Oral History with Andrew Snavely (2020)

Nico, Interviewer:

Today's date is December 28th, 2020. My name is Nico Wright. I am talking with Andrew Snavely. And your pronouns or anything for later?

Andrew Snavely.:

Any, all. Lean a little on the they, them spectrum.

Nico, Interviewer:

Okay. Got you. If you're comfortable, what year were you born in?

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah, 1991.

Nico, Interviewer:

Great. If also you're comfortable, what city, state were you born in?

Andrew Snavely.:

Pennsylvania.

Nico, Interviewer:

Pennsylvania. How long have you been living in Asheville or Western North Carolina for?

Andrew Snavely.:

My family moved to Spruce Pine when I was a baby. So, 29 years.

Nico, Interviewer:

Okay, got you. Awesome, thank you. All right. Just to start off, how would you 00:01:00like to describe yourself as a person?

Andrew Snavely.:

Oh gosh, I'm a pretty relational person. I really enjoy having ... I definitely don't lean towards small turf. I definitely enjoy jumping in on these kinds of conversations even though I jump again to the more strangers or in any kind of recorded way it makes me super nervous. I definitely enjoy working more behind the scenes but really respect and value the way in which the stuff getting recorded just requires people putting their voices out there. So, I'm really excited to engage this project in that way.

Nico, Interviewer:

Yeah, great. Thank you. So, you said that you moved here as a, to Spruce Pine as a baby. What has kept you in the western North Carolina region for your whole life, I guess?

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah. It hasn't been my whole, whole life. There was a window when I went to college where I actually went to school at Evergreen out in the Northwest for three years. So, that was sort of a back for the summer situation.

Andrew Snavely.:

I think a big part of it is the land. Just growing up and feeling a connection with the mountains here and also just kind of quickly building an understanding of if you grow up in a community and you can still see yourself wanting to stay there, while it's true that you can build a sense of community and build a life 00:03:00anywhere, but that possibility is always open. That just because of the importance of time and investment and the fact that you go through these stages of development in your life when you're really young, that never get repeated in that way anywhere else, there's just a sense of preciousness around the fact that for the good and for the complicated that there is certain qualities and connections of relationship, that certain ties that I have in this area specifically that never would be built anywhere else.

Nico, Interviewer:

Right.

Andrew Snavely.:

So, that's something that feels really special to me.

Nico, Interviewer:

Yeah, for sure. Let's see. If you're comfortable talking about this, can you 00:04:00tell me a bit about your coming out journey as an LGBTQ person?

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah. Up through my teenage years I definitely say growing up in a rural western North Carolina area I wasn't really seeing any representation of LGBTQ stuff. It just really wasn't a term that existed in this other sense.

Andrew Snavely.:

As I got to be older into my teenage years, you start to learn the charge of that, just like in all the casual. I feel like that's so gay became a big phrase when I was moving through school. I feel like that's maybe when that trend started.

Andrew Snavely.:

Just being aware of that underlining negative implication. But for me also, when I was a teenager I got really caught up in the church and I have an ex evangelical background. I was actually for a spell of a couple of years really deep in that culture of being directly really homophobic environments.

Andrew Snavely.:

I'd be in the same room with people who are on the Jesus Camp Documentary which is all about youth indoctrination and brain washing and stuff.

Andrew Snavely.:

There were up through most of my high school all of that purity culture and all 00:06:00of that kind of the running list of the pro life, homophobic. Everything was sort of my tight lifecycle.

Andrew Snavely.:

But I was also an artist so I spent time in arts communities. Spruce Pine is where Penland School of Crafts is. Just through academia and arts community. Folks were accepting of how super, super Christian I was being and showing up at that time.

Andrew Snavely.:

There was sort of an up space in a lot of those environments for me to show up with a lot of that symbolism and language but also for me to encounter and share 00:07:00time with lots of folks who are different.

Andrew Snavely.:

I definitely say one of the big shifts or opportunities for me was whenever I did end up choosing to go to college in the Northwest, just getting that spell of complete kind of remove and getting that opportunity to kind of recreate myself and be in an environment that was very queer, LGBTQ positive.

Andrew Snavely.:

In my first class I made a friend with someone who was also kind of in this moment of exploring kind of ... I made a close friend that I still have who was clarifying their identity.

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah, I feel like I was just fortunate to right around that time make a close 00:08:00connection with a friend with someone else in the queer community and just kind of get that peer, that sense of peer support and discovery.

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah. I feel like I just had some time, like a couple of years to sort of unfurl that at my own pace and then in choosing to move back to North Carolina, a couple more years or unfurling. Kind of gradually deciding where I wanted or needed to come out to different folks and having a mixed bag of experiences like some really positive and some really not and just coming to a place and going through all of the slog of that.

Andrew Snavely.:

Having a really clear sense of no environment or place, short of kind of 00:09:00immediate safety need. Being unwilling to go back in the closet about core parts of myself unless it's completely necessary.

Nico, Interviewer:

Awesome, thank you. I guess sort of related to that is what kind of spaces are you out and not out in?

