The Country Vs City Divide

Last year I moved to a rural area, after spending most of my life living in cities. What I want to talk about is my experience and observations with the country, the city and privilege. It is intended to help people who are navigating the idea of moving to a rural area, or who already live in a rural area. I ask that you please notice your own reactions and ask yourself what they are rooted in. This may be sensitive for some people of privilege, which is important to unpack.

Please don't lash out at me if I say something you disagree with. This is a topic I have sat with, discussed with people for over a year, and researched.

Let's begin with this quote:

"Throughout history, land has been recognized as a primary source of wealth, social status, and power. It is the basis for shelter, food, and economic activities; it is the most significant provider of employment opportunities in rural areas and is an increasingly scarce resource in urban areas. Access to water and other resources, as well as to basic services such as sanitation and electricity, is often conditioned by access to rights in land. The willingness and ability to make long term investments in arable land and in housing is directly dependent on the protection that society affords the holders of rights. Thus, any concept of sustainable development relies heavily on both access to property rights in land and the security of those rights."

From Gender and Access to Land

In order to move "out here", it is much more important that you have access to land than if you move to the city. Whether that is by buying the land yourself, having relationships with friends or family who have land, or working in a specific job or industry that is rooted in the rural place (usually tourism, agriculture, forestry, outdoor recreation), somehow you need a connection. In cities, because there are more services, and more infrastructure in general, it is technically an easier place to move without these kinds of relational resources. This is why generally people migrating from outside the Imperial Core, especially Black and racialized people, move to the cities, and why rural spaces are so white.

I will say that land and access to it is scarce everywhere, and that rural living is certainly not without experiences of marginalization, nor is it easy to live rurally because of things like lack of transit or medical care. Even when a person has access to land, it can require a lot of work that isn't required in the city. These are some of the reasons I have heard people who live rurally explain why they think that city living is privileged over rural living. However, none of those things are necessarily measurements of overall marginalization. People mistake the difficulty of chopping wood, living without electricity and having to build their own house as marginalization, and while I understand the mistake, it is in fact that.

"Even in areas where one may be able to afford a home and some land there are various issues that keep folks from moving there. Things that may keep folks from locating to a particular area include pollution, poor school systems, ethnic/racial demographics, access to desired services, restrictive laws, socioeconomic status of the neighborhoods, and the general conditions of the land, homes and infrastructure."

From Land is Sacred

Obviously cities are a product of colonialism, and all rural areas were once populated by the peoples Indigenous to that territory. Those peoples were systematically murdered, relocated, declared extinct and forced to assimilate. Once that land, rich in resources, had its Stewards removed, white settlers were offered benefits like free or affordable land to make sure the area was held by white people and extracted from for the benefit of Empire. The white settlers who did the actual farming, mining, fishing, building were lower in class or even oppressed, but they were able to acquire land that was then passed down from generation to generation. So in many places rurally, you'll meet people who have lived on this land for about 100 years, have roads named after them, and a lot of local sway. They tend to share their land and resources with other people like them, usually white.

"Homesteading, for lack of a better term, holds a lot of different meanings. The term originates from the Homestead Act of 1862, which provided economic incentives in the form of land ownership to established and potential citizens willing to move westward to expand America’s colonialist pursuits...

In other ways, it can be a limiting term. Not only does its use gloss over the historical and modern injustices of land theft, but it also often ignores the topical issues of land justice and the privilege to be able to choose that lifestyle. Broadly speaking, homesteading also tends to be understood as an individualistic pursuit. The Homestead Act itself marks a tragic moment in history in which Indigenous common lands were stolen for private property. Even when modern examples acknowledge this shift as an outcome of colonialist thinking, they still manage to mostly describe the act of leaving, going off-grid, or checking out from both the limitations and the conveniences of modern society as an enviable and solitary endeavor."

From Build Your Modern Homesteading Community

In the area I am in there are a lot of communes, collectives, and cooperatives, born out of hippie cultures, anarchists, Christians, anti-vaxxers and draft dodgers. What I have noticed is that there is no public, accessible or even readily available information on how to become part of these supposed communities or what the requirements may be. They are in essence, closed. This is not liberation. This is privilege.

Not everyone out here is a blatant white supremacist, but because a trademark of rural living is "individual freedom" it's a perfect breeding ground for extremists of all kinds. Close to me, there is a property with a "Don't Tread on Me" flag and it didn't take me long to ask a few questions and get the name of the person whose property it is plus a little biography. Even if most people aren't flying these flags, rural areas are closed communities because of the systemic barriers that marginalized people face to moving out here: if you don't have someone to vouch for you or show you the ropes, it is near impossible.

We know that there is a long history in so-called Canada of racial segregation and intentional barring of access to land ownership for Black people, as well as the people Indigenous to these territories. This is prevalent and clear in rural places today.

