The Survival of the Community, Not of the Fittest
The pandemic left communities in Eastern Kentucky fighting for survival and waiting on government responses that came too slowly, so Misty Skaggs turned to the ancient principle of mutual aid.
“The reason the South is so repressive is because it is the most radical place in North America,” writes Robin D.G. Kelly, the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA.
I’d take that one step further and say that Central Appalachia, in particular, is home to some of the most badass, radical folks I know. Chief among those people? Misty Skaggs, whose work I first learned of in the context of the floods that ravaged Eastern Kentucky two years ago this month. When I asked my friends in the region whose hands to put money in—who was bridging the gap between the immensity of folks’s need and the slow-as-molasses, mealy-mouthed response of bureaucracy—the answer, again and again, was “Misty.”
Misty set up Eastern Kentucky Mutual Aid two years prior to the flooding, in the spring of 2020, as an attempt to respond to the unmet needs in her community during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Masks, hand sanitizer, groceries, COVID tests, clothing, food. You name the need. E Ky Mutual Aid was working to meet it. The groups’ origins in those early days of COVID meant that they already had infrastructure, in the form of a robust Facebook group and community gatherings, through which people could communicate that they had a need, and organizers could amplify that need and collect funds on their behalf, and then funds would get deposited into folks’ Venmo or Cash App accounts as soon as it came in. No need to go to an office to fill out paperwork and wait for it to be processed. No wait time between expressing a need and having it met. No shaming. No questioning of your integrity. Just express the need, whatever it is, and if it can be met, it will be met.
Misty will be the first to tell you that mutual aid in this country has its origins in Black and indigenous communities’ ethic of care, one that was required to survive the violence and deprivation that White supremacy continually rained down on them. Further afield, the Russian scholar Peter Kropotkin posited that mutual aid, not social Darwinism, was at the root of evolution. Human beings didn’t evolve because of “survival of the fittest,” in this view. They evolved because they recognized their need for mutual interdependence.
When it came to flood response, I sent money to Misty, told my friends and family to do the same, offered free copies of my book, Another Appalachia, to folks who donated to E Ky Mutual Aid, and then watched as she plowed funds back into the community as soon as they hit the organization’s accounts. Misty and her crew helped families pay for hotel rooms, get clean drinking water, get clothing and personal hygiene products, fill prescriptions, and buy food and cleaning supplies. E Ky Mutual Aid moved a hell of a lot faster than FEMA. That’s why folks knew Misty. That’s why I kept hearing her name.
When I look at the work of Eastern Kentucky Mutual Aid, I see a path forward for those of us the systems in this country have been, and continue to be, designed to fail.
As I watched from away, I realized that Misty’s approach was not just critical, but also familiar. Whether it is biology, or human nature, or something about the way that being perpetually on the brink of extinction is this shared experience for Black and Indigenous folks, Appalachian folks, queer folks, and immigrants in this country, I knew this kind of care. I’d lived it.
“See the need and meet it.” That was the core value of the community where I grew up in southern West Virginia, and that was exactly what Misty was doing. What she continues to do every single day.
We live in extremely turbulent times. Electoral politics have clearly failed us. Income inequality leaves too many of us with far too little. It’s become abundantly clear that the systems in our country were and are built to oppress, rather than liberate, the vast majority.
It’s easy to feel hopeless in this context. Because: how the hell are we going to get out of this mess?
When I look at the work of Eastern Kentucky Mutual Aid, I see a path forward for those of us the systems in this country have been, and continue to be, designed to fail. A path on which we honestly acknowledge that no one is coming to save us, and that our survival requires us both to be willing to be honest about our own vulnerability, and honest about how—and why—we can help others. A path where we see one another’s humanity clearly, instead of letting politicians push us towards corners where anyone who is not like us, is not human.
Neema Avashia: The first time I heard folks use the phrase “mutual aid” was during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, and when I heard the concept explained, my reaction was basically, “Oh…so this is just what it meant to be neighbors on Pamela Circle.” I wonder if you could start by talking about the Appalachian lineage of mutual aid, and how you understand your identity in relationship to this work?
