Garrett Blaize

Treasurer, Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards, Appalachian VA

Garrett Blaize is a 24-year-old community organizer and administrator from the Appalachian Mountains. They serve as the staff lead for grantmaking and philanthropic partnerships at the Appalachian Community Fund (ACF), a regional funding intermediary and movement support fund. As a representative of ACF, Garrett sits on the Steering Committee of the Appalachian Funders Network, where they also serve as Co-Chair. Ex officio, through his work with the Appalachian Community Fund, Garrett supports the Waymakers Collective, an Assembly of radical arts grantmakers serving artists and culture-bearers across Appalachia.

Garrett serves on the Coordinating Committee of Alliance for Appalachia and as a volunteer leader of their local affiliate Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards, a local organizing collective dedicated to building deep democracy, accelerating a just transition, and remediating the harm caused by the historic extraction of labor, capital, and natural resources from the Appalachian region.

A legacy of extractive industries like coal mining and natural gas pipelines has degraded water quality, increased flood risks, and limited marginalized groups’ authority over land management in Appalachia. Mountaintop removal has exacerbated flooding, but at the same time much of the developable land outside flood zones is controlled by mine land holding companies and speculators, constraining affordable housing development opportunities for residents displaced by climate change. For his project, Garrett will attempt to establish frameworks, conduct research, and build capacity to equip marginalized communities in southwest Virginia to obtain formal rights in governing how vacant land assets could be sustainably developed to benefit residents. This will include a feasibility study, visioning workshops with the community, trainings for community leaders, and the development of a potential structure ownership model. Ultimately, within the next few years he’d like to launch a community land trust.