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        • SSI 2018: Celebrating 10 Years of STAY
        • SSI 2017
        • SSI 2016 Photos
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      • Fund Black Appalachian Futures
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#Appalachianlovestory

Appalachian Love Week 2018

2/14/2018

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Dear STAY Project Family,

Happy Appalachian Love Week!

This week we are inviting folks to tell their Appalachian Love Story, and we are asking you to be a part of ours.

So what does STAY mean when we talk about our Appalachian Love Story? Well we’re not talking about a storybook romance. We’re talking about "love" as a verb, as an action, as a process we continue to change and shift. We are talking about love as a choice, like how we choose to love Appalachia and how we choose to stay even when it might be easier to leave.
We are talking about love as an intersectional movement for and by youth that for ten years has been building towards regenerative and inclusive communities in Appalachia; communities where all young people are able to thrive and grow.
We are talking about love as physical space where young Appalachian folx are allowed to exist in community as their whole selves; like how each summer the STAY Project holds the STAY Summer Institute, an autonomous youth space where young folx around the region are able to gather, connect, and share knowledge together.
We are talking about how love is celebrating and honoring our culture and traditions but also how love is a commitment to dismantle the parts of our culture that uphold white-supremacy and the narratives that erase queer, indigenous, black, and brown histories and current realities from Appalachia.

We are talking about how love is recognizing that our struggle in Appalachia is not a microcosm and we are stronger when we are in alignment with movements across the South, like how a delegation of young people from Appalachia have been at all seven Southern Movement Assemblies to connect with folks across the South and be a part of developing a Southern plan of action to build new social economies, practice people’s democracy, and protect and defend our people.

We are talking about love as a vision of an Appalachian economy where prisons do not replace coal mines. We are talking about how love is recognizing our value is greater than the resources, the people, and the stories that have been extracted from us. Love is demanding that we deserve clean water, affordable and reliable internet access, and livelihoods that do not break our bodies or our spirits.
We are talking about love being hard work sometimes, and about how love comes with both joys and heartache. We are talking about how love is building a network of young people in Appalachia who uplift and support each other through both the joys and the heartache.

We are talking about a love as a quilt sewn from patchwork of different experiences, histories, and visions. We are telling this love story together y’all and we can’t do it without your engagement and support. So this Appalachian Love Week we’re asking y’all to show the STAY Project some love by making a donation or even becoming a sustaining giver so we can keep doing the work we’ve been doing for ten years in Appalachia! The work of empowering youth leadership in our region.

For our members, our fellow Appalachian youth, we have an additional ask; we’re asking y’all to use #appalachianlovestory to tell and show us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter how you love Appalachia, tell us how it’s hard to love this place, tell us how you choose to STAY.

Will you make STAY your Valentine this year?

In Love & Solidarity,

The Stay Together Appalachian Youth Project

P.S. We hope you’ll join us for our 10th Anniversary/STAY Summer institute at the Highlander Center in New Market, Tennessee, July 12th- 15th!
I want to make STAY my Valentine!
STAY on Mountain News & World Report!
WMMT’s Rachel Garringer sat down in the studio with founding STAY member, Willa Johnson, current STAY coordinator Lou Murrey, and new STAY member Katelyn Damron- who joined by phone to talk about their annual #appalachianlovestory campaign. Listen to the whole story here.
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Appalachian Love Stories on WMMT

2/13/2018

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 WMMT’s Rachel Garringer sat down in the studio with founding STAY member, Willa Johnson, current STAY coordinator Lou Murrey, and new STAY member Katelyn Damron- who joined by phone to talk about their annual #appalachianlovestory campaign.  Appalachian Love Week is February 12-18, 2018 and STAY asks folks to share their #appalachianlovestory online with this hashtag.
Listen to the story here: www.wmmt.org/mtn-news-reflections/
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Katelyn Damron's Appalachian Love Story

2/12/2018

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I’m finally ready and willing to start sharing photos/poetry/thoughts/reflections on my experiences as a player playing many parts in that great family feud, as it were, of 2017 that, unfortunately, is not yet quite over.

2017 - that whirlwind of a contemptuously impossible year - proved to be my greatest failure, my greatest disappointment, my greatest education, and, somehow too, my greatest hope. Firstly, that jaded, rundown kind of hope which mandates the belief that eventually, things were going to have to be okay. And, later (currently), a sanguine hope, reddened in the face from drunkenness on the precipice of full redemption of those things truly important - a hope that shines in the darkness and which leads wise folks hither; truth is righteous, truth is clarity, and truth is the way of the world (courts).

For catharsis, I took to writing this all down, scrawling the phrases as they popped into my head and piecing them together a little more artfully in the still quiet of many nights robbed of sleep. 
Unfortunately, in this society, our standard of strength is wholly contingent upon the amount of abuse that one can endure. Who would I be without suffering all this BS? Probably someone having far fewer anxiety attacks, but at the very least, it makes for a good story about how good prevails invariably, probably. This is the first manifestation of that.

This particular set of photos signifies the preciousness and the seriousness of place - these are those couple hundred acres of red clay that someone once convinced me was home. These lands are held hostage and eerily quiet in the bonds of injunction, awaiting release. If stolen from me, they are stolen from everyone on this creek, farming families here hundreds of years, and their ancestors’ bones crushed under bulldozers of wealth. It is the latest, most personal iteration of the legacy of absentee land ownership, white collar theft, geographic pillage, and general abuse of the poor by the rich, the irrelevant, the outsider, in this area. But we are still fighting.
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Katelyn Damron, 19, is a 2017-2018 STAY Project steering committee member from Tornado, WV. 

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    Appalachian Love Stories 
    ​

    Appalachian Loves Stories was a storytelling project started at the Stay Summer Institute in 2014 and has expanded into a campaign focused on making space for the stories of young people in Appalachia who may have no other space to tell their story.

    So what does STAY mean when we talk about our Appalachian Love Story? We're talking about "love" as a verb, as an action, as a process we are continuing to change and shift. We are talking about love as a choice, like how we choose to love Appalachia and how we choose to stay even when it might be easier to leave. We are talking about love as an intersectional youth movement that is building towards a regenerative and inclusive Appalachia. We are talking about love being hard work sometimes, and about how love comes with both joys and heartache. We are talking about how love is building a network of young people who uplift and support each other. So we are asking y'all to tell us how do you love Appalachia? Tell us how it is hard to love Appalachia. Tell us how you choose to stay. Tell us your Appalachian Love Story so we can feature it on the blog. #appalachianlovestory  

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