Misty Skaggs: Our group started back at the beginning of the pandemic, actually. The original concept was a fundraiser for eastern Kentuckians facing hard times. That’s when I first started to hear the phrase used widely and the concept explored openly, too. And that’s also when I found myself putting my Mommy to work sewing masks, spending hours slinging free hand sanitizer in crowd sourced containers in high school parking lots. Mutual aid felt like an elevated turn of phrase to me for something that was in my blood already. ‘Cause the concept can be so damn hillbilly when you put it into plain language. I read Marx and Kropotkin as an angsty teen feeling trapped in the foothills of Elliott County, but I’ve never much connected with dusty ol’ Russian men. I connected mutual aid with different things, with lived reality as opposed to theory.
What I remember is when we’d buy fried chicken from the gas station in Olive Hill and take it to the little old widow out the road ‘cause it was her favorite and she couldn’t drive after her husband died. That’s mutual aid. I remember Mamaw filling boxes of food that we would’ve eaten and dropping them off at someone else’s house and standing on the porch swearing she just had to clean out the freezer. Mutual aid was making sure you had an open invitation and a shoulder to cry on for all the neighbor kids and neglected cousins you knew wouldn’t get that at home. It was hearing my hippie uncle tell stories about giving his food stamps to the Black Panthers back when he lived out in the Haight and explaining that’s how we all got our free breakfasts, too! ‘Cause people came together to provide. Not just for themselves or even for the people closest to them.
When I launched headfirst into E KY Mutual Aid, I knew it would be important to acknowledge the American roots of the concept. In America, mutual aid is rooted in a history of oppression and Black and Brown people trying to survive in a country that wanted to kill them. It’s the recognition that we’re all we’ve got.
Appalachians understand what it feels like to know help ain’t coming from outsiders. We saw it during the floods. Bad shit’s happening. People will need money. You can’t get a hotel immediately. You can’t buy the supplies you need. We bought so much Monistat 7 and other treatments for yeast infections, antibiotics, and salves to treat wounds. There are a lot of people that lost limbs just walking through all that nastiness. You had a little bit of a bug bite, and the next thing you know, you know, you’re an amputee.
“The reality is, people are hungry and people are without homes in Kentucky. And I’ll be real. It’s mutual abandonment, not affiliated with any one party. Democrat or Republican alike, they ain’t helping.”
Mutual aid is about community, and it’s hard to avoid being a part of your community when you’re an Appalachian, whether you like it or not. Even if you can’t hardly stand your neighbor, you’re not gonna let him run out of firewood come wintertime. I also found connections in labor roots when it comes to Appalachia. Papaw was a Union man, an organizer who lost most of his right hand to the timber industry. “Solidarity” was never a dirty word in our house, but “scab” sure was. Mutual aid is all about solidarity, not charity.
Neema: Having used mutual aid to support eastern Kentuckians through multiple crises, what do you feel like are its limits? What are the things that mutual aid can’t do, that government needs to step up and do.
Misty: I think people get frustrated because we do ask for money a lot. Well, guess what? I can’t buy electric with canned tomatoes. I can’t help a woman get out of a domestic-violence situation, and pay a security deposit, with a promise of work. We love swapping and trading and having those skill shares. But the bottom line is, yeah. We hit a wall. Because there’s just not enough money. We’re all poor, and we’re all just trying to keep each other going.
I was just saying to Olivia [Qualls], my partner in crime when it comes to mutual aid [Olivia works with Misty to manage the Facebook group, distribute funds, and run events], is it just me, or has it been like three months where we’ve just been swamped in housing requests? I could have put probably $7,500 into housing this month, if we’d had it, just on rents, just on keeping people in their houses, and we just never had that kind of money. We have $400-500 a month to play with, usually, and that doesn’t go anywhere. One rent and maybe two families get groceries out of that, and then we’re straight back to the hustle, straight back to trying to get that money coming in. And that sucks. We hate that we have to do that constantly, and that we have to be about the money. But again, what are you gonna do sometimes? Can’t let grandma not have oxygen because the electric company turned her off.
The housing situation in Eastern Kentucky is bullshit. I don’t think anyone has made any real effort. Okay, they’re saying they’re building affordable housing. And I see houses going up. I see the pictures, and I see the smiling grandmas, and I also see them taking on an $80,000 mortgage that they’re not gonna be able to pay. Has there been one low-income-housing apartment building built anywhere near that flooded area? No.
