- Hello, welcome to the workshop about herbalism and border violence. Just a little overview of what I'm hoping to cover. So I'm just gonna give some kind of like practical things, introduce myself and then we'll dive into kind of what is the border regime and we will talk about the mobile herbal clinic call and kind of do like a deep dive into some of the medicines used in the clinic. And then I'll talk about the work with Ukraine and we'll kind of end talking about this idea of like border abolition and sort of like practical struggles towards that. And then I'll share some resources and yeah, you'll be able to, I'll make sure the slides are available to download and I'll send you a PDF of the different recipes we use with the mobile herbal clinic. So yeah, you're welcome to take notes but you will kind of get these, get these slides. So yeah, firstly I'm like so grateful for your presence and your time and energy and I'm so sorry about not doing this live Basically I've got a six month old, he's called Lee, this is him. So I put a little picture of him. He's so cute. And yeah, we, we co-sleep and he's normally like a brilliant sleeper, especially in that first part of the night. And we arrange the talk for like 8:00 PM UK time thinking I'll be able to sneak out the room, you know, with a camera on him or maybe my partner could sit next to him, but he's recently been waking up more frequently and being very distressed 'cause he is teething. So I just said like, hey, I am really sorry I don't feel like I can do this live at the moment. But yeah, you're really welcome to send any questions to my email, which is info@solidarityapothecary.org. I'm a little bit slow with emails at the moment 'cause I don't have that much kind of childcare help my partner's out a lot. So yeah, I would just do my best to get back to you, but please like feel free to contact us. Yeah and just like a content warning, you know, a bit like the kind of prison workshops I do like, there is kind of like explicit mentions of violence, excuse me, like with the border regime and yeah stuff in Cali, it's just endlessly horrific And you know, I'll talk about the racism and the anti-blackness, but this is obviously violence inflicted on racialized bodies and yeah, I'm just aware that that content can be quite difficult for people. So yeah, it just to kind of like take care of yourself, it's totally normal to dissociate when hearing distressing things. Like I normally kind of say this stuff when it's like a live workshop, you know, finding something to kind of help anchor you like to support through the material, whether that's like your favourite herbal tea or you know, yeah organising like with a close friend to watch it together and like debrief if possible or writing about your reflections or I think like getting active is really nice, like in terms of movement but also like politically organising. Like you know, maybe after the workshop you could like drop a donation into a project that are organising support for people on the move and stuff. So yeah, that's just a little thing for that. And yeah, just some disclaimers like it is obviously like a massive topic in a small amount of time and yeah, it's just kind of one lens of state violence. You know, there are countless other forms of state violence which intersect with border systems, which I'll talk about. And yeah, the distribution of this violence and oppression is not even right, like it's racialized, it's classed, it's gendered. And this talk like focuses on the kind of so-called like British French border. I'm aware lots of people that come in via kind of rail, we art Apo Korea or in the so-called us. And so I am really sorry it doesn't contain content about like the US Mexico border. I would love to like connect with people working on that border in terms of herbal medicine, there's one project that I mentioned in the talk, but yeah, I would love to kind of do some podcast interviews with folks that are organising solidarity on the ground there. And yeah, I just wanna, you know, say again that the kind of British state has like mastered this art of statecraft, right? Mastered this art of policing and borders and prisons like through colonialism and yeah. And when we talk about abolition and resistance to this, I wanna name that these movements have been led by black feminists and radicals, like from the very beginning and still are. And yeah, I'm, I'll just introduce myself, but I am, yeah, I use she her pronouns. My name's Nicole Rose, I'm, as you can see in the picture, I'm white, but my lineages are English, Welsh and Irish been a kind of DIY herbalist for over a decade and then completed this formal clinical training with the plant medicine school several years ago now need, need to update this slide. But I've run this project called the Solidarity Apothecary and I focus as a herbalist on supporting people experiencing state violence with herbal medicines. Yeah. And obviously, you know, I just wanna name that I am, you know, I am white, I'm like, you know, I grew up like super working class in the UK context, but you know, I'm just, yeah, super privileged, have papers like every time I, every time I drive to France, you know, it's like a flash of this passport, you know, and I'll talk about that in the, in the talk. But yeah, I just wanna name as well that the work I do is part of like loads of collective organising when I introduce the clinic. Like it is a complete collective project, you know, with lots of people making decisions and loads of different contributions likewise with Ukraine Hub or solidarity. So I know sometimes I can like be a bit of a mouthpiece for some of these projects 'cause of my podcasts and stuff, but they are, yeah, collective, collective efforts. So the mission of the Solidarity Apothecary is to materially support revolutionary struggles and communities