Our conversation this week is with Chloe Maxmin & Canyon Woodward. Chloe is the youngest woman ever to serve in the Maine State Senate. She was elected in 2020 after unseating a two-term Republican incumbent and (former) Senate minority leader. In 2018, she served in the Maine House of Representatives after becoming the first Democrat to win a rural conservative district. Canyon is a political strategist, author, and trail runner who served as Chloe's campaign manager in Maine. Together they wrote "Dirt Road Revival: How to Rebuild Rural Politics and Why Our Future Depends On It" and founded Dirtroad Organizing, where they continue their work empowering the next generation of rural organizers, staff, and candidates. They are both children of rural America, Chloe from Nobleboro, ME and Canyon from Franklin, NC and the North Cascades.
In this episode we talk about the long history of Chloe & Canyon's special friendship, their deep love of their home, family, and the natural world keeping them grounded, finding their way into organizing and political action at Harvard, the brain-drain in rural places, the circle from going away to coming home, listening to stories as a campaign strategy, curiosity replacing fear, understanding moral communities, telling more unified stories to beget social change, and the great work Chloe & Canyon are doing with Dirtroad Organizing.
Check out Chloe & Canyon's work: Dirtroad Organizing
Read their book! Dirt Road Revival
Chloe's appearance on Big Ideas for a Small Planet: Communities
Canyon & Chloe in the film Rural Runners
Mentioned in this episode:
Making Noise: The Story of a Skatepark by Cecilia Cornejo Sotelo
The Wandering House — Cecilia Cornejo Sotelo
How Students Pressured Harvard to Divest From Fossil Fuels
Hollowing Out the Middle by Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas
Weather Reports — Terry Tempest Williams
Chloe Maxmin & Canyon Woodward