Over the past two weeks, people around the country have watched in horror as our neighbors and fellow workers have been battered by the successive disasters of Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton. “After making landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on Sept. 26 and tearing through the Gulf Coast of Florida,” Adeel Hassan and Isabelle Taft write in The New York Times, “Helene plowed north through Georgia and walloped the Blue Ridge Mountains, washing out roads, causing landslides and knocking out power and cell service for millions of people. Across western North Carolina, towns were destroyed, water and fuel supplies were disrupted, and residents were in a communications black hole, scrambling for Wi-Fi to try to reach friends and family… As of Oct. 6, there were more than 230 confirmed deaths from the storm.” The hurricanes have passed, but the devastation and dire need they left in their wake remain. In this urgent mini-cast, we speak with two guests who are on the ground in Asheville, NC, providing relief and mutual aid to their community: Byon Ballard, a cofounder of the Mother Grove Goddess Temple in Asheville, where she serves as Senior Priestess, and Lori Freshwater, a journalist and relief aid volunteer who is originally from North Carolina. Additional links/info below: Mother Grove Goddess Temple website, Facebook page, and Instagram Mother Grove Goddess Temple volunteer and donation information page Beloved Asheville website, Facebook page, and Instagram Adeel Hassan & Isabelle Taft, The New York Times, “What we know about Hurricane Helene’s destruction so far” Dharna Noor, The Guardian, “Double punch of hurricanes could become common due to climate crisis” Oliver Milman, The Guardian, “‘It’s mindblowing’: US meteorologists face death threats as hurricane conspiracies surge” Oliver Milman & Jonathan Watts, The Guardian, “Global heating makes hurricanes like Helene twice as likely, data shows” Lauren Aratani, The Guardian, “Insurance is failing hurricane survivors: ‘People thought they were covered’” Permanent links below: Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show! Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page Featured Music:Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song Studio Production: Max AlvarezPost-Production: Jules Taylor Transcript The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible. Lori Freshwater: Hey Max, I am Lori Freshwater and I am originally from North Carolina, although I’m on the coast, but when I heard that my beloved mountains were in trouble, I had to come here and see if there was anything I could do to help and I found the Mother Grove goddess where I am today. I’m a journalist, kind of a nomadic journalist, and so I’m going to be here for the foreseeable future trying to get the news out about what the needs are here in Western North Carolina. Byron Ballard: I’m Byron Ballard. I am one of the founders, one of the co-founders, and I serve as senior priestess for the Mother Grove Goddess Temple here in Asheville. We are a church that honors and celebrates the divine feminine in whatever spiritual tradition you’re in, and we’ve been around for about 18 years doing public rituals, teaching classes, and this is our first and we are hoping, hoping it is going to be our last major push on relief efforts. Please. Oh, please. Maximillian Alvarez: Alright, welcome everyone to another episode of Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Brought to you in partnership within these Times magazine and the Real News Network produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like You Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast network. If you’re hungry for more worker and labor focus shows like ours, follow the link in the show notes and go check out the other great shows in our network and please support the work we’re doing here at Working People because we can’t keep going without you. And please support the work that we do at The Real News Network by going to the real news.com/donate, especially if you want to see more reporting from the front lines of struggle around the US and across the world. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and we’ve got an urgent episode for y’all today. If you have been watching the news or just going outside in the record breaking October heat, then you like me, have surely been feeling ever more anxious and uneasy about the intensifying effects of climate change. If you live in the American Southeast, however, chances are you are feeling the disastrous effects of what must be understood as a full-blown climate emergency. Over the past two weeks, those of us around the country have watched in horror as our neighbors and fellow workers have been battered by the successive terrors of Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton. As a deal, Hassan and Isabelle Taft write in the New York Times after making landfall as a category for hurricane on September 26th and through the Gulf coast of Florida, Helene plowed north through Georgia and walloped the Blue Ridge Mountains washing out roads causing landslides and knocking out power and cell service for millions of people. Across Western North Carolina. Towns were destroyed. Water and fuel supplies were disrupted and residents were in a communications black hole scrambling for wifi to try to reach friends and family officials raced to rescue survivors, locate victims, and restore flood damaged water systems. The chaos in the state was part of a path of destruction that Helene carved through the region, including portions of Tennessee, South Carolina and Virginia. As of October 6th, there were more than 230 confirmed deaths from the storm. Helene is the deadliest tropical cyclone to strike the mainland United States since 2005 when Hurricane Katrina caused nearly 1400 deaths on the Gulf Coast. According to statistics from the National Hurricane Center, pounding