with plant medicines to strengthen collective autonomy, self-defense and resilience to climate change, capitalism and state violence. And you can see all the different offerings and bits and bobs that I do@solidaritypathcreek.org. Alright. Oh yeah. So just like a little overview of the, so I support people experiencing state violence with care packages, with one-to-one support. I distribute a book called The Prisons Herbal that people might have come across to people in prison for free worldwide. I'm part of this mobile clinic project and Ukraine Herbal Solidarity. I support a lot of people engaged in kind of like movement work and organising. And I have a podcast called the Frontline Herbalism podcast, but I've mostly been supporting people in prison for the last two years. I'm an ex-prisoner and yeah, most of my sort of political organising has been around that. Yeah. And you know, I wanted to do something with the group like life when I'd made these slides, but I just wanna honour those, like Killed by Borders. Yeah. So please like, pause the video and take a breath, light a candle if you can. I've just lost count of how many people I've met in France who we've treated with a clinic one week who've then drowned in the channel, including like an entire family about three years ago. And it's still happening, you know, so yeah, these systems are not only obviously unnecessary, but like they're murderous, right? Like people lose their lives trying to cross to get to the uk, like across the channel. I'll talk about that more like later on in the workshop. But yeah, I just wanna, I just, I can't talk about this stuff without honouring people that are, you know, killed by these systems. Okay. So yeah, a little bit about the border regime. So yeah, if this was live, I was gonna ask folks like what are borders? Get people to kind of contribute their perspectives of what they think a border is or what the border system is. And yeah, they're made up basically like animals, plants, insects, birds, they've all migrated forever. Humans have migrated all over the world. Yeah. The sand, you know, migrates like the oceans move, like yeah, they are a complete human made construct. Obviously we have, you know, different separations between LANs and Sky, but even those like shifu time. So yeah, there is a quote here in a book called Violent Borders by Reese Jones and I'll, I'll read it out. For people that are just listening, borders are not natural divisions between people or benign lines on a map. They're mechanisms for some groups of people, excuse me, baby sleep deprivation. They're mechanisms for some groups of people to claim land resources and people, while fundamentally excluding people from access to those places. They create and exacerbate inequalities and they protect the economic, political and cultural privileges that have accrued, accrued over the past few hundred years through the spoils of colonialism, capitalism. And most recently economic globalisation, excuse me, drawing a border is an inherently violent act that relies on the threat of force to support a territorial claim. So yeah, so basically borders are tools of states, right? Of colonial entities to, you know, enforce separation between people to control who's coming in and out. But it's worth emphasising that borders are not always closed, right? They are actually always open for capital, you know, for the movement of goods and services for exploitation of labour. People don't realise, but like the really big companies, oh, excuse me, sorry to keep you running, they're really big companies. Were actually, you know, anti Brexit. Like they, you know, love Brexit because they want that constant flow of, of kind of labour to exploit. Yeah. And you know, countries like Greece have things like golden visas. If you pay 250,000 euros you can access a visa if you buy property. So yeah. So the rich don't have any problem flying around the world at all. Yeah. So just wanted to, to emphasise that. And before I dive into the talk, just a little note on language. So there's a really nice crew called the Migrant Rights Network here in the UK who organise around kind of solidarity with migrants, including refugees and yeah, I just wanted to run through some of their definitions. So they identify a migrant as any individual who has cross borders between two different countries for the purpose of temporary residents, for example, to study or work and yeah. Oh, sorry, I haven't put their first names here, but I think it's Gracie Bradley and Luke Denora In Against Borders, which is like another fantastic book, right? How the violent exclusion of people defined as migrants, which then makes it possible to illegalize detain and deport them should be of concern wherever it emerges. So, you know, I'm not gonna be using language like illegal immigrant or alien or you know, this kind of, you know, language that people use to kind of perpetuate like violence in the media for example, or encourage deportations, things like this. Yeah. And I just wanna emphasise that people have multiple identities beyond this kind of status, charact characterization of why they have crossed a border. You know, someone isn't just a refugee or an asylum seeker or a migrant, you know, or you know, a fucking sorry, sorry to swear. Like an expat, right? Like a white expert like who get that name and other migrants don't. Anyway, it's a whole other workshop. But yeah, migrant rights Network talk about how a refugee and asylum seeker is an individual who has been forcibly displaced from their home country because of war or conflict, settler colonialism, excuse me. Or because they have been harmed or threatened with harm due to their ethnicity, religious or political beliefs, disability, gender identity or sexual orientation. An asylum seeker often has very limited rights in the country. They have