Building Community Wealth and Collective Well-Being with Atlas Charles

Episode 45 Description

There is something truly unique and complex about coal mining communities in Appalachia, and Atlas Charles has experienced this firsthand. Growing up queer, nonbinary, and autistic in the Cumberland mountains of Southwest Virginia and southwestern West Virginia, Atlas understands the coexistence of hardship and beauty.

Today, Atlas uses their systems leadership skills to lead the complex work of co-creating thriving communities that balance economy and collective well-being. Their work centers equity, anti-oppression, and regeneration, while believing in and harnessing the existent wisdom a community already has.

Creating new Appalachian economies means honoring other people’s experiences, showing up hand in hand, and building together a web of local anti-oppressive economies. This is the work Atlas does.

Their heart for the oppressed and for creating safe space for all people to be seen, heard, and thrive is palpable. This is our first Yes! We Rise Episode of 2023. Welcome!

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Episode 45 Show Notes

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Key takeaways

• The Appalachian Mountains in Southwest Virginia and southwestern West Virginia are complex regions. Historically, the same jobs that provided families with food have also often been poisoning the water and harming the community.
• When a place feels welcoming, safe, and offers meaningful and lucrative work, why wouldn’t you stay? Unfortunately many folks feel unsafe or unseen, despite their desire to stay in the same place.
• Relationships allow us to truly see a person. These often deep connections go beyond -isms and the mental constructs learned through culture and environment. Through relationships we can drop into our heart, and out of our head.
• Atlas has taken their personal longing for a better childhood and harnessed it into community based work. They aim to help kids live joyfully, fully and authentically as themselves, specifically in the complex Appalachian regions.
• The wisdom is already there! Atlas’ focus is on three main areas, equity, anti-oppression, and regeneration. Through participatory facilitation work, they help unlock the already present wisdom in a community so it can be turned into action.
• This year, Atlas is launching their Participatory Facilitation Trainings which will provide folks with the knowledge and skills needed to be a community steward, unlocking existing wisdom and helping that community transform it into participatory work.

Notable quotes

“I’ve traveled to other rural regions; I’ve traveled abroad. I’ve lived here in Northeast Tennessee for some time. I honestly think it took some of that travel to see the complexity and not just the oppression, because you feel the oppression so deeply in those spaces. Leaving allowed me to locate myself socially in those systems which then, I think, enabled me to do the work that I’m doing now.” 

“My heart grieves a lot of times to be where I grew up, to be with my family, to be with the people that I knew earliest, to be with the nonhuman community that I grew up with, I mean, it’s so beautiful in the Cumberland Mountains.” 

“The systems of oppression make it almost impossible for a lot of young people to stay in rural areas, particularly in Appalachia, especially when you get some intersecting marginalized identities, it makes it even more difficult.” 

“Relationships can overcome whatever indoctrination might have taught them that queerness was bad. I show up, as the same person I’ve been my entire life. I’ve not changed anything. I was queer then, and I’m queer now and somehow… that clicks for folks.” 

“Because of my experiences in Appalachia, because of the beauty and the struggles, I learned how to live mostly as unapologetically and joyfully as I can, as me. And that is Appalachian to the core, queer as hell, and committed to futures where kids like me can thrive in towns like I lived in.” 

“The path to change is long, and you have to walk. Bureaucracy and the oppressive systems and the exploitation and the degeneration, the systems and the mindsets run deep in our society, and common folks have what we need to solve those problems and create futures where we want to live. The work is about drawing up that wisdom.”

LINKS/RESOURCES MENTIONED

Be sure to check out more information on Atlas Charles along with the work they do at Rural Support Partners and with Economic Development Greater East. Additionally they were the Board President of Partners for Stronger Communities through 2022.

Read some books that were influential to Atlas’ work including: We Make The Road By Walking By Myles Horton and Paulo Freire and The Pedagogy Of The Oppressed by Paulo Freire.

Some other highly recommended books from Atlas include: Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by Adrienne Maree Brown, and Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey.

The Yes! We Rise podcast features solutions-seekers, change-makers, and those creating a resilient future. We share stories and strategies to inspire action to build resilience and community transformation. To create change, people need to feel like they belong and that they are part of a growing movement. They need to know their voice matters and that they have the inspiration, agency and ability to transform their lives and their communities. They are the key to a resilient future.

From the Navajo Nation to the mountains of Appalachia, incredible work is being done by community members and leaders. Change is often sparked by inspiration: seeing what others have done, especially in similar situations and places. People see that when someone looks like them or lives in a place like theirs, and has created real, true and lasting change, change that will allow their granddaughters and grandsons to thrive — they begin to imagine what might be possible for them. No longer waiting for someone else to come and save them, they realize they are the ones they have been waiting for. But what creates that spark? What creates that inspiration? Learning through stories and examples, feeling a sense of agency and belonging, and getting fired up to kick ass creates that spark.

We Rise helps community leaders and members learn to forge a new path toward creating resilience and true transformation. One person at a time, one community at a time, one region at a time, the quilt of transformation can grow piece by piece until resilience becomes the norm instead of the exception. Together, we rise.