections, whether that was 2025 or the special elections that we've seen over the last year or so since Trump was elected, have been some of the most successful elections for Democratic candidates in my lifetime. And that's without a strong leader at the national level. And so right now we're in this moment where local Democrats, people that are getting involved,

people that are showing up at their no kings rallies, and then taking it to the next level. Those are the people that are actually leading the Democratic Party right now. And it's working. And it's working in a way that I don't think we've ever seen at work. So maybe you could just mention as we're closing out here, how people can get involved. I know rural organizing and rural progress are looking at a civic leadership program called the Rural Defenders Union. Maybe you could just mention that for people if they're wanting to learn the skills that you've learned to take their work to the next level. Maybe you

can just mention that and then we'll end it there. Yeah. So the Rural Defenders Union is an awesome program that supports local change makers or vocal locals. And aims to give them the tools that they need to take their leadership to the next level in their communities. So a lot of the awesome things that I'm talking about that we're trying to implement in northeastern Pennsylvania can be done in your community and you may not know where to start or you may need some resources to do that. So you can apply at rural progress.org to get involved in the rural defenders union, which is an in-depth training program that aims to give you the tools and the skills that you need to get started on this journey, you know, within your own community.

All right. Last question I have for you. What's giving you hope? How are you, you know, getting through these troubling times? What do you look to for inspiration? Right now, it's the nationwide network of people that we've been able to build who are pushing back against the development of these concentration camps within their communities. It kind of feels right now like we're in a process of throwing noodles at the wall and trying to see what sticks. But it gives me a lot of hope. to see how many lawyers and, you know, people who sit on zoning boards and concerned citizens and parents have stepped up to say, hey, here's one idea. Let's add that to the list. So just the sheer number of people coming out to say, I didn't, I wasn't involved previously, but now I need to be is so important and inspiring. And at the end of the day, they have $75 billion, but we have the numbers. We have people. We have public opinion and support on our side. And that's why, you know, I think things are going to get worse before they get better. But I think we're going to win.

And that's why. All right. Well, Megan Coker, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me.