Andrew Snavely.:

I never ... There was one moment after college where I sat in on a sermon done by the youth pastor I had in all of those years who was a close mentor of my life for five years.

Andrew Snavely.:

The sermon itself was really directly homophobic. In sitting through that super uncomfortable. I got introduced afterwards as a Biblical scholar and just a very ... This person just totally projected I was in the exact same place as when they last saw me. That was sort of a charged environment where I decided this is not going to be a moment where I'm going to correct them on that.

Nico, Interviewer:

Yeah.

Andrew Snavely.:

But anywhere else in my life where I'm making a new connection, any kind of new work environment or it's just kind of knowing the stress of maintaining that, it's just a deal breaker that I try to put those cues out pretty early to read whether or not.

Andrew Snavely.:

I'm sort of in a state of going forward as feeling being out wherever I'm 00:11:00showing up.

Nico, Interviewer:

Got you. Got you. Thank you. You mentioned a lot about meeting new people through the arts and academia as well as your fellow peers in college and stuff like that. Did you have any particularly formative experiences with any of these people or something like that?

Andrew Snavely.:

Let's see. I feel like it's something that's built gradually. So, it's difficult to point to a specific experience. I feel like there is kind of important shifts 00:12:00whenever I took a job teaching in middle school right in kind of the training period of it.

Andrew Snavely.:

I was very, yeah, just kind of named my identity and I very much came out on the spot there and received ... Yeah, made some close connections with some peers and coworkers around that and not so much with others.

Andrew Snavely.:

But in any case, it felt really empowering and good to have that shift into having that very much on the table. Over the course of time, working and also living at that school because it was a boarding school.

Andrew Snavely.:

A coworker friend that I made who then became a partner, who then became my 00:13:00wife, we started hosting big gay brunches for anyone local and queer. We sort of identified together we needed more community and connection and support and have both prioritized building that in lots of different ways.

Andrew Snavely.:

So, kind of over sort of intentionally identifying needing that more and building that more. We met, through that, we met and made some friends that we play weekly D&D with.

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah, I just feel like there's ... In the earlier part of that process, there were a lot of moments of critical support that I wasn't getting as much from 00:14:00queer community because I just hadn't had that built as much. It was more just those lucky breaks of looking for supportive housing and knowing a straight contractor friend who could understand that I was needing to find a more supportive space and help hook me up with that or other straight mentors that were supportive enough to kind of be there and hold space for some other rockier shifts and moments. So yeah.

Nico, Interviewer:

Thank you. Well obviously you just talked about sort of the connections that you sought out and sort of the groups that you kind of created on your own. But are 00:15:00there any LGBTQ organizations that you've worked with or benefited from specifically in the western North Carolina region?

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah. It wasn't until my last year at the school where ... I worked there for three years and I was out the whole time. So, over kind of midway in that process I started building a relationship with and having some queer youth start to come to me for support and sort of starting to learn and understand to reach out and learn resources to get them support.

Andrew Snavely.:

I started learning those resources myself and a really big catalyst for that was a lot of, like a handful of youth directly asking for queer history classes. I 00:16:00was really excited to try and meet and support that.

Andrew Snavely.:

So, in setting up this one specific class that's built around a unit that takes an 18 day road trip, learning and unpacking the subject directly while traveling ended up, to prepare, to study to be able to go teach the class, I ended up reaching a bunch of queer history books. Learning all about the organizations that have formed over time and learning a lot of the local ... the lay of the local ones to connect and share and teach that to the students.

Andrew Snavely.:

When we went on our trip, that was just like a powerful point of just connecting 00:17:00with a lot of these spaces and this queer history and activism trip was connecting with just a lot of that wealth of community and support.

Andrew Snavely.:

So yeah, I feel like through the ... It's a big theme for me that I haven't encountered a lot of that larger, wider community and support kind of, and to led me to be involved in kind of helping create it.

Andrew Snavely.:

Sort of collaborating and co-creating pieces of it. Yeah, I feel like a lot of my experiences so far especially like still living further out from Asheville has been identifying the more queer community spaces or important and needed and figuring out how to directly build that both so I and others in this space can 00:18:00get those needs met.

Nico, Interviewer:

Awesome, thank you. That's really cool. What do you think in general, does this area, region need to better support and include LGBTQ people?

Andrew Snavely.:

I feel like that's question is just kind of like a mantra. But in kind of the western North Carolina area, it's definitely made a meaningful impact to have Asheville in driving distance. My partner and I have both gotten a lot of support, a lot of sense of support building relationships with folks that 00:19:00campaign for Southern Equality, and building relationships with folks at Transmission, and my wife actually works with that team now.

Andrew Snavely.:

So, just having that line of connection that opens up a lot of wider support and just like I recently this past year was doing overall youth empowerment fellowship with EqualityNC and Adrian at Youth OUTright was a mentor through that project.

Andrew Snavely.:

So, just like ... Yeah, those relationships are a huge part of what makes our life out here feel more supported and possible. I don't know if we would have been able to stay the same way without that.