We’ve had two legislative sessions where they pretty purposefully ignored the issue. They’re too busy with absolute bullshit, bigotry. Culture war crap.
The reality is, people are hungry and people are without homes in Kentucky. And I’ll be real. It’s mutual abandonment, not affiliated with any one party. Democrat or Republican alike, they ain’t helping. If I see [Kentucky Governor] Andy Beshear tweet one more time about the rainy-day budget surplus, I’m gonna fucking freak out. I hate to see it. It makes me sick physically in my stomach, because there’s still people who are homeless from the floods. Homeless from the tornadoes over in Mayfield.
And the nonprofit industrial complex doesn’t help either. Nonprofits get the big money. We work with a lot of nonprofits. It’s not that I’m talking shit specifically on Kentucky nonprofits, but I am talking shit on a system that has so much red tape that people can’t get the help that they desperately need.
Neema: Folks where we are from are, rightly, pretty suspicious of things they see as intervention, and it can be hard for them to accept help even when they need it. What do you think has allowed you to build a community of mutual aid so successfully?
Misty: As well they should be! Appalachian people should be highly suspicious. We’ve been flogged and exploited, our lands raped. Our people have been worked into oblivion. Another thing I learned during the floods was coal companies still own half the good land in Letcher County [largely mountainous county in eastern Kentucky, on the Virginia border]. They’ve never even set foot there, you know. So there’s still this faraway outsider that is bothering us. It’s not our paranoia.
I feel like people think they have to leave their community sometimes to do good work. I’m one of those Appalachian weirdos that did stay home. I moved away for maybe two, three years and came straight running back, could not stand it, so homesick I could die. So I have the advantage that I started in a community where I went to high school, and the people that were participating were people I’d known since kindergarten. I started in my own backyard, and so it made people more receptive to me, cause they’re like, here comes crazy ass Misty. But it also helped that crazy ass Misty was coming with free stuff.
There are also just the shame stigmas. And Appalachian people are proud people, too. We can be a stubborn people and say, I can do it. I will figure it out. But sometimes, by the time you get it figured out it’s too late. You’ve already lost your house. You’ve already lost your car. If you need help, it’s okay to ask. Reality is, we have to ask each other sometimes, and it’ll make it easier on all of us if we can spread that responsibility around a little bit, not be afraid of that connection that that brings, and the intimacy that that brings with your neighbors and your community. We can just not be afraid of that and embrace that. It would make it a lot easier on a lot of us. And I think mutual aid has helped to show people that it’s okay if you need $20 for gas, nobody’s gonna say shit to you. And if they do, they’re gonna get kicked out of the group.
“Something I learned ... from my papa was when people would ask him, ‘Why’d you give [that person] money? You know he’s gonna go buy booze with it.’ And he said, ‘When it leaves my hand and goes in his hand, it’s not my money. I gave out the goodness of my heart.’”
We were just given two dollars. Sometimes those two-dollar donations mean more to me than $200, to be perfectly serious, because I know that those people needed that two dollars. That was a little bit that got spared because it was all that could be spared. But if enough people pay two dollars, we can pay an electric bill, and there’s power in that. There’s power in showing people that you don’t have to be rich to be together on something. And to show these people we mean business because we’re together.
Neema: What advice do you have for folks who are thinking about getting involved in mutual aid work?
Misty: My best advice is, just find what is needed and give that. Give that.
Don’t go trying to start a Mutual Aid organization and expect it to work if all you have to offer somebody is brochures and pamphlets and something to sign. It’s not gonna work. I’m not being disparaging to people who are out there canvassing and knocking on doors. That’s awesome, but it’s not mutual aid. It’s bothering somebody when they may have fifteen minutes to make dinner all week with their family. These are working people. Don’t do it unless you have something to offer.
An important basis of mutual aid is no judgment passed, and no questions asked. Something I learned as a child growing up from my papa was when people would ask him, “Why’d you give [that person] money? You know he’s gonna go buy booze with it.” And he said, “It’s not my money anymore. Simple as that. When it leaves my hand and goes in his hand, it’s not my money. I gave out the goodness of my heart, and whatever he does with it, it’s his heart and his conscience to deal with.” That’s just how we practice mutual aid.
People have been incredibly receptive to that. The group exploded even before the flood. People wanted some way to get involved. We had people making baked goods and doing bake sales to raise money. And then we really got off the ground. People just were like, I have clothes. Does anybody need this or that? We’ll all meet in the high school parking lot, and we’ll swap.
