COVID-19 and Appalachian Youth

As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, existing inequalities are thrust into public consciousness.  Currently, young people in Appalachia are feeling the effects: missed graduations, trouble accessing the internet, significant layoffs, and lack of COVID testing. Health disparities in Appalachia have existed for decades, and many fear that when rural areas get hit, they will get hit hard. Jesse, a young person living in western North Carolina says, “that’s what terrifies me, is that we’re rural, so we’re going to see our peak after the cities do.” Not everyone, however, is concerned, as we’ve seen people ignoring health guidelines and gathering in public demonstrations to open the economy. Jesse fears the repercussions of opening back up; “People already aren’t listening: they are tired of the stay at home order.”

Jesse and his wife Sierra Asheworth, are both high risk for the virus. Sierra, a public health student, is extremely concerned about the lasting health implications of COVID-19, as research shows it could affect the body in unexpected ways like blood clots and permanently damage organs like the kidneys and lungs. The concern for their health and the health of their loved ones is palpable, even as we chat over zoom, as they discuss their preexisting conditions and family health history.

Sierra has lost her mother and aunt to cancer, and is potentially high risk herself. Jesse’s grandfather worked in a coal mine in West Virginia, and suffered from black lung. Jesse lives with both asthma and Ehler’s Danlos disease, a chronic illness that targets joints. The common national narrative is that COVID-19 only puts older folks at risk for getting sick, but the reality is many young people, especially in Appalachia, have preexisting health conditions that give this virus potential to cause serious damage to the body. Sierra says it all started to feel real to her when her childhood best friend, whom she grew up with, passed away from COVID-19 just a few weeks ago.

Young people across Appalachia are being effected by this, especially graduating high school and college seniors who no longer able to attend a graduation ceremony. Laura Helayne, a high school senior in rural Kentucky, is feeling the unique challenges of trying to stay connected with loved ones over the internet, taking care of older relatives, and missing out on a graduation ceremony. She knows that in her community, especially for people who won’t continue their education past high school, that celebration caried a heavy significance. Laura remarks, “And I’m the only person in my household who has actually graduated from highschool, so to not have that graduation really sucks.” Many high schools and colleges are having modified graduation ceremonies to awknowldege and celebrate the hard work of so many students.

• Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective - A collective of advocates, yoga teachers, artists, therapists, lawyers, religious leaders, teachers, psychologists and activists committed to the emotional/mental health and healing of Black communities. Provides a Black Virtual Therapy Directory and Resource.
• Therapy for Black Girls - Podcast & Website. Dr. Joy Harden Bradford is a licensed psychologist, speaker and the host of the wildly popular mental health podcast, Therapy for Black Girls. Her work focuses on making mental health topics more relevant and accessible for Black women and she delights in using pop culture to illustrate psychological concepts.
• NAMI (National Alliance for Mental Illness)

Young people living in Appalachia are struggling to thrive under the economic and social legacy of extractive industries like coal, gas, logging, tourism, etc. Those jobs broke people’s bodies and/or left and pharmaceutical companies flooded our region with opioids. Our local, state, and federal governments are trying to sell us prisons, small business, tourism, and downtown revitalization as the solution. We’ve got high rent and low wages because opportunities for youth are few, and often look like low-paid positions like Americorp/VISTA that exploit the labor of young people. We know that these are false solutions that rely on able-bodied workforces to work long/seasonal hours with low pay, little to no benefits, and that it will only replicate our current conditions and cause suffering, while lining the pockets of politicians and corporations. 

The economic and environmental issues we face are compounded by acts of homophobia, transphobia, sexism, and racism, from members of our own communities. Trying to survive and just be young under compounding oppressions, while living with the legacy of extraction, takes a toll on our mental and physical health. Not to mention our access to healthcare is disappearing with the closing of rural hospitals and absurd medical costs. Instead of real transformative solutions, we get policing by cops and ICE in our schools, our hills, our hoods, and our hollers.

We know that culture doesn't shift in a day or even an election cycle, and that come November, no matter who is the president, we will still have to fight for justice. We are in this for the long haul. We know that no one industry is going to save us, and that it will in fact take many people using a diversity of tactics in coordination across the region operating under shared principles to realize our vision of safe, sustainable, engaging, and inclusive Appalachian communities.

In 2020, the STAY Project is going to keep creating spaces to connect youth across urban and rural divides in Appalachia to build relationships, skills, political analysis, and a vision for how young people are gonna survive and thrive in our region. Our opportunities are in our relationships and our kin networks that transcend state & county lines. We know how to show up for each other. We are providing strength and refuge in each other–– our resources are our relationships. We know how to invest in those relationships and build each other up as leaders. 