Andrew Snavely.:

Let's see. I'm trying to come back to remember another part of the question. Yeah, what's needed or what can help out here? In terms of rural western North Carolina specifically, a lot of it comes down to resources in terms of being able to make a living, it's a real game changer for my partner and I that she was able to find remote work with transmission.

Andrew Snavely.:

A lot of it's just because with some of the additional challenges of finding work that can support you in a rural economy is challenging for everyone, and then you add on queer experience in addition to that and it can be especially 00:21:00key as whenever a larger, wider, more resource organizations can just fan out those opportunities directly to folks.

Andrew Snavely.:

It's also just with the shifts of this pandemic, it's opened up a lot to get digital, for things to be digitalized, to not have to travel so much to have these kinds of meetings and connections and to have support groups open up into digital spaces more.

Andrew Snavely.:

But yeah. I feel like I can speak more specifically to sort of the rural corner of this pocket of western North Carolina. That's what I see, is just getting that baseline of sort of class support to be able to keep existing out here to 00:22:00be able to then build the relationships and support education and institutions and to be able to do the other levels of support. First you just have to be able to keep living in the area.

Nico, Interviewer:

Yeah, for sure. Do you mind talking a little bit more about poverty and discrimination and how that's impacted you and people you know in rural areas?

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah, it definitely ... If I'm speaking to my experience, the queer history and activism class and trip which I definitely want to share a little bit more about 00:23:00in depth at some point in this conversation was an incredibly powerful, excellent experience. And it's also the case that behind the scenes of making that happen within the institution, it was a really mixed bag of a handful of folks who are very supportive and very onboard and excited to see it happen.

Andrew Snavely.:

There was resistance within the organization and in the wider community of the school. So, it is the case that the behind the scenes of making that class happen was really taxing and when we came back from that trip from the road, and this happened in 2019, so it's still ... It's definitely something that we're 00:24:00still in the works of processing and yeah, I feel like this story is going to continue evolving overtime just because it's still in that window of fresh enough.

Andrew Snavely.:

But yeah, we did return to homophobic and trans phobic stuff within written work reviews since those were delivered at the return of the trip that we ended up fighting and not seeing the changes that we needed to see and making a really hard decision to leave the school together.

Andrew Snavely.:

So yeah, it's definitely any kind of ... If your professional track is education, community programing, facilitating events or workshops and stuff like 00:25:00that, finding paid up stable paid opportunities to do that.

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah within Asheville it's competitive at that level and outside of Asheville it can be more competitive in the sense of just a lot of that work still happens but is not in paid positions.

Andrew Snavely.:

So yeah, I've fallen back to doing a lot of house painting to make ends meet and we finally, yeah, found ... My spouse found a place with tranZmission that's been really wonderful. So, I feel like it's just one of the ways that sort of 00:26:00class and resources and stuff can show up. It's just that when those resources and opportunities are more limited just like you end up going to these fallbacks of just doing whatever, working class, labor, you can get an opportunity.

Andrew Snavely.:

And it's like sort of a slow build to shift out of that sort of survival mode and trying to build up, stay connected with the work that's most meaningful and important to you. It kind of takes these ebb and flow back seats. And it's certainly been a huge help for us to have each other in that and to be able to kind of take turns with who's bringing in what to kind of cushion the fact that 00:27:00for us that was a really unplanned shift to all of a sudden need to look for new housing and new jobs for both of us.

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah, I guess in the full economy of that, it digs into your savings. It's sort of a process to ... We're really grateful to have had enough of a cushion in our life to kind of absorb some of the shock of that and your cushioning it gets depleted and it takes time to rebuild it.

Nico, Interviewer:

Awesome. Thank you for sharing that.

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah.

Nico, Interviewer:

If you want to, I guess now you can speak more about the queer history and activism project class that you were talking about.

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah. That was just like a really, personally a really intense and powerful 00:28:00awesome experience of or just intense experience of just over time being an out, queer educator and having my students start to trust me enough to share their identity with me and advocate for themselves around me was just really touching and rewarding to just be present too because growing up in the same area myself, you have 30 minutes down the road in the public school system there was never an out, queer adult in my life that I had any kind of, had a relationship with or I 00:29:00could relate to as any kind of mentor or role model.

Andrew Snavely.:

So, just I know there's a certain meaning in just being able to exist in that kind of space when it's something that your younger self would have really not got to see or experience.

Andrew Snavely.:

So, whenever I was hearing specific asks from these students about learning this history, I was definitely really excited to make that, dig in and make that possible. And kind of excited for the sense of because of how the school works and because I was teaching more in the humanities track that all it would take 00:30:00to make that possible is just for me to dig in and read a bunch of books.

Andrew Snavely.:

So, in just my own process of setting that up, this was really the first time I was encountering queer history, really besides just like I feel like the year before was the first time I heard the word Stonewall. So, it was definitely a fast and intense learning curve to all of a sudden discover oh, there's actually extensive recorded core history.