rain flash, floods and dangerous landslides savage, the area around Asheville and Western North Carolina putting the region in crisis. It’s like a mini apocalypse said Gretchen Hogan, a resident of Brevard, North Carolina. Now the hurricanes may have passed, but the devastation and dire need they left in their wake remain. The stories coming out of communities ravaged by Helene and Milton are ghastly, devastating and heartbreaking. And the reality that humanity has been barreling down a decades long path to the extremely predictable climate emergency we’re now in is in infuriating, terrifying and overwhelming, but out of darkness. There has been light out of crisis, an outpouring of love, solidarity, and sacrifice, and today we are talking with two incredible human beings on the ground around Asheville, where communities have been directly impacted and where folks have been working overtime to provide relief and mutual aid to their community. Lori Byron, thank you so much for joining us today amidst all this chaos. We really, really appreciate it and I promise I won’t keep you too long. I was wondering if we could just start by turning things over to you and asking if you could talk us through what you have been seeing, feeling, experiencing, hearing from your community there in Asheville since Hurricane Helene hit and especially in the weeks since. Byron Ballard: I’ve got to be honest with you, many of the people that I talk to and deal with every day aren’t feeling anything. We can’t. We can’t because there’s too much work to do to stop and process. So we’ll do that later. I’m dreaming of a trip to the beach in the winter where nobody’s there and I don’t have to answer anybody else’s questions. We are in a place that we’re in the middle of a natural disaster. We’re at the beginning of a natural disaster. There are places that look perfect and untouched only to discover that there’s four feet of toxic mud inside them. My family has lived on the French Broad River since they came from an adjoining county at the end of the 19th century, and I lived there still, but high up so that I could watch the river rise in 1916. This river rose to 22.4, I think feet above its banks and it was over 27 feet for this flood. So it is the worst flood that anyone here has ever historically experienced. What we are looking at is need on every possible level. So people need water because the water system is destroyed. There are towns that are gone. There’s a little sweet little touristy town called chimney rock, and it is much of it is simply gone. It’s not that the trees are down and there’s some mud, it’s that the buildings are gone. There is a beautiful valley called Swano, which we understand is a native ward and I don’t know if it’s creek or Cherokee, but that means beautiful valley and it is a long valley between heading east out of Asheville, heading towards downstate and the Swanno River, which is a tiny little drought, water river most of the time floods a lot and it flood flooded. It flooded in a horrific and substantial way so that the Swanno Valley is now the Swanno Valley of the shadow of death. And for over a week it was almost impossible to get in and people would get in with a four wheel drive or an A TV or however they could do it and do the basics, pull people off the roofs of their houses, get the people into shelter and safety. It was extreme wartime triage, and I’ve heard that again and again from people who say, I was in Korea, I was in Iraq, and this is wartime damage. We are fortunate in that no one is bombing us actively. But yeah, that’s what we’re looking at. And at this point, two weeks in much of the triage is accomplished. People have water people, the hierarchy of needs are met with exception of shelter. And that’s what everyone is working on now, cleaning up, rebuilding, building where they can, but the infrastructure is gone. The water system can’t be rebuilt in places because there are no roads left in those places. So first a road has to be built and then the water system can be addressed. And I want to address one thing right now, right up front there’s a lot, lot of misinformation. And here in the mountains we would just call it damn lion about what is and is not here. FEMA is here, the Army Corps of Engineers is here. We have had utility workers from as far away as Canada to reestablish power here. The government that everybody hates is here and they are functioning, but the terrain is impossibly difficult. So there are still without any doubt, families and individuals in the far western part of this state and in the higher elevations in these counties around here and in Buncombe County that have not been reached yet because it’s the terrain. These are among the oldest mountains in the world and people look at ’em and go, well, they’re not the Rockies. They shouldn’t be too bad. Well, they’re bad, they’re bad. And because decisions were made on a higher level than any of us, we’ve had ridge top development and steep slope development that never should have happened because in addition to the flooding, we have landslides, we have rock falls. They tell us in order to drive the federal highway I 40 west to get from North Carolina to Tennessee, we will not be able to do that until November of 2025. So that’s the level of destruction. I’m going to say one more thing and I’m going to turn it over. Last night we had been expecting a load of supplies from the Charlotte area and the fellow got here and with his father-in-law, and we started unpacking all that we needed unpack. And he turned me and just grabbed me in a big bear hug and looked in my face and he said, I don’t know if I should say this to you, but I was in Katrina and this is worse than Katrina. And he had tears in his eyes. So we know. But to get back to your first question, what are we feeling? We can’t feel that yet. Not yet, because we’re still delivering water, we’re still collecting diapers and bleach wipes