(C) Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural This story was originally published by Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . A Rural Calling: Liv Cook [1] ['Taylor Sisk', 'The Daily Yonder', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar'] Date: 2025-04-30 On a Thursday afternoon in early April, two young women addressed the school board in East Tennessee’s rural McMinn County. Both were raised in families that came to this country as immigrants. They were expressing their concerns with a bill the state legislature is deliberating that would allow local school districts to deny enrollment to undocumented children. One young woman spoke of her parents’ hopes and dreams in coming to this country and of her own dream of being an interpreter, a psychologist, or a social worker. The other underscored that children are brought to the U.S. “not knowing about laws, borders, paperwork, or immigration status. They are innocent.” Among those in attendance was Liv Cook. McMinn County is Cook’s home; public education is her passion. Through a decidedly turbulent time in her life, public schools were Cook’s refuge. They’re why she became a special-education teacher and why she now serves as lead organizer for the Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment’s (SOCM) Public School Strong TN campaign. Liv Cook (Photo by Taylor Sisk) Cook has helped bolster these young women’s confidence and was there that day to lend moral support. She can well empathize with a young person’s instinct to assert agency when the potential costs of silence are considerable. Sara Denny has witnessed Cook’s growth as an organizer, an activist, and a community member. Denny, director of student success at Tennessee Wesleyan University, from which Cook graduated, met her in 2016. “Her heart has been the same, but I’ve seen her grow in confidence, I’ve seen her grow in the understanding of her power,” Denny said. “ I’ve seen her grow into leadership.” Cook taught for three years and hadn’t intended to leave the classroom quite so abruptly. But the local school board’s decision to ban the Holocaust novel Maus from its 8th-grade curriculum proved a turning point in her life and work. She joined with a group of community members who objected. With national attention brought to bear on the banning, the book shot to the top of Amazon’s bestseller list. “I saw the power of what it could look like when a community comes together and says, ‘This doesn’t represent who we are,’” Cook said. She was driven to do more on behalf of public education. She told herself, “I want to do something to change the system, and right now I don’t feel like I’m changing the system. I’m just addressing individual harms.” The Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment, or SOCM (sock-em), needed someone to work full-time on public education. Cook had found her niche. Survive and Thrive Raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, an hour to the northeast of McMinn County, Cook’s upbringing was peripatetic. Her dad struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder from overseas military service; there were substance-use issues. She and her mom were unhoused for three years. “Our house foreclosed, and we stayed there as long as we could,” she said. They would sleep on friends’ couches for a couple of months at a time or drive through the night, sleeping in their car. They moved in with her grandma for a few months. “I think that in a lot of ways, it radicalized me. I know what it’s like to be so far below the poverty line,” she said, “There were a lot of ways that I felt like the system did not work for me. … I think I carried with me this understanding of ‘the system doesn’t work for the working poor; it doesn’t work for poor folks.’ I felt shame going to school smelling like mildew and cigarettes. I would always keep perfume in my backpack to not smell that way.” Throughout, however, she nurtured a deep faith that she’d survive and thrive. She nurtured a profound empathy for the forgotten. Around the time she entered high school, her mom met the man who is now her stepdad, and they moved to McMinn County. Grassroots Through it all, school was Cook’s haven. She was embraced and she excelled. “I really loved school,” she said. “I got breakfast and lunch. I got counseling. I got Christmas gifts.” She joined clubs. “It’s what got me through.” She became a peer mentor for a special-ed class. “That’s when I knew I wanted to be a teacher.” She graduated from McMinn County High School in 2016 as a valedictorian and chose to stay in the area to attend Tennessee Wesleyan, in Athens. Her degree is in special education. Soon after, she married Nathan Cook – they’d met in drama club at 15 – and they’ve settled in the nearby town of Etowah, at the foothills of the Cherokee National Forest. Nathan is now studying to be a history teacher. Cook’s experience as a special-ed teacher was enlightening. “I’ve always felt that children are an oppressed class, students with disabilities even more so,” she said. “I was really trying to implement restorative practices. I was really trying to fight for inclusion for my kids, get them their services. And I was just coming home at six o’clock every night, bawling because it was just too much.” The opening at SOCM was an ideal fit. SOCM was born in 1971 to advocate for underserved, isolated coalfield communities. There are now chapters across the state, advancing housing rights, public education justice, and community-driven development. Its campaigns are firmly community grounded, Cook said, “because that’s where we have the most power.” The Public School Strong TN campaign is a movement of parents, educators, neighbors, and students who believe in “honest, equitable, safe, and fully funded public schools.” Community members are trained to organize at the local school board level and to then begin connecting with leaders in other counties with shared concerns. Opposition to the legislation that would deny undocumented students access to an education is a prime example of how this works. School boards across the state are hearing from their constituents. In McMinn County, Cook said, “My hope is that if this bill passes, we have now built the relationships and put the faces to the people this will harm, and they will pass some kind of policy or statement saying they’re going to commit to serving every kid who walks in our doors.” “I firmly believe that our stories are our most powerful tool,” she said. ‘Radically Present’ Faith provides a foundation for Cook’s activism. She grew up “spiritually all over the place.” Her grandma was a Southern Baptist. “I spent every weekend with her. When you spend the weekend with her, you’re going to church.” But as she matured, she found “there’s a lot about being Southern Baptist that doesn’t align with my values, or how I see Jesus.” At Tennessee Wesleyan, a religion instructor told her he “took the Bible too seriously to take it literally. And I was like, ‘Whoa, hold on.’” It allowed her to begin imagining a very practical, every-day faith. She minored in religion and philosophy. She now serves as children’s minister at St Paul’s Episcopal Church in Athens. “Liv is gentle and courageous, incredibly thoughtful, and sees every person in their full dignity,” said Rev. Claire Brown, St. Paul’s rector. “She has a rare depth of integrity between her values and her practice, and this really shines through in the way that she is radically present to the children in our community with all their silliness, questions, and struggles.” From her training in special education, Cook has created a children’s ministry environment, Brown said, that “encourages children of different ages and abilities to encourage each other.” “She’s half a great crafter and half a good support,” Brown’s 5-year-old son, Amos, said. “If plans don’t work out, she always gets another idea.” “I also see her faith at work in the ways that she rests,” Brown added. “Liv is a gardener and cook. She adores her dog and is a playful friend. She and her husband, Nathan, are deeply creative, thoughtful people, and love these hills, and it’s this rest and joy that keep her heart wide open to the work before her.” Given how Cook’s strong spiritual foundation has informed her, Sara Denny added, “She can’t possibly not do good work.” Cook has learned that if she can help create a nonjudgmental space in which to share differences, it might reveal that, for example, maybe parents aren’t “as mad about the trans kid in the bathroom as they are that their kid can’t read yet…I believe so deeply that relationships can heal a lot,” she said. But it takes work. Organizing against the proposed legislation on undocumented students was launched in tandem with a series of community discussions SOCM hosted with St. Paul’s and a local history professor, titled “The Roots of American (Dis)Unity.” The classes were in response to members of the KKK leaving flyers throughout the community in January, instructing immigrants to deport themselves. “It’s exciting to see political education transform into community action,” Cook said. “In these moments, I’m so deeply hopeful and excited for what we could be. Good people live here, and I’m grateful to know them and to be a small piece of growing us in a better direction.” “A Rural Calling” is a Daily Yonder profile series featuring people throughout rural America who are making significant contributions to their communities. Related Republish This Story Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. 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