Andrew Snavely.:

Learning every new piece of that, being really intensely validating and encouraging and completely infuriating, specifically reading through US queer 00:31:00history and having the map of what you learned in US history, in my case AP US history class, which is supposed to be this deeper dive.

Andrew Snavely.:

When you really spend some time sitting with the fact that just how much this stuff get erased and how ... When you start to realize that a lot of the markers of history that you've been taught, things like yeah just knowing names like Eleanor Roosevelt or knowing about the Red Scare and realizing that it doesn't actually ...

Andrew Snavely.:

That there was this whole other Lavender Scare of that Eleanor Roosevelt wasn't 00:32:00straight. You realize that you already have a lot of the markers for where queer history was happening. But it was just kind of left unmentioned. Frida Kahlo. Yeah, the list goes on and on and on.

Andrew Snavely.:

But I feel like it's a special kind of frustrating to realize that you've always had these figures, they've always been there, you've just never been allowed to see them. So yeah, the course of just learning to set up this class was really intense and kind of expanded a lot of my resources and understanding in my own space.

Andrew Snavely.:

Once we were able to kind of on a narrow margin get the class passed, it was 00:33:00exciting and stressful to teach just because I was grateful to co-teach it with my partner. The 10 students who were in the class it was a small boarding school. Were really engaged. We did one of the core projects that we did with them was sort of run through a lot of different figures like folks who have contributed in some way to queer history or activism and each student picked one person to make a quilt square of that represented it was either a portrait or 00:34:00represented their work and write a paper on them.

Andrew Snavely.:

So, sort of in the lead up to this trip there was just a flurry of trying to touch on conversations about local queer history, pulling in and having guest speakers come in from folks who did work with Mitchell County Gay Straight Alliance and having that story get shared, we tried to be really intentional about pulling in local history and relationships, US history, and also some global history.

Andrew Snavely.:

Anyway, we did a project that was putting together a queer history quilt where one day a week the students would just be crafting and working on these quilt 00:35:00squares and just building community in the class. Once that quilt got finished and put together, we took it on the road with us.

Andrew Snavely.:

They actually got practice with every different organization we visited, giving a short presentation of walking through this is my quilt square, I did this person. Here's a sense of what they've really brought to the table.

Andrew Snavely.:

It was really exciting in a lot of these different spaces to have some of the folks who work in these different places share this is a person I hadn't heard of before. Yeah, I feel like we're kind of presently still in this kind of exciting window of a lot of queer history getting recorded and uncovered and 00:36:00brought into the forefront.

Andrew Snavely.:

It was just really exciting to have a class that sort of as we're bringing this out and learning it and sharing it, other people who are also on the fore front of this work learning with us in that process.

Andrew Snavely.:

I definitely want to share about the class itself but also because this is an interview about my own experience of it, which is a lot because it was such a concentrated thing to do because there was a lot that I feel like is going to take some time to unpack really around navigating this as a queer educator.

Andrew Snavely.:

Navigating all the different microaggressions that came with that, the extent to 00:37:00which it was clearly more than 75% of the students in the class. Throughout the process I came to learn most of the students taking this class self-identified somewhere in LGBTQ experience.

Andrew Snavely.:

So, there's just the dynamic of getting to teach and share queer history space with so many queer youth and youth that were really passionate about learning it and feeling solidarity with it.

Andrew Snavely.:

Part of what pushed, took the scale of making this class possible in spite of 00:38:00the resistance too from the institution of letting it happen was that a third of the whole student body which I feel a majority of those were students who ended up being in my class listed it as their top choice for what they wanted to take a trip and learn and have this big experience with that year.

Andrew Snavely.:

Out of a sheet that had been written up that had 15 different detailed trips listed that they could have chosen to take and structure as part of their education. It just had overwhelming engagement and passion and support from the students and really wanting to actively have access to it, which was incredible 00:39:00to get to be in relationship with as a queer educator.

Andrew Snavely.:

The reason why that had to be recorded in the first place is because in behind the scenes meetings, the extent to which our students would advocate for this opportunity to me as an out, queer educator, but not speak up about the same way around other people at the school the extent to which I would be disbelieved in representing what students would represent to me, was pretty astounding.

Andrew Snavely.:

The extent to which the larger community around the school anonymously contacted former staff and board members, expressing a concern about the school's new 00:40:00direction and agenda which this class came out and was being taught was the institution never responded to my knowledge with a ...

Andrew Snavely.:

The institution got a lot of this foggy, grapevine pressure backlash where it was very indirect, but passive aggressive and concerning to the level of the content of several meetings.

Andrew Snavely.:

The institution didn't ... While there was mixed support for doing it, the institution never made it clear, just community statements saying we are fully 00:41:00behind this and don't see this as an agenda and are fully supportive of our queer students and queer staff.

Andrew Snavely.:

Anyway, it was tied kind of in that setting where as the lead teacher I was very clear with saying , here are the exact books that I'm using. I was very acutely aware of the pressure of how right the class needed to be taught and I think that's a lot of the hard nuance that's still built in a lot of educational settings.

