Dear Friends,
In the mountains of Appalachia, where our rivers have carved deep valleys and old-growth forests carry generations of wisdom, we stand at a critical crossroads. Our beloved home faces unprecedented challenges, and we need your support now more than ever.
A4A member Joanne Golden Hill at the Upper Big Branch Mine Explosion Memorial
The Crisis We Face
For too long, our region has suffered from extractive industries that take our resources but leave behind pollution, illness, and poverty. Our communities experience higher rates of cancer, birth defects, and respiratory diseases. Our youth are forced to leave despite yearning to build futures here. Energy corporations drain our resources without remorse, while absentee landowners make decisions about our future from distant boardrooms.
The threats continue to multiply:
- Unreclaimed “zombie mines” leach toxic chemicals into our water
- Prison profiteers target our healing lands for new facilities
- Environmental protections are systematically weakened
- Working families struggle despite our region’s natural abundance
Hope Rising Across the Mountains
Yet across Appalachia, hope rises. Rural communities are winning grassroots victories against landfills, nuclear facilities, and fracking projects. In Eastern Kentucky, Indigenous women are restoring formerly strip-mined land using Indigenous practices—though these efforts are now threatened by the Bureau of Prisons’ plans for a new facility in Letcher County.
Your Opportunity to Make a Difference
This Spring, the Alliance for Appalachia will bring 50 grassroots activists to Washington D.C. We’ll meet with lawmakers and regulatory agencies to advocate for:
- The Environmental Justice for All Act – Strengthening legal protections for communities facing disproportionate environmental burdens
- The Appalachian Communities Health Equity Act – Funding critical health studies on the connections between extraction activities and illness
- Rescinding funding for the Letcher Prison Project – Stop the construction of the proposed USP Letcher; protect healing lands and communities from further extraction
- Coal Mine Bonding Reform – Ensuring companies—not taxpayers—pay for environmental cleanup
A4A members planning our meetings with reps
We Need Your Support
This advocacy trip requires resources. Travel, accommodations, and organizing materials for 50 grassroots activists add up quickly. Will you contribute an amount that feels meaningful to you to make this trip happen?
Your Contribution Makes a Real Impact
Every dollar you give directly supports Appalachian voices in Washington:
- $25 covers the cost of a t-shirt for participating activists
- $75 provides one day of meals for an activist
- $100 covers transportation costs for one person from their rural community to our meeting point
- $250 funds one night of accommodation for two activists
- $500 sponsors one grassroots leader’s complete participation in the trip
- $1,000 enables the creation of advocacy materials for meetings with 10 Congressional offices
- $2,500 supports a pre-trip training session for all participants
Your donation will amplify the voices of those most affected by environmental injustice and help us demonstrate the unshakeable spirit of Appalachian people to our nation’s leaders. Follow the progress of this campaign on Facebook and Instagram.
Join Our Movement
Together, we can show the nation that Appalachia’s strength flows from our unity, our resilience, and our unwavering love for these mountains. We refuse to be divided. We refuse to be exploited. We choose to stand together: as firm as mountain bases, as constant as our rivers.
Because this is our land. Our home. Our future.
In solidarity and hope,
Taysha DeVaughan and Lyndsay Tarus
Co-Coordinators, The Alliance for Appalachia
A4A members at last year’s advocacy trip
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