In 2020, the STAY Project is solidifying our commitment to invest in Black youth leadership in our region. At the recommendation of the Black Youth Advisory Committee, we are making Black Appalachian Young & Rising a permanent program of the STAY Project. 

WE STAN THE CULTURAL AND CREATIVE POWER OF YOUNG PEOPLE. STAY members are out here making music, creating art, and celebrating despite the challenges. We are using our cultural and creative powers to inspire and live out a vision of just and sustainable communities in Appalachia. In 2020, the STAY Project is providing platforms for young people to share their talent with our first ever Appalachian Love Fest.

We know that young people have already been out here in these hills doing the work. STAY members are creating revolutionary gathering space, leading electoral campaigns, expanding reproductive healthcare access, redefining sex education, pushing other work to be better, supporting labor struggles, organizing and getting resources to our people, etc. And y'all are doing this with the absolute bare minimum. In 2020, the STAY Project is going to keep connecting y'all with opportunities to grow as leaders and resources through our gatherings, and through our member support fund.

We know that we do not have all the answers and that we are not the first to do this work. In 2020, the STAY Project is asking our community, our members, our alumni, and our elders to hold us accountable and give us guidance and support. We are in this for the long haul.

We love y'all so much. 

STAY tuned.  

solidarity & kinship,

The STAY Project staff & steering committee

Why would you ever go back?” “Why don’t you move to Los Angeles, or come out to Denver?” “Have you at least considered Birmingham?”

Whenever I told someone, be it a stranger or someone much closer to me, that after graduating from college I was planning to move back to my hometown of Gadsden, Alabama, these are the questions I faced. Even people who saw me spend my entire undergraduate career studying inequality in the rural South, even folks who had read my senior thesis – a model for community organizing in my hometown – could not understand why I would actually go back to put that knowledge to practice.

And over the last six months of living back home, I can’t say that I don’t ever question that decision, too. Exactly zero of my 1600 peers from Harvard’s Class of 2018 moved to Alabama after graduating. Most of my friends from high school either left to find work elsewhere or are locked up in multiple low-wage jobs.

Every time a college buddy tells me about the latest function on a New York City rooftop, with every new vegan café I try in my siblings’ respective cities and every queer couple on my Instagram feed looking proud and protected in their urban bubble, I wonder if I should have abandoned my dreams of making my home a better place and moved to a place that was better made for me.

Yet like any piece of clothing worth a damn, there are pockets of people across Alabama and Appalachia that remind me where I fit.

Last month I got to attend the Stay Together Appalachian Youth (STAY) Summer Institute, a gathering of young leaders, creators, and organizers across Appalachia dedicated to supporting one another in building inclusive and sustainable communities where we can and want to stay.

In between midnight swims in a starry lake, Appalachian love ballads, and meals of stuffed homegrown poblanos and fresh mint soda, we wrote ourselves into a people’s history of the region. We gathered as queer people, trans people, and people of color. We shared our stories and songs and skills and learned to love this land that doesn’t always love us back. We found common ground not just in the space we shared, but in the challenges we experienced and in the liberation we envisioned.

I cried the whole way home. I was a kid again: leaving summer camp, unsure of the fate of my newfound faraway friendships. I cried for the childhood camping trips and bluegrass festivals that took me from the north Alabama foothills through those curvy roads and rocky rivers of Central Appalachia.

Every time I rounded a bend and saw the setting sun’s rays spread out across those mountains, I cried for how they – and their people – have been so repeatedly dishonored. I cried over the harshest reality of growing older–realizing how the purest joys of my childhood have been tainted by corporate control, political partisanship, and liberal elitism.

At STAY I didn’t have to prove to anyone – not even myself – why I chose to come home. I found solidarity, strength, and understanding in the people who know that living here isn’t a sacrifice, but a source of power.

And even though we’re now separated by hills and hollers and highways, I am starting to see that power all around me. It bubbles up in the spring that fuels my favorite swimming hole. It’s drawn from the roots of my great-great grandfather’s fig tree. It’s flowing through the pipes of my $400/month two-bedroom. I hear it interwoven in the Southern drawls and Spanish dialects at the Trade Day flea market, in the banjo and guitar licks of Bluegrass Thursdays in my dad’s basement, in the silent acknowledgment at Walmart between another queer and myself (the “gay gaze,” I like to say).

Above all, I see that power in the leaders and members of Hometown Action and other groups in the People’s Action network. Much like the folks at STAY, we are determined to make small towns and rural communities happier, healthier, and more inclusive places to live.

I thank the heavens every day that I get to serve as Hometown Action’s Appalachian Region Lead Organizer, and I’m ready to fight like hell with anyone who wants to make this place somewhere we can and want to stay.