"In Canada, Black people typically face additional complexities before they even start to dream about that sweet corner lot. On top of the various criteria lenders use to figure out how much money and under what terms they might lend it, Black people are more likely to encounter white supremacy in all aspects of the housing market, meaning they are less likely to be able to rent or buy desirable property. The word for this particular mechanism of white supremacy, where Black families are less likely to be approved for credit with which to buy a home, is redlining."

From Redlining in Canada

I have encountered a fair number of leftists and communist leaning folx in rural spaces who are theoretically aware of liberatory movements like Free Palestine, mutual aid, Land Back, defunding the police, decolonization, and pro-2SLGBTQIA+ activism. However, I have observed a huge disconnect and defensiveness to how privileged they are to have access to rural living.

Once people get out here, they disconnect from the struggle of the city and seem to almost see themselves as separate from systems of oppression. I've noticed this in a few ways. One is with comments of exceptionalism like "out here you can create the life you want" or "we value creating alternative lifestyles". That we are more connected to the land, to local organic produce, that by not buying from big box stores and growing the food ourselves we are automatically separate from systems of oppression. This ignores the privilege required to access said lifestyle, and pronounces that simply making these statements somehow wipes us clean of benefitting from capitalism. It's anti-Black, racist, and classist.

"I was chatting with center members who were sharing their struggles in managing their stress as they grappled with their newly found recovery. Naive me shared, “why don’t you try going for a walk in the woods? There’s a great path nearby in Trumbull.” The person responded, “I’ve never seen woods before. I would have to take the bus to get there though.

It shocked me. Forests, and access to nature were the grounding points in my life. I couldn’t imagine never knowing, hearing, feeling what being in the woods was like. My nervous system needs it to feel balanced & safe.

And then to learn how it would take hours to go just a few miles over a town border, paying way too much for a bus fare, and then to struggle with 1) being in a new really stimulating environment like the forest and 2) needing to assess your safety - not just because of wildlife, but also because of people may judge you and seek to cause you harm based on the color of your skin."

From Confronting My Privilege In Access to Land

It is a complete and utter privilege to be able to walk outside in the wilderness, to find swimming holes that aren't on Google Maps, as all human beings should have a right to do. While people rurally are chopping wood, building their own shelters and lighting fires for warmth, unhoused people in the cities are being arrested for doing the exact same thing, and city neighbours are calling the cops on each other for talking too loudly with their friends. Freedom to live this way is something that Empire has intentionally ripped from us to control us, and while some people out here understand this, many don't understand that only freeing themselves and those close to them is embodying the same oppression that settlers embodied right after people Indigenous to those territories were murdered. People from Europe left cities teeming with disease and hardship for the promise of a "new land" and a "better life". Was it harder than they had been told and did many of them not survive? Absolutely. But they also had the privilege to escape, AND took ownership of stolen land in the process. This continues with what I would call "white flight" from the cities.

Part of the current "white flight" is that not only are cities police states and impossible to live in because of capitalism, it is also that especially white people are not taught how to build community with people more marginalized than them. Actually no one is taught how to build community or real relationships or move through conflict with anyone, but it particularly shows up in white privileged people, and it particularly affects the people most marginalized in the cities, aka Black people, Indigenous people and unhoused people. So instead of organizing to shift collective conditions, people are fleeing to rural areas to create their own mini utopias, abandoning marginalized people along the way. Once they get out here, there is the surface idea of community in the romanticization of rural areas: there are less people so you get recognized at the post office, everyone goes to the same corner store and their kids all go to the same school. But the community ends there. I have seen no actual radical mutual aid or push for building networks of community care centering those most marginalized.

Another way I see a disconnect happening with recognizing privilege and creating community for marginalized people is with white rural poor folx who have been settled for a couple of generations. Understandably, they're wary of newcomers to the territory, having to scrape by and witnessing white gentrifying people form the cities coming out here a cosplaying living off the land. For white rural poor folx, they do not have the option to go back to the city if the country doesn't work out. However, the problematic thing I see happening is that they equate themselves with the Indigenous people of the territory, which is inaccurate, harmful and oppressive.

No matter how poor a white a person is, no matter how much oppression they've face, they still have more privilege than an Indigenous person.

When I have brought up that I don't see these radical community led grassroots efforts existing, I have had people tell me that "they do exist and people are doing them" and my question has been "why don't I know about it?" This isn't from a desire to centre myself, but to point out that mutual aid is not liberatory or radical if it is a secret. Yes, communities deserve to create boundaries and build standards for trust and care, but those processes and protocols need to be explicit and easily accessible to anyone who wants them, otherwise it is a clique.

