A Reflection on Home and the Wider World
An OPINION by Marie Irving, Altamont NY
It is easy for outsiders to look at rural New York and see a culture that is completely locked into an unyielding, unbreakable way of thinking. From a distance, a solid block of red on an election map makes places like Allegany County look like an impenetrable wall.
Growing up in Allegany County, I know that wall looks very different from the inside. And in my professional life today, that inside perspective is exactly what drives me. My daily work includes advocating for the resource-sparse, economically isolated rural counties that decision-makers too easily ignore.
I see the heavy, systemic pain of our small towns—the decades spent experiencing the devastating loss of manufacturing, the decaying main streets, the shrinking school resources, and the reality that state policies are often written by people who have never stepped foot on a family farm. When a system abandons you, the natural human instinct for a community is to retreat, circle the wagons, and draw a hard line around itself. There is a fierce, deeply rooted loyalty in these towns—a profound devotion to holding onto your history and looking out for your own when it feels like no one else will. It is a powerful instinct.
But my work also calls on me to confront an uncomfortable, dual truth: that same fierce loyalty, when turned too tightly inward, can build cultural walls that end up suffocating the future.
Even if you fit into a small town perfectly, there can be a quiet pressure to see the world as everyone else does. When everyone shares the same experiences, perspectives, and assumptions, there is little room for new ideas, new people, or the next generation to grow. It isn’t always that a small town makes you feel unwelcome; its boundaries leave little room to become anything other than what is already familiar. Like many who grew up there, I left because I was curious about what existed beyond those boundaries.
But lines are powerful things, and they cut both ways.
We just witnessed a monumental shift across New York because a line was crossed, and the cracks in that solid wall became visible. In the North Country, a dairy farmer like Blake Gendebien moved historically rigid counties by double digits because thousands of traditional voters decided a candidate’s combative approach went too far. Right here in the Southern Tier, an unknown challenger like Aaron Gies was powered by an unprecedented grassroots surge from local voters who demanded to be heard. And statewide, candidates lost ground in traditional strongholds because regular people concluded that certain lines should not be crossed.
Every single one of those moments was an example of everyday people stepping up to a line, looking at a political script, and deciding to think for themselves.
Leaving home taught me that the truest form of safety doesn’t come from building a wall around our town or our mindset. It comes from having the courage to look beyond it.
Curiosity about people who look, live, and believe differently than we do isn’t a betrayal of where you come from; it is a tool for survival. Decision-makers in urban and suburban areas have massive, often arrogant blind spots about rural economic reality, and I am committed to illuminating those blind spots. But rural communities have blind spots of their own. One of the most persistent is the belief that we can protect our future by closing ourselves off from people and ideas that challenge our assumptions.
Drawing a line is an act of values. But true strength is the ability to step up to that line, look across it with openness, and wonder what the person on the other side sees that you do not.