arrived in asylum seekers may seek formal, official protection from the country they have arrived in, otherwise they may live outside the remit of the law, fearing apprehension by the home office and forced removal. Okay, so what is the border regime? So it is used as kinda shorthand for all the many different institutions, people, systems and processes involved in trying to control migrants. So what feels like another lifetime now, but while I was doing my clinical training, I had a part-time job like just working from home as part of a group called Corporate Watch. It's all sort of like anonymous writing. But yeah, my kind of coworker and comrade put together this book called the UK Border Regime based on his years of experience organising around like refugee solidarity, like he's, yeah, Iranian and it's, you know, he's like super active in different communities and yeah, I helped to kind of edit the book and promote it and stuff and yeah, you can get it for free. I've put a link in the resources section. It's an absolute beast. But yeah, you can kind of download that and get an overview of borders. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk about this more in a minute, but I just wanna emphasise that like borders are everywhere, right? It's not just the physical location, say in France and Cali, it is literally everywhere. So yeah, Gracie and Luke write how borders do not materialise only at the edges of national territory in airports or at border walls. In fact, borders are every day and everywhere determining how people relate to partners, employers, and the police, where they live and work and their access to healthcare and welfare support. So, you know, there's all these kind of like complex systems like all together at the same time. So, you know, the reporting systems, like people having to go to the home office and you know, like regularly sort of like report in where they, you know, they risk like arrest and detention and it's always like a huge source of stress for folks. The dispersal system. So like where people are kind of moved to live, you know, they're often sent to kind of cities really far away, you know, in really horrific kind of like slum accommodation, the systems of raids and the work of the immigration enforcement raid squads. So this is like a team part of the state who raid kind of businesses and homes and other kind of things like mosques and stuff to, to kind of, yeah. Arrest people and deport them. And it, you know, it's just an absolute like weapon of fear. Like it's talked a lot in this border regime book, the detention centre, the detention system. So people are kept in detention centres Yeah. Without, you know, with kind of indefinite amounts of time and yeah, they're just kind of, they're, you know, they're prisons, they're absolute prisons. Like people are often suicidal, extremely distressed, like unable to leave, unable to access like high quality legal support 'cause of the system and yeah, people, you know, kill themselves and there's a lot of self harm and abuse going on behind these walls. Excuse me, deportations. So people are actually like physically quote unquote removed and put on on flights and you know, forcibly removed, say for example, just from the uk. But obviously this happens, you know, all over the place, especially in the so-called us. And yeah, there's a lot of, you know, for every part of these regimes there's like resistance to them, right? Like there's people that have been fighting for a long time to stop deportation who, you know, tie themselves to planes or kickoff or target airlines, things like this to stop people from being deported. Maybe people heard in the media about the UK wanting to deport people to Rwanda as an alleged like safe third country. Sorry, I could like go into so much detail about these, but I'm just trying to give like a kind of summary. Yeah. So continuing investment in Cali, which is where, what I'll be talking about a lot. So this is the port town in France where many people are trying to cross. So the British state invest millions in fencing, policing, surveillance systems to make it as hostile as possible to people. And they obviously collaborate with the French state to do that. The hostile environment, this is language that a former prime minister Teresa May brought in. So this is about, yeah, kind of creating, literally creating a hostile environment for people to live in with very strong kind of anti-migrant measures. You know, whether that's banning people from access to certain care or hospitals or, you know, gathering a lot of surveillance and data to, you know, like people being, what's it called? Like made destitute stuff like this. Like, you know, loads of rhetoric in the media. Yeah. Just this whole vast array of like anti-migrant measures and finally like hostile data. So this is systems that the home office used to kind of track people. So there's like, you know, billions invested in these kind of surveillance systems like electronic tagging for example. And yeah, throughout this kind of talk, I have included little pictures from this project called Conversations from Kelly. So they get so different volunteers and people working in France, like tell them little anecdotes of what's happened and it kind of communicates quite viscerally like what is happening there. And then these are kind of like, like wheat pasted, like around cities and stuff. There's a whole book of them now. They're like really, really moving. So this one, the person said, you told me the day before you had to, you had tried to cross the channel and had spent seven hours at sea, you called the UK Coast Guard, but for hours, but nobody came. Your face was burnt and blistered. You asked me for the number of another Coast Guard one that would actually come. Yeah. And that's just kind of a typical story of yeah, collaboration