and every afternoon we drink elderberry, tincture and hope we’re not going to get sick. Yeah, I mean that’s our reality right here on the ground. Lori Freshwater: Thank you, Byron. I would really also like to kind of clear up from people on the ground some of these absolutely insane conspiracies. I complained about FEMA being slow, getting in here with water openly. So I’m not someone who is afraid to criticize the government, but they are here and you see them with vest everywhere and they’re going around to people that are in the parks and that just clearly don’t have any place to go. The Army Corps of Engineers is here. I was listening to the Buncombe County press conference this morning and just heard this statistic that was just mind blowing from the Army Corps of Engineer Engineers. He said that there are an estimated, there’s an estimated 10 million tons of debris out here, 10 million tons of debris that has to be taken care of. So that alone is enough to just cripple the entire area if we aren’t really all working together. And that’s what people have been doing. They’ve been working together in a way that I’ve never seen through any other community. People have been communicating with people in far areas. They’ve been looking online in different Facebook groups to see, oh, there’s somebody that needs a meal for their autistic child. We can bring it up. People are rising above what I would have ever even expected or dreamed. And I would just ask the rest of America to kind of the best thing you could do for the people of Western North Carolina is to follow their example. Stop looking at hate and conspiracies and things that push people down and look at what is going on here now and get your As to work. Sorry, that was a little interruption from Byron. They’re welcome to come here and work as well. We have plenty of work to do. But would just say what I’ve seen here has been really, really special and incredible. And I think that what I want to do going forward is to tell other communities whether you are a coastal community or wildfire or just a community that hasn’t been touched yet, start working together now with your community because that’s what’s going to save you. Luckily the people here, were able to get things together quickly and are still trying to do so, but when you have to go to a cashless society overnight, it’s like no technology. So there’s no way to buy gas. There’s no way to buy food. You run out of cash pretty quickly. You want to be prepared. And so that’s a big lesson that I would say Max, that people really need to take from this is get going now. Get to know your neighbors, get out there and talk to people in your community and say, who’s got these skills? Who has a chainsaw? Who’s a good organizer on doing meal drops? That kind of thing. And that’s what people should be doing instead of talking about conspiracy theories, how you get through disasters, that’s how we become better Americans and that’s how we become better humans. So that’s my little preach for the day Max. Maximillian Alvarez: No, I can’t thank you both enough for laying that out and preaching the good word that needs to be heard right now. I want us to end here in a second by talking about those relief and mutual aid efforts and the light that has come out of this darkness. The great Mr. Rogers famously said, in a moment of disaster or crisis like this, we always need to look for the helpers. We need to know that there are people there helping and you all are out there helping. And I want folks listening to this to look for the helpers and to be the helpers. And I want to emphasize that the people out there spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories and all that crap are not helping shit. So I want us to end on that in a second. And pardon my French, it’s heartbreaking hearing what you guys are laying out for us. And I just wanted to, by way of getting us to the final question here, I want hover on something that you guys said about how other communities need to be preparing themselves for eventualities like this. Because when the catastrophe comes, you’re going to need your neighbors more than you ever thought you would. But this really speaks to the heart of an investigation that we’ve been doing on this podcast for years now. We’ve been interviewing working class people, living, working and fighting in different, so-called sacrifice zones around the country, places like East Palestinian, Ohio where working class residents have had their lives upended by the derailment unavoidable derailment of a Norfolk southern bomb train two years ago almost, right? And to communities here in South Baltimore who are being poisoned by another railroad, a medical trash incinerator, all that kind of work that we’ve done to talk to folks, living in areas like that has taught us something that I’ve said on this show many times is that we are all more or less being set up for sacrifice. And in these communities you can see the future that’s in store for most of us. And if you don’t believe that, just look at the last two weeks. Listen to what Byron said about the toxic sort of sludge that you can’t control where that stuff goes when a hurricane hits your area. What about the mountaintop removal that’s increasing the likelihood for deadly landslides? I mean, what about the insurance companies that are telling people after a natural disaster that they are shit out of luck? I mean, this is what we mean when we say we all need to care about this and we all need to be fighting together against this because we’re all being set up for sacrifice. And that is unacceptable on every single level. And so I can’t stress that enough for people out there listening, please don’t comfort yourself with the notion that you’re going to be fine even if others aren’t. And just hoping and praying that you live in a safe zone. We need to be proactive about this. And I just can’t emphasize that enough. And I know