I was SO honoured to have a piece featured in the book Constellations of Care: Anarcha-Feminism in Practice. It’s an incredible body of work brought together by Cindy Barukh Milstein (aka my anarchist crush!).
💗🖤 Here is the blurb: “What do we do when the state has abandoned us? From failing health systems to housing crises to cascading ecological collapse, it’s increasingly evident that state-centered politics do not protect us from the violence of colonialism and capitalism, fascism, and patriarchy. In fact, they actively work to harm us.
Anarchist feminism – or anarcha-feminism – shows us how we tend to our social relations can build a new world inside the old one. We can care for each other when nothing else will, supplying communal well-being and liberatory horizons.
From communitarian kitchens to medic collectives, squatted social centers to queer theater troupes, Ljubljana to Mexico City, Constellations of Care powerfully underscores that we already have everything we need and desire in one another to carve out lives worth living.”
I’ve FINALLY finished reading it on my phone during breastfeeding sessions and every piece of writing moved me in different ways 😭💗🖤
My whole life has been shaped by the politics of care which in our often macho movements are rarely given airtime. Hence why the book felt so validating and inspiring.
The Solidarity Apothecary chapter gives a little overview of the project (with a lot of editing help from Cindy!). I remember working on it in airport lounges coming back from Poland at the start of the invasion of Ukraine, when this frontline herbalism work felt so present.
I concluded the chapter with:
“Plants take care of each other and their ecosystems, including taking care of us. They take care of us in prison courtyards and refugee camps, when fleeing war zones or working toward a world free of domination, exploitation, and oppression. The Solidarity Apothecary and my related projects are just tiny conduits; the herbs themselves are mutual aid.” 🌱💗🖤🌱💗🖤
It was published by Pluto Press and you can get it in all the usual places!
Learn more here: https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745349954/constellationsofcare/
