April 23, 2025

📯 More Parades for the People ✨

Rural cultural work doesn’t stop—but the funding sure does. Let’s keep the arty party going.

Dear neighbors,

Instead of my usual meandering updates, I’m knocking on your inbox with a big announcement (the meandering updates will come later, so hurry up and unsubscribe). First off, I’ve migrated mail platforms once again (Sorry! I am not wired for the speed of tech!), so a big welcome to all ye new folks I’ve transferred from my paper address book after last year’s ramblings. And secondly (importantly), I’ve kept busy behind the scenes of national political cruelty and upheaval doing what Virgos do best: paperwork.

I’ll open with some oft-quoted math: less than 4% of all philanthropic funding reaches rural communities. In liberal states like Washington the funding math is even bleaker: foundations rarely (if ever) award or support artists outside of the Seattle metro area. 

For two decades, I’ve been making work within that disparity—because rural post offices are essential organizing hubs, local quilting circles are radical assemblies, and our main streets are sites of civic possibility. My neighbors have always been my collaborators, my neighbors have always been my teachers; all the highways between are a deep map of rural cultural workers that are deeply embedded in their community’s work.

I started a non-profit to continue supporting grassroots and collaborative futures work in rural places. 📣 More Parades is a registered 501(c)(3) and cultural incubator providing support, platforms, research, and resources for neighbors, artists, creatives, and cultural workers centered in civic engagement, creative economies, community projects, and local organizing initiatives. We provide fiscal sponsorship, creative labor, administrative assistance, and cultural resources to a variety of values-aligned rural projects.

Making long-term relational work, building cultural equity, and nurturing rural practice is only getting more difficult. Grants are vanishing, projects are being canceled, geography is being weaponized, and the current presidential administration hobbled funding opportunities for artists like myself that rely on grant funding for community work. But here’s the thing— More Parades is committed to stubbornly holding space for the kind of work that brings us together instead of drives us apart. 

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How You Can Help

All donations to More Parades are tax-deductible. Get your money out of the mouth of the war machine! Your hard-earned moolah can go directly to supporting working artists, instead of fueling oligarchy.

💡 Donate one-time 
💸 Become a monthly or annual sustainer
📡 Forward this to someone new! We believe artists belong in every kind of geography. Every community, no matter how small, is home to beauty, culture, and total freaks.

This is a direct ask from one neighbor to another. The work has always been collective. We can all help keep it possible.

See you all out in our great beyond,

🕯️ m

P.S. If you donate online, select “other” and input zero on the “Help Keep Zeffy Free” section and you won’t pay any service charges.

P.P.S. Prefer to donate cash? Visit State Bank Northwest in downtown Palouse and ask them to send your money to the More Parades Account. And if you can’t give today, send me a note—I’d love to hear how rural culture has shaped you. I love reading emails from from friends.

*_{^{This is a ballpark, oft-cited number I learned from Art of the Rural. Are you a numbers person that wants to do some rural number-crunching for a manifesto? Hit me up!}}

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📚 Recent Top Reads
✎ Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind by Annalee Newitz 
✎ Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene by Donna J Haraway
✎ Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao

📻 Current Jams
✺ NTS: Michael Hurley ✺ All hail the good lord Snock 🕯️🕯️🕯️
✺ The County ✺ I’ve had this song on heavy rotation all winter, looking forward to the upcoming album release by my roaddog & rock-jack aficionado Forrest Van Tuyl
✺ Horses ✺ Great album of luscious pedal steel and transcendental hinterland tunes from Tobacco City