I can’t keep you both for much longer because you have the vital work to do of repairing your community and meeting your community members’ needs. And once again, we can’t thank you enough for doing that work. I want to just ask if you could tell our listeners a bit more about the kind of relief work that you’ve been doing, the kind of needs in the community that you referenced earlier that are ongoing, the different orgs, volunteer groups that are doing the work of helping and what folks out there listening right now can do to support those efforts and support our fellow workers in these regions battered by the hurricanes. Lori Freshwater: Right. Thank you for all that and thank you for just, it’s so nice to talk to someone so informed from a distance about what’s going on, not just here, but like you said, so many places. I was at a place called Beloved Asheville yesterday, which is they’ve kind of risen to the top of the organization chart. It’s amazing to watch. I was there a couple of days after the storm and I watched them ramp up and now I think it’s acres out there and they’re on social media, so please go find them on social media. They’re posting a lot of videos and reels and that kind of thing, and it really does show you how massive their relief efforts have become. And they have everything from gas cans, camping supplies, things we still need. By the way, it’s getting cold here. So we need blankets, we need clothes for people, gloves, those kinds of things. We need medical first aid supplies. Like Byron said, I think we’re okay on water. We need to keep distributing what’s here and make sure that people aren’t getting left out, but we are pivoting now to a different kind of needs. When I was at Beloved Asheville, I spoke to the co co person facilitator, I’m not sure if his title, I apologize. And he was saying that what we need is land and we need housing, and that’s what we need to start thinking of now. Instead of saying, well, this isn’t the time to think of that, it is the time to think of that. There was a homeless population here before and now that population, we don’t know. We have no idea how many people are homeless in Western North Carolina right now. So his point is so valid. We need to be thinking about getting land and building housing for people and people who are owning investment homes here. They need to do the moral thing since our laws won’t force them to do it, and they need to stop sitting on empty houses in these places where people are homeless. So that’s the focus going forward. How can we not just get to where we were, but how can we come out better? So that’s what I would say. And I think I would just ask Byron if she has a couple of things to say that people are sending here that we might have enough of or things that we need. Let me see what she has to say because kind of really got her eye on everything coming and going. Right now, Byron Ballard: I course want to talk about Barnardsville. So we heard early on that Barnardsville was a disaster, and it is the big Ivy River, which is kind of a misnomer. It’s never been a real big river, but the devastating flood on that river in this little valley, again, in this beautiful little valley, we just heard how terrible it was. So we loaded it up, a four wheel drive with water, food, diapers, all of that. We headed out there and the road was good, and that is a huge blessing. The road was good, but on a quarter mile, either side of the road, it looked apocalyptic. Lori Freshwater: It really max. It does. I have to just say it really does look like what people think of as the zombie apocalypse. Byron Ballard: It looks like the suburbs of Beirut, just fewer buildings. But then we got to the place we were headed and they said it’s right across from the post office. We got there, and it’s an old firehouse and the group of people who have organized that, a group of, I’m going to call them anarchists, that is a word close and dear to my heart, but they’re primitive skills experts and they do workshops in the area all the time. They had that thing set up so elegantly. So the first bay was missing persons. Second bay was first aid. After that, there was a section of clothing and a section of food and outside under 10 by 10 popups or thousands of cases of bottled water. And you pulled in differently if you were delivering versus picking up. The point is they had within hours of the disaster, they had organized that because they knew how to organize. So we at Mother Grove, goddess Temple are doing nothing, anybody. We’re not doing anything special. Everybody can do this, but you need to think about it now when you’re not in the grips of a crisis, it is possible to organize so that you get people what they need. But you need to think about it now because it is absolutely true that the first responders of any disaster are the people who are also the most effective victims, the disaster. And we need to be ready for that because this is a warning shot the same way that Katrina was a warning shot, and we’re not going to get many more warning shots before the big huge cataclysm happens. We just simply aren’t. So I would say, and I’ve said this again and again, do the work. Do the damn work. Look at what your community needs and do it and do it and do it. And yes, it is exhausting. I mean, I look at your face and I know you look at my face, look at us, look at hanging out over your phone and we look tired because we aren’t tired, but we’re doing good work. So if people want to come to Mother Grave, goddess Temple, we are here. We will give you a cup of tea or a cup of coffee and a cookie and maybe some food, and then we may say, how much gas you got in your car? Can I give you money for gas? This stuff needs to go and I want to emphasize this. We are not special. Anybody can do this, but you just have to have the guts to do it, and you’ve got to get off your lazy ass and do something. Okay, I guess I’ll finish with that.