Andrew Snavely.:

If you are yourself a queer educator teaching queer content, that the stress bar is fairly high because there's still in educational settings a pretty alive 00:42:00stereotype of indoctrination and queer role models are going to turn youth.

Andrew Snavely.:

The pressure of coining to the resources that you're studying and using and sharing with students. I put that out there as best as I could, but not once in this process did anyone who had concerns about the class bring those concerns directly to me, the person teaching.

Andrew Snavely.:

That's to me a pretty clear line of that's a completely ridiculous thing for there to be widespread community mistrust and pushback on a class but never directly talk to the teacher about that.

Andrew Snavely.:

So getting, I'd say after six weeks of that process, getting out on the road and 00:43:00visiting, we started in Asheville, visited with Campaign for Southern Equality and I'd have to pull up a thing on my screen to even ...

Andrew Snavely.:

I can just raddle of a quick list of where we went and who we saw because ... But before I do that, it was just very refreshing to finally hit the road with this group of students who are really passionate about learning this and with teachers who are really passionate about teaching it.

Andrew Snavely.:

And just all of a sudden be in the company of these organizations that were fully supportive and celebratory and it was kind of a surreal breath of fresh air and possibility.

Andrew Snavely.:

But yeah, we started at Asheville and spent some time with Craig out at Campaign for Southern Equality and then we did a big drive day and went out to Atlanta. While we were there in Atlanta, we met with Lost-n-Found Youth and SOJOURN and POWS and there maybe someone I'm forgetting here because it was just a kind of such a pact learning experience here connecting with so many people.

Andrew Snavely.:

Once we were done in Atlanta, we headed out to Philadelphia and this is where the class started getting really, really deep in a lot of the kind of history of 00:45:00connecting with the William Way Center and visiting and touring the gayberhood out there.

Andrew Snavely.:

The youth also visited with Equality Forum and if I'm saying it right, they made a visit to go layout, I'm not sure if I'm saying it right. But there was a sort of a community of a queer retirement space that the students visited.

Andrew Snavely.:

This was the day where I was actually staying back with someone who was sick, so I didn't end up going myself and don't have the memory for it. But they met and directly had conversations with some queer elders who were really active in early parts of this movement.

Andrew Snavely.:

I know that was an especially powerful day that I heard about from a lot of the 00:46:00students and teachers that went.

Andrew Snavely.:

After Philadelphia we went to New York city and we went to Stonewall of course. Actually if I would back up for a second, a lot of the connections and a lot of these places that we visited, a really exciting background of this trip was that I met and made a connection with Mandy Carter before this class got formerly approved but when I thought it probably would be.

Andrew Snavely.:

Mandy Carter was super generous with her time and setting up as many, using her connections to set up as many learning experiences for these students and for 00:47:00this class as she could.

Andrew Snavely.:

So, it was just kind of in the backdrop also an incredible thing to get to spend time with such an amazing person and have so much, have a queer elder properly involved in forming and making these opportunities of the class happen.

Andrew Snavely.:

I say that now because when we were in New York city, Mandy Carter connected us with Walter Naegle who's the surviving partner of Bayard Rustin, who's one of the first a student made a quilt square for.

Andrew Snavely.:

So, it was just like that was definitely one of the more powerful moments along the trip of getting to spend time with hear about and spend time with a 00:48:00surviving queer elder who's so closely, in such close relationship with Bayard Rustin and just yeah, I'm going to try to get through this interview without going too deep into just talking about queer history.

Andrew Snavely.:

I'll just trust that people will look up some of these names if they don't know them already. But yeah. That was we had an intense, an awesome day in New York. One very, very wonderful staff member who just drove this massive for transit around New York city for the time that we were meeting with this amazing person to compensate for no parking.

Andrew Snavely.:

Do all those funny on the road quirks. But anyway, when we were in New York city we also got to go up to Gleeson headquarters and that was really incredible just to be the devil, however many 15 or so floors up and the headquarter of a major organization supporting queer youth and schools.

Andrew Snavely.:

From there we went to D.C and sort of beforehand in the class studied and talked about the names quilt and that relationship between queer history and the AIDS, 00:50:00just fighting for basic rights and the AIDS quilt being laid out on the mall.

Andrew Snavely.:

We got to visit with Washington Blade and go to PFLAG headquarters and then we met up with Mandy Carter again and Sam and Duram. Yeah, we also ... We visited through a song twice. We also visited with them when we were in Atlanta.

Andrew Snavely.:

But yeah. There is of course so many stories in just the different days of back to back to back going from one incredible organization, meeting one really incredible team, to another. But a common thread that really kind of shaped how 00:51:00that trip went was that so many of these folks we met with were really generous with ... Like a question that just came up everywhere we went.

Andrew Snavely.:

Whether someone just kind of offered it or whether it was asked was other people's stories of coming out or their experiences and sharing about their identities and kind of on this 18 day long journey. Hearing and needing so many different stories back to back was really just intense and wonderful.

