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Hey y’all—Tucker and Emery here, with our thoughts about Hurricane Helene. If you don’t have time to read this email, please refer to the list of rapid response mutual aid orgs listed at the bottom.
Our hearts are heavy bearing witness to the effects of Hurricane Helene this past week. Over 130 people have been killed, 600 are missing, and the destruction is immeasurable. Across the South, full homes have been entirely washed away, and thousands more have experienced irreparable damage. Many who had enough warning to evacuate didn’t have the resources or capacity to leave. Those who did evacuate have little to return to. For those who are still there, they are experiencing police barricades at entries to grocery stores who are allowing food to simply rot. Incarcerated people have been abandoned in prisons and jails. Much of the entire region is without water, power, and cell service, and we are certain the glimpses we are seeing are only a fraction of the devastation that has occurred.
These kinds of climate disasters are hugely devastating for generations to come, especially for frontline communities often hardest hit. In these circumstances, we know that large agencies like FEMA and the Red Cross are slow to arrive and have histories of abandoning systematically oppressed communities. It is local folks, those on the ground, who are the ones providing mutual aid, doing the long-term organizing and coalition-building required to make recovery sustainable—with those most affected making decisions. We know the cities and towns across the South affected by Helene will be transformed forever and face a long and painful recovery. Where we direct our resources will help decide whether exploitative disaster capitalists or fierce community organizers lead recovery efforts.
As RGers, this is an important moment to provide vital funding, and, how we fund matters: we need to invest in community based efforts, immediate relief, and organizations that build long-term power and strengthen movements across the South. Southern organizing has so often provided the blueprints of our best movement strategy, a keeper of the deep tradition of relational organizing and long-term mutual care necessary in the face of climate crisis and resisting other forms of oppression. We're calling on each other to show up in solidarity with southern movements because it’s the right thing to do, and because we can't win without southern leadership.
And we know that climate disasters are a direct product of all the other systemic failures in our society. For instance, housing insecurity is only magnified by climate insecurity—as climate disasters can, and have, destroyed homes in a matter of minutes. Historically corporate lobbying, funded by wealthy people, has prioritized the expansion of fossil fuels over protecting our communities. In times like these, we lean on our movement partners’ wisdom about how to proceed and support. Today, we are learning from Movement For Black Lives member Southerners on New Ground’s (SONG) wisdom:
“We know that nothing about this disaster or what is happening to our people is natural. It is not natural for police officers and militiamen to guard stocked grocery stores in areas without food or water. It is not natural for workers in Erwin, TN to be missing after being forced to continue working as their town flooded. It is not natural to leave people in cages while cities evacuate. It is not natural to plan to pave over forest wetlands to build a Cop City when flooding in Atlanta worsens each year. It is not natural that our region will have to fight tooth and nail for recovery resources while our government spends billions funding genocide. In the face of it all, we must do the most natural thing we can, we must turn towards each other.”
Indeed, as catastrophic as these moments are, they can also be transformative as communities come together to respond, and in our best moments imagine another world as possible. Please consider donating to these organizations, uplifted by our Asheville members and national campaign partners, who are doing incredible work and need our support:
Beloved Asheville ( venmo.com/Beloved-asheville [[link removed]] )
Appalachian Medical Solidarity Street Medics ( venmo.com/appmedsolid [[link removed]] ).
East Kentucky Mutual Aid, PayPal & Venmo: @ekymutualaid [[link removed]] , Cashapp: $ekymutualaid
Poder Emma [[link removed]] - [link removed] [[link removed]]
The Appalachian Helene Response Fund [[link removed]] - [link removed] [[link removed]]
Mutual Aid Disaster Relief - [link removed] [[link removed]]
If you're able to give to one of the above formations now we encourage you to do so. After you've done that, please consider what long-term funding of power-building in the South could look like for you, especially if you live in the north or a major city.
We have the capacity to be building a better world. We know recovery from this hurricane as well as future hurricanes will be a long and arduous journey. Investing in southern organizing now is crucial for making sure we have the social safety nets, community care, green infrastructure, climate resiliency, and durable green social housing to weather these storms.
In solidarity,
Tucker/Nessle Barker, Bulbancha/New Orleans, Southern Regional Organizer
Emery Kiefer, Lumbee Land in so-called Raleigh, NC, Local Power Organizer
We encourage you to consider joining RG as a dues paying member [[link removed]] , and if you would like to get involved in your local chapter, please fill out this intake form [[link removed]] !
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