between, you know, the coast guards and the border regime of this situation of, you know, different coastal teams, like not picking people up, right. And people getting dragged back into French waters and then dragged back into the British waters and you know, just like all this kind of like horror of not answering people's distress calls and again, trying to create this kind of hostile environment for people trying to cross. So yeah, so there's a whole bunch of different actors involved. So like the home office is like the main government department in the UK responsible for immigration control. Then we have, you know, like the border force. So like these are the guys in uniform responsible for control at the frontiers, you know, people working in airports and ports like checking people's passports, searching vehicles, you know, kind of, yeah. Being on that front line. And then there's the collaboration of all these other companies, right? Like airlines, ferry companies that let them do this, that let, yeah, that, you know, racialized people, racially profiled people getting on their coaches, things like this, travel agents for example, that book all the deportation flights. You know, there's like so many different actors that are part of this entire system of oppression against people, you know, against migrants and refugees and asylum seekers, security companies who kind of, yeah. Do a lot of the border searches run the detention centres for profit, for example. Yeah. And it, it geeks developing this kind of big data software and inventing new surveillance systems and weapons, big business lobbying to try and keep down labour costs. You know, bosses who call immigration enforcement raid on workers demanding higher wages. So lots of people who kind of resist or push back on labour conditions are often kind of dobbed in by their, by their employers. Yeah. And there's also, you know, just like snitches who are just people in communities that think someone is like, you know, un undocu, undocumented, undocumented and will, you know, call a certain hotline and that will trigger a raid. There's obviously the role of the media, there's all these politicians that kind of posture is like tough guys, tough on immigration and then, you know, there's like far right agitators and fascists who try and kind of push the window even more of like acceptable hate. And we saw that recently with kind of some fascist uprisings, the uk Yeah. And even say in England there's council and homeless homelessness charity workers that go out with immigration enforcement to find foreign workers or rough sleepers to help deport them, which is just like effing horrific. Okay. But yeah, you can read more about that in the Border regime book, like I mentioned, like I'm not talking about borders in other contexts, I'm talking mostly about the situation where our clinic is working in France, but I just wanna kind of give this like bigger picture around Europe and yeah, there's a kind of map here of like major migration routes to Europe in case, you know, you don't, you don't live in Europe and this is kind of all new to you. You can kind of see the red arrow flows and actually this is quite outta date because there's now this other route in terms of like Belarus to Poland, which is like, yeah, kind of more getting more established. But yeah, there's obviously kind of, you know, the European Union like works together with a system called Frontex to kind of police borders to protect like what, allegedly protect the whole of Europe, if that makes sense, because there's like a sheen agreement, which means people can kind of move freely in between these European countries if, you know, if you have papers obviously. But yeah, these are the, some of, some of the common roots. So if you can see by the time people get to Cali, they've already had like one hell of a journey, you know, like maybe they've been living on the island of Lesbos, you know, that's part of Greece and maybe they've been there for two years waiting for papers and documents in Greece, for example. Maybe they've got all the way to Germany and live there for a few years or a few months and then decided, right, they're gonna go on to the UK because they wanna be reunited with a family member here. You know, maybe they've been kept in a detention centre in Austria, for example, or maybe they've been employed in Spain on some horrific migrant worker worker camp, or maybe they've, you know, gone via Paris and had to do sex work. Like, you know, you know, maybe they've been enslaved in Libya for example. You know, we've met people who have literally been enslaved who've been, you know, stabbed with machetes through their guts. Like literally like every horror you can imagine, like it is happening and people are yeah. You know, stripped naked and pushed back over borders, for example in Hungary and Serbia. It's just, it's just like beyond words and nothing I can say can do this justice of the oppression people face every step of these journeys. And yeah, I just wanna speak to the kind of like fierceness and courage that it takes to, you know, obviously people don't have a choice, right? But yeah, I just wanna name like the fucking resilience for someone to get all the way to France, for example. Okay. So that's just like, you know, absolutely like butchered small introduction. So yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna introduce the context in kale and I wanted to just read something out from a group called Cali Migrant Solidarity. So they're a crew that I've been organising in France since 2009, and I think something they've written about Cali just kind of summarises it really, really well. Okay. So a fundamental component of the state's attack on daily life has been the constant denial of shelter. This was done by providing, by refusing to provide sanction sleeping spaces