My advice is just find the people who are already doing the work. They may not call it mutual aid, but if you can, help them. It’s important to make sure you work with people whose values align with yours, but you also have to make sure that you can be open minded enough to be receptive to help from people whose thoughts and opinions may not be the same as yours.
That said, we don’t allow bigotry of any kind. It’s our number one rule. We established that right off the bat, which, surprisingly, has given us so much less trouble because of the zero-tolerance policy. People questioned whether that was really a good idea. But it’s worked really well. We don’t even hardly get weird, racist, sexist, homophobic shit in our inbox anymore. So that makes me really happy. And I think we’ve made a dent in that area because we made it clear we are not going to accept this behavior. If you want to participate in this group and get free shit, it’s not gonna be okay to come to a mutual aid event wearing a rebel flag T-shirt.
What I tell people most of all is: don’t be afraid to check on people, and ask them if they’re okay. Be a little more thoughtful and take a little more time. And that’s not easy, either, because our world is fucking all-consuming capitalism, and we’re stuck on that hamster wheel. But it really does help. It helps you feel better. And it helps with that community building so much.
Neema: You’ve been at this nonstop since 2020, Misty. I have to wonder: How do you sustain yourself in this work?
“We don’t allow bigotry of any kind. It’s our number one rule. ... If you want to participate in this group and get free shit, it’s not gonna be okay to come to a Mutual Aid event wearing a rebel flag T-shirt.”
Misty: I’m honestly gonna have trouble answering this question because I’m having trouble sustaining myself. That’s the truth.
We revel in the little victories. We kept an elderly couple from getting evicted. So no matter else what else happens, no matter what other posts come in that we can’t help people with, we did one thing. There’s nothing wrong with celebrating that one accomplishment, because it might be the only one you get for a little while.
I suck at boundaries. If I didn’t have my awesome team, I would get so overwhelmed. The Facebook group alone is 7,000 people. We did have to set some boundaries like, don’t message us at 2 a.m. or 7 a.m. and expect an immediate response. We’re only human.
We are also not a nonprofit. We don’t have regular donors. We have a little bit that comes in every month on Patreon, and that’s just out of the goodness of people’s hearts, because I never get a chance to update. We’re doing the best we can.
People will ask us, “Why don’t you guys open a community center? Why don’t you guys do this event and that event?” Oh, well, that would be great, but we’re trying to keep people from starving.
If somebody wants to pay for it, we would fucking run it. It would be a boon. But we’re not going to spend money that could be spent on keeping somebody literally alive and housed. People need medicine. They can’t afford their fucking insulin. Gotta be at least around $120 to $250 some months sent out for co-pays on insulin.
My volunteers don’t get to do shit. They don’t get to go on retreats. They don’t get to go on trips. They don’t get any kind of special benefit for reading every post that goes into that Facebook group. It is enraging sometimes, because there’s money floating around out there. Give it to me, and I’ll give it to somebody that needs it.
It is very frustrating to watch people who are good people, who I could put to work in mutual aid and make a real difference with, who are instead butting their head against the political wall, over and over, praying that somebody’s gonna swoop in and save them when the reality is: the system is not in our favor. It’s a class war. We’re on the bottom.
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About the author
Neema Avashia is the daughter of Indian immigrants and was born and raised in southern West Virginia. She has been an educator and activist in the Boston Public Schools since 2003, and was named a City of Boston Educator of the Year in 2013. Her first book, Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place, was published by West Virginia University Press in March 2022. It has been called “a timely collection that begins to fill the gap in literature focused mainly on the white male experience” by Ms. Magazine, and “a graceful exploration of identity, community, and contradictions,” by Scalawag. The book was named Best LGBTQ Memoir of 2022 by BookRiot, was one of the New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2022, and was a finalist for the New England Book Award, the Weatherford Award, and a Lambda Literary Award. She lives in Boston with her partner, Laura, and her daughter, Kahani.
- Neema Avashiahttps://www.salvationsouth.com/author/neema-avashia/
- Neema Avashiahttps://www.salvationsouth.com/author/neema-avashia/
- Neema Avashiahttps://www.salvationsouth.com/author/neema-avashia/
