This workshop involves a popular education approach to envisioning a more accessible and effective model of healthcare, and most importantly, strategizing steps to get there. An emphasis of the Northeast Radical Herbalism Network is how to build this model in a way that dismantles oppressions that exist in healthcare systems and rebuilds healthcare/healing systems in sustainable, holistic, and inclusive ways.

We start with where we’ve come from and where we’re at now: what are the problems within healthcare historically and now (By the healthcare system we mean the institutions that are in place and the healing modalities they utilize)? What are the effective and valuable parts of healthcare now? What components of healthcare have been lost? Who doesn’t healthcare serve, and how does it reinforce the power structure and systems of oppression within the United States?

Using stories that the RadHerb Network has written about new visions of healthcare, and the stories of participants in the room, we begin to sketch a new model of what healthcare could look like. How do we heal from racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, within healthcare? How do we each empower ourselves and our communities to reclaim our own health; what knowledge have we lost and how do we regain it?

For the majority of the workshop, participants will discuss current projects that are steps toward our visions of healthcare— what are some vibrant, community based projects already out there? From there, we will talk about what further steps we need to take in the next 5 years, the next ten years. How do we work together from our various communities? How do we build a model(s) in a sustainable way that allows everyone to receive the appropriate healthcare, and not burn out? We will conclude with concrete next steps, inviting our networks, allies, and communities to create and partake!

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We want participants to take away inspiration and networks to further build and create local community health care that is sustainable, inclusive, and holistic. Using popular education, we know that the workshop will have many results that we cannot imagine now, but that are indeed exciting, innovative, and creative. We hope that this workshop will strengthen alternative health networks, and inspire more in a way that challenges oppression.

We connect to the USSF crosscutting themes in that we strive to make healthcare accessible ESPECIALLY to those who have been excluded for many disgraceful reasons. We strive to build a healthcare movement that connects to local initiatives and projects. We hope that our participation in the USSF sends a message to herbalist and health justice workers around the world that we are here, cranking away within the United States, and that we are in solidarity with them.

We will provide handouts for attendees in English and Spanish.

We will engage the participants through popular education exercises, integrating art-making, movement, brainstorms, and small group discussions.

The biggest challenge that the Northeast Radical Herbalism Network faces right now is just getting off the ground as an organization-so all of the basic start-up things: developing a fundraising program, finding a sustainable way to organize with the understanding that the core organizers live in 5 different states in the Northeast, expanding our network, finding new and effective ways to do outreach. In the last month, our biggest challenge has been finding ways to make our annual conference accessible without reinforcing existing class and racial structures, with the understanding that our budget is extremely limited.

We are trying to figure out an alternative, and attending the USSF is a big part of that- seeing how the USSF is organized, what considerations have gone into that, who is present in June. The core organizers of the Northeast Radical Herbalism Network have each taken on tasks for the conference-outreach, media, fundraising, finding workshops and facilitators, while keeping a keen eye on the systems of oppression and asking for help when we think we may be reinforcing them. We also have some older herbalists who have been working within herbalism for 30+ years with a radical analysis, and they provide invaluable guidance as we try to build progressive ways to do herbalism.