Andrew Snavely.:

Someone who had worked at the school for six year who went along on the trip was going along the trip as kind of like they hadn't been involved in the teaching 00:52:00of the class but they got moved in kind of in part due to recognizing that this trip and this class was under a lot of scrutiny and pressure in just existing.

Andrew Snavely.:

This person was a straight ally who understood some but definitely learned a lot. They were specifically blown away by they said in all their trips that they'd been on and in all their time at the school they had never been on a trip where every single student was so bought in on the content.

Andrew Snavely.:

But it's very common for students at the school to have these big trips that have mixed profound experiences and you always have a student or so that kind of could take or leave the actual content of the class. They're kind of along for the ride.

Andrew Snavely.:

Anyway, this other teacher just shared that they were blown away because they 00:53:00had never seen that extent of unanimous investment and they had never seen a class where every single night students were when they're not directly on some kind of visit that's part of the trip learning that they would be in their own time just continuously bringing up topics and conversations and trying to dig in and learn more on the rest.

Andrew Snavely.:

So yeah. Just a quick clip about my own kind of parallel experience of something that was particularly intense about this was being a teacher and a trip leader 00:54:00through this experience I did not anticipate that whenever we were in Atlanta, which is like one of the first places we were staying and visiting with, I pretty early on ...

Andrew Snavely.:

We met with someone who introduced themselves as gender queer and non-binary. I was like, "This person seems really cool." Then later in the day when we were doing some volunteer work and sorting clothes for lost and found youth thrift store.

Andrew Snavely.:

Just as a teacher teaching on the topic of gender and sexuality and history and all of that, we were in this massive room with this huge pile of clothes sorting them size, women's, men's.

Andrew Snavely.:

I just noticed in myself, I was like, "Oh, this feels really weird and wrong and 00:55:00oh no this brings up a lot of stuff to be sort in this big pile of clothes." I started kind of checking in with the students and asking, "How do you feel about sorting this pile of clothes?" Relationship to gender and stuff and yeah, a lot of the students and a lot of other folks I was kind of asking if anything was coming up for them.

Andrew Snavely.:

It was like, it's whatever. So, I kind of started putting together the pieces of this is my own experience. It was within two or three days of this trip when I realized I had never met someone non-binary and I was actually kind of had the 00:56:00full aha moment of oh, there's a core piece of my own gender identity that hasn't ... but this is illuminating.

Andrew Snavely.:

So, this already intense experience became extra intense when it became really suddenly that personal. So, sort of in the backdrop of all of these other experiences and encounters and moments in this trip.

Andrew Snavely.:

I was kind of doing the initial PFLAG of oh, my whole relationship to my personal experience of gender has just done that tipping point. So, it was really exciting and incredibly stressful in that respect.

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah, that's just like a way in one of those markers of coming out processes. That was another one of those being in the right place at the right time to kind of realize that you've just never seen that kind of representation that you've needed to see and that actually had words. Yeah, if you haven't had anything to relate to it until that point.

Nico, Interviewer:

Awesome. Yeah, you would say I guess in relation to that that you figured out your sexuality and stuff like that sooner than your gender identity?

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah.

Nico, Interviewer:

Yeah.

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah.

Nico, Interviewer:

Awesome, thank you. That sounds like a really cool project for sure. I guess 00:58:00related to LGBT elders and stuff like that, do you have anyone that you know who might be good candidates for this sort of interview in the western North Carolina region.

Andrew Snavely.:

Absolutely Mandy Carter.

Nico, Interviewer:

Awesome.

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah. I know she just wrapped up a ... she was doing a lot of voting campaign work with EqualityNC and just wrapped up a contract with them. But yeah. I saw that you had an interview up from Zeek, but if you all haven't talked with Adrian who does ... Like one of my mentors from the RYE Fellowship, Adrian who is the executive director of Youth OUTright would be a great person to talk 00:59:00with, I'm sure, if they haven't already.

Nico, Interviewer:

Awesome. Yeah, I will look into that because I don't know all the people we've interviewed.

Andrew Snavely.:

Sure.

Nico, Interviewer:

So, we'll look into that. Awesome, thank you. One more question that I had, in the previous email correspondence with the archive. You mentioned that you had been involved with the local election here as far as working for the election and stuff like that. Would you mind talking a little bit about that and your experiences with that?

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah. I guess to back up on that just a little bit, in part of leaving the 01:00:00school and choosing to stay in the area, we before the pandemic we were, my partner and I were running sort of by word of mouth we're running queer support space out of a local library and we're feeling safe enough about doing kind of, like working with known people that we trust to try and get word and support and bring spaces together in that way.

Andrew Snavely.:

We are still doing regular potlucks out of our home and that kind of thing. I definitely say this how the recent election season played out here definitely 01:01:00had a pretty, in my personal experience, a pretty chilling effect on before the full visibility and pressure that we were feeling good about having a pride flag on the outside of our home.