I have heard the statement that cities are always privileged over the country in that city folx are awarded the descriptions of "sophisticated" and "cultured" while the country folx get called "uneducated" or "simple". This is absolutely a stereotype that gets perpetuated in the media: a stereotype that is anti-Black, racist and classist, conjuring discriminatory ideas of "rednecks" and "hillbillies". But what we always have to ask ourselves when determining privilege is: what resources do people have access to? How does this positionality or identity increase or decrease resources?

Are there examples of corporations using and extracting from rural folx with the idea that they are not intelligent enough to understand they're being taken advantage of? Yes. One major example I can think of is how oxycontin was intentionally pushed to such an epidemic in places like Appalachia. But this happens in the cities too. People in the cities are ravaged by toxic drug supply. People in the cities are taken advantage of in the sense that they can be controlled by increasingly militarized police forces, bylaws, their dependence on corporations for food and basic needs.

Yes, I understand that people from the city come out here, drive up prices, and gentrify. But let's be honest: that's what people who have been doing since first contact with the original colonizers. There's an eerie forgetting that happens in the 20 years it takes for someone to become a "local" and in the way people separate their whiteness from "the other people's whiteness" refusing to take accountability, using any of their own struggle as a weapon.

I did not come out here by choice, it was a last resort. For reasons I won't get into here, it has been an extremely unstable time of material insecurity. My time in this area has been one of the more difficult of my life and I have been the most isolated I have ever been. But because I am new, I've been met with an attitude that I need to be the one putting in the effort to build community, that I'm the one who needs to earn trust. Most of my efforts have been thwarted in some way, and because of my circumstances it's taken long periods of recuperation before trying again.

I've connected with many people who came out here in the last decade who have felt the same way, and people who are actively trying to get out of here because it is so bad. The thing that all these people who recognize the truth out here have in common is that they are aware of their privilege and access to resources.

Privilege isn't a dirty word and people need to realize that.

The truth is that small farms and people living off the land and rurally here are not raking in profits galore, and they are surviving only because of the access they have whether that is through their contacts and friends, family support, or jobs with local institutions. It isn't a life of unbridled luxury, but it is freedom that people in the cities do not have. While hard work is needed, hard work does not and never has negated privilege.

I joined some Facebook Groups when I moved here, and was kicked out of one for offering to help someone who thought there were unhoused people moving into the field near them. Then I was told by the moderate liberals that things weren't that bad and that there were lots of nice people here. I attended local organizing groups until they started making decisions that felt really misaligned to me, I tried to start a community fridge no one would even show up to a meeting for. Now I go out to do cold weather response with my partner and put messages out to the two group chats I am still a part of to people for donations.

I know it will take time to build real community, and I will keep going. But what I keep thinking about is how anyone more marginalized than me would not be able to survive coming out here. Black people, single mothers, unhoused folx, who have less privilege than I do.

I share all of this for us to start thinking about how we are really going to break down barriers and liberate all people. I share all of this for us to start thinking on how we can redistribute what we have access to and realize that it isn't just money: it is land, it is relationships, it is knowledge, it is creating ways for people to participate in communities when they are new to an area. I share all of this for us to always ask ourselves when we have something, who is being denied that thing.

Being gatekeepers without opportunity for entry or learning is privilege. That is not stewardship. The only exception I can think of is with closed cultural practices.

As late stage capitalism continues on with its violence, we who are living rurally also have to realize that we can offer an escape, an opportunity, a chance at freedom for so many. What are we willing to do about it? We need to be organizing with people in the cities so we can figure out what of our resources they need. Do they need access to land and housing? Do they need people to teach them how to garden, chop wood, build shit? Do we need anti-racist and local Indigenous led welcoming committees that help newcomers to the territory understand the land and their relationship to it while also being able to navigate privilege (aka Black newcomers from Africa and the Caribbean are not the same as white newcomers from the United States). Do we need to be creating education circles in rural spaces for people to confront their biases? Do we need conflict transformation education for rural spaces? Is the country where we build actually abolitionist, anti-oppression communes that centre unhoused and precariously housed people, that centre Black and Indigenous people, that are doing the internal work of liberation? Is this where we stake out abandoned land and buildings to squat in, fix up, and live in? Is this where white people who have the funds can purchase land that is collectively owned and has anti-oppressive values written into agreements?

YES TO ALL OF THESE THINGS.

There is so much abundance and opportunity to aid the revolution from the country, and I hope what I have shared can spark interest in that. I hope that we can truly build together and create a future that our ancestors and the ancestors of every land we are on dreamed of. I hope we can build the future that all marginalized people dream of and deserve.

I hope that one day I can read this back and see how far we have come.

© 2025. All rights reserved.

Email: slowmotionradical@proton.me

Linktr.ee: https://linktr.ee/slowmotionradical

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Kara Bullock lives on the Unceded Territory of the Sinixt People. Learn about how the colonial government has declared the Sinixt Extinct and support the Autonomous Sinixt here.