Andrew Snavely.:

After seeing in town out here there were a couple of days like Trump trains and rallies that happened and that those recent experience were kind of game changers for us really valuing rural queer visibility that kind of being in the 01:02:00process of reassessing how we need to look at doing that in the safest way.

Andrew Snavely.:

So, as a part of that and trying to figure where to place that particular kind of stress, I reached out to do some polyarching just because yeah, figure out what you can possibly do to try and support the process of something that's so pressurized.

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah, I definitely say that it was ... I don't know. I feel like my relationship 01:03:00to the local community and where it's at with the spectrum of safety, specifically in relationship to how visible you're being, I feel like in any kind of marginalized experience in a rural community there can actually be a wealth of support and also kind of this ongoing sense of you don't want to stick your neck out too far or you want to make sure you're working within circles of actual relationship and trust, but it doesn't always feel like a bad thing.

Andrew Snavely.:

Sometimes can be a really powerful way to move and work in community. Yeah, we definitely experienced in our own kind of recoil of really having to look at 01:04:00whether or not this area is still safe. We experience support from some key neighbors and there's a sense of relationships that are there to hold space for building up more of that and building more connection and kind of seeing and understanding the extent to which some of these events can be really scary.

Andrew Snavely.:

We're still here and I'd say in terms of the direct poll watching it was encouraging to me that I didn't, that while there were definitely a handful of people that would come vote and be decked out in their [inaudible 01:04:55].

Andrew Snavely.:

While we're living in a county that definitely voted more republican, it was 01:05:00encouraging to know that there was no voter intimidation. That's what that I was most concerned about, kind of showing up to trial and yeah, see and track and try and do something about.

Andrew Snavely.:

It was encouraging to me the full extent of toxic stuff on display wasn't actually showing up in the community on voting day and I made a connection with someone else volunteering out there who was looking for more ways to support queer youth.

Andrew Snavely.:

So, I feel like this kind of the behind the scenes, it was encouraging to be 01:06:00able to meet and make connection with another person looking to find and build resources.

Andrew Snavely.:

So, a lot of those, yeah, within the stress of this stuff just crossing paths with another person can really make a big difference in how it feels coming out of it.

Andrew Snavely.:

So yeah, going through the pressure cooker of election season out here in rural western North Carolina I feel like it's we're definitely being a lot more careful and intentional about how and where we're visible or extra visible.

Andrew Snavely.:

At the same time, it has really shone a clear light on a lot of folks who are 01:07:00ready to step up and try and build safer networks of support, which is a lot of what keeps us here.

Nico, Interviewer:

Awesome. Thank you so much. Is there any other sort of topic that you want to talk about at all or stories that you want to share while we have the time?

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah. Just really, I think I'd love to touch on the rural youth empowerment fellowship that I just wrapped up. Yeah it was for the year 2020. So, if I would have known that this was the year that it has been, this would not have been the year that I would have signed up to do a fellowship project.

Andrew Snavely.:

But yeah, for that being what it's been about mid summer, my project work was going to be very focused on in-person spaces for youth and that ended up taking a turn into making, like collaborating on a queer resiliency skills resource.

Andrew Snavely.:

So, I would love to ... Yeah, it was actually with two former students from the class in that trip. I collaborated with them on ... They were contracted to do the art for this resource and collaborated with Youth OUTright and Adrian on taking some content that they had but not really in a digestive. It was in a document, it wasn't really in a digestible format and the language wasn't 01:09:00written to a youth audience.

Andrew Snavely.:

So, I took this content that teaches a lot of coping and resiliency skills and tweaked it to kind of be at the level of a middle schooler or a high schooler or anyone can pick it up and jump right in, and the language wouldn't be too bogged in a mindfulness terms.

Andrew Snavely.:

Anyway, I worked on kind of putting finishing touches on some of the content itself, and these two former students I did a bunch of illustrations and I was here just recently within a week or so we finished this resource call that getting through a queer resiliency guide made with love by and for LGBTQ+ youth 01:10:00and it's now up on Youth OUTright's website in the resources section.

Andrew Snavely.:

A former really supportive coworker from the school did the translation work so it's available in English and Spanish. Yeah, just want to make a quick plug for that existing and did just walks through a whole bunch of different sort of the whole concept of how we can work on regulating stress in our lives and different tools to try out for that.

Andrew Snavely.:

One of the ... Something I'm really excited about and the tail end of the resource it just has a massive listing of a lot of other organizations and supports like Trans Lifeline and Trevor project.

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah, a lot of those wider, like when you asked me early in this conversation about where have you gotten support or found organizations or queer community. There's a section that lists a whole bunch of national resources but then we specifically list western North Carolina and North Carolina resources. So, it's exciting to hopefully feel like some other young queers or queers out there that can pick this up and not have to do all of that research and infrastructure building that we had to do quite the same with.

Andrew Snavely.:

I'm excited to sort of going forward to see more of these things kind of cross paths with more people and be more easily accessible in one place.

Nico, Interviewer:

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Well, unless you have any other sort of things that you want to talk about, we can probably end it there.

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah. One thing that I, I guess one quick last thing I did want to touch on is when we were talking about when you were asking me about rural socioeconomic stuff and things like that, I feel like one strength of organizing in rural communities and just something I'm excited to see coming to the forefront more is sort of with the Fannie Lou Hamer's quote, "Nobody is free until everybody is free."

Andrew Snavely.:

I feel like within more LGBTQ spaces I'm really encouraged by the more and more 01:13:00I can see folks really with whatever they're organizing or setting up or advocating for, starting to do that more and more with the big picture of us stepping out of these single issue boxes and really seeing that yeah these are shared histories to advocate for and these are shared ...

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah, just I feel like in communities that have more limited resources and from this kind of scarcity mindset like a lot of us have been taught in our different communities seeing that actually there is a lot there and that it's really possible and actually necessarily that we build these things together and across 01:14:00issues sort of all the time.

Nico, Interviewer:

Yeah, for sure. Do you find that there is a certain amount of, I guess, degradation be the word between different identities within the LGBTQ community?

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah, definitely. In terms of rural, in the community that I'm a part of it's definitely as a white queer person been a learning curve to actually step back and reckon with the fact that when you grow up in a community that is so, so overwhelmingly white, there is just a baseline of reeducating and unpacking the structural racism that's just present there and really stepping into 01:15:00understanding and creating any kind of ...

Andrew Snavely.:

Because queer spaces and queer history is so expansive that actually creating LGBTQ+ places necessitates a lot of anti-racist presence and work that is just always needing to be completely vamped up and brought to the forefront.

Andrew Snavely.:

So yeah, I guess just that whole sense of learning that in whatever pocket of life policy or organizing or support that anyone is engaging, that if you're not referencing and centering that from kind of the bottom up of whoever is going to have the most marginalized experience and referencing and building from there, 01:16:00then you're missing it.

Andrew Snavely.:

As that ties back in with what you were asking me about election stuff, it's a hard part of the reality that we made a connection with someone local and queer and black who did have to make a hard choice to leave the community because the racism and violence on display in this election season was understandably too much.

Andrew Snavely.:

So, there's just kind of the way to understanding that in a lot of these spaces even being a queer and trans person there's still the measure of an experience 01:17:00of whiteness in this community and this space still brings so much privilege that has to be learned and used.

Nico, Interviewer:

Well awesome. Thank you for sharing so much.

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah.

Nico, Interviewer:

I really appreciate it.

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah, thank you. This is a really exciting project.

Nico, Interviewer:

Yeah, yeah. It's very cool.

Andrew Snavely.:

Really cool to get to be a part of it and see it grow.

Nico, Interviewer:

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I will get in contact with you about the consent form thing. So I'll ask you a question about that and then you can send me whatever form you would like to send back to me or back to the official office and then we will eventually get a copy of the transcript before they publish anything so 01:18:00you can go over it, check for mistakes or if you want to change anything, whatever. Yeah.

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah. That sounds great. I have a picture of, a photograph of that finished quilt and also of this document that breaks down who's represented in what square and something I did when I shared it in another space before is just like if you can go in and just edit out the names of students because it says quilt square of so and so, by so and so.

Andrew Snavely.:

I feel like in terms of that liability and all that, if you can just erase line student names that it ...

Nico, Interviewer:

Yeah, I'm sure someone would be able to do that just to protect the student's identity.

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah. If I can't figure out how to do it on my end I'll just send you all with 01:19:00that tagline.

Nico, Interviewer:

Yeah, yeah, they'll be sure to make sure it's good before publishing anything of course. Yeah. It might be a great thing to send. Thank you.

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah.

Nico, Interviewer:

Well thanks for the conversation. I really appreciated it. Got to talk about a lot of interesting things.

Andrew Snavely.:

Are you based out in Asheville yourself?

Nico, Interviewer:

Yeah, I live in Asheville as well.

Andrew Snavely.:

Okay. Cool.

Nico, Interviewer:

I get to do this digitally.

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah, yeah.

Nico, Interviewer:

So, I don't have to ... Without the pandemic I could go to people's houses and stuff like that. But not doing that right now. Don't have any intention of doing that any time soon.

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah. Well if and when gatherings become a safe thing, if you are at an Asheville area you would definitely be welcome to come join us in one of our brunches sometime. I actually have friends from the Asheville area that come out 01:20:00to that and before that was put on indefinite hiatus.

Andrew Snavely.:

We live in a studio apartment so we actually have kind of a small space with just an outdoor area and on average 10 folks could come once a month. So, it was kind of a pap sweet little thing that we always enjoy bringing more people into.

Nico, Interviewer:

Awesome, yeah definitely. Well thank you so much and hope you have happy holidays, whatever you're celebrating. If you celebrated the holidays that have already passed. Yeah, thank you and I will get in contact with you soon about other stuff.

Andrew Snavely.:

Yeah. Well thanks. This is wonderful.

Nico, Interviewer:

Great. Awesome. Thank you. Goodbye.

Andrew Snavely.:

Bye.