alongside the invasion, eviction and destruction of any autonomous living places that people created the ability to live in Cali becoming a point of struggle, the ability to live in Cali, becoming a point of struggle for migrant communities alongside the daily attempts to subvert the physical border. Over time, people have made their homes all over the city in disused buildings or squatted camp camps known as jungles from al the Pato word for forest, both inside and on the outskirts of the city. However, violence and arrest in Cali has never just been confined to living spaces. It is a daily reality that people face both while attempting to cross the border, but also whilst going about other aspects of daily life. The train stations, parks and just the street are places where people have been repeatedly targeted for ID checks or controls violence and arrests, as well as constant surveillance and intimidation at the places where people go to eat at the different food distribution places that have been in Cali over the years. The violence faced by people trying to cross the border is the constant that never changes in Cali. People are beaten, caught by dogs gassed by pepper spray or more serious gas and routinely threatened and humiliated. And this is all alongside other injuries or dangers that people face while making attempts to cross the border. While violence in public places and living spaces has fluctuated over the years, the police have never shied away from violence in these places where often nobody is watching when nobody is filming. The police are not the only people who contribute to this policy of violence, repression, or discrimination. In Cali, the way the UK border operates and the fines imposed on truck drivers found with migrants inside means that the violence at the hands of lorry drivers bars crossing is also a significant risk. Uncountable lives are wasted and suffer from the violence of the border, whether from the direct attacks by police and border forces, or in the attempt to escape their controls or through the dangerous methods of transit or at the hands of gang masters and mafia. An unthinkable number of people have died in Cali. Alongside the increased security measure measures over the last couple of years. The number of people being killed whilst to cross in more and more dangerous ways has increased. The people are always in our thoughts many times over the last years, these tactics of deterrents from Cali have been met with resistance and defiance, demonstrations, occupations and resisting evictions have been commonplace over the years. Most importantly, people have always kept coming to Cali, always carrying on crossing the border and finding ways and places to live while they're here. Okay. So yeah, that's a kind of introduction to Cali. But in terms of our clinic, which I'll introduce properly in a second, basically you can see this picture here of these kind of encampments, right? So people are living tents, which are taken like every few days from the police and volunteer groups obviously keep giving them to people so that they are, have some kind of shelter. You know, there are always kind of really horrible conditions without sanitation. For example, groups do try and organise like water points and things, but again, the police take them, there's regular food distributions, again, self-organized grassroots groups doing that, which face criminalization and repression from the authorities there. But yeah, people are kind of like self-organized into these temporary communities and deal with like constant evictions. Cali is obviously right next to the sea, right? So it's like really kind of cold and windy and like difficult like climate conditions and yeah. Just a couple more of the conversations from Cali. You told me the boat had tilted and that you and your family had almost drowned. You said you thought that was the end, your kids held on, held onto your back, you had a baby with you in the water after you were rescued, you said you would never try to get to the UK again, but a few days later you attempted the crossing again. So yeah, like the, the, the kind of pattern I guess in France is, it is repeated attempts at crossing, right? So that could be trying to get into a lorry that could be trying to get a boat and cross the channel, which is the most common way now. And yeah, they're very dangerous vessels. Like often people will sell them to you and completely overload them. They're not always in good conditions. So they often sink people will get to the kind of shore and kind of set off and then be raided by the police, be dragged off the boats. You know, I've treated a 3-year-old girl with pepper spray wounds from the police spraying her. They were trying to spray everyone on the boat to try and get them to, to fall off into the water. And then they said recently, I think this was in some legislation that like beating people is actually quote unquote better than things like pepper spray. So they'll just grab people and punch them and get them off the boats that way. And it's just like, yeah, mind numbingly awful. And people, yeah, people have to try consistently, you know, often people, mostly people have to pay to cross and that's not always financially possible. So yeah, it's kind of, yeah, a whole, a whole other world. But yeah. Okay. But yeah, I just wanna emphasise that like, yeah, I think I talk about this later, but basically there's no safe legal roots, right to the uk. So apart from some refugees for people from Ukraine and Hong Kong, which I'll talk about in the Ukraine section, but if you want to claim asylum in the UK, you have to get to the uk. So you have to risk your life crossing this border and crossing this, you know, body of water. Yeah. And the other conversation from Cali here, you came up to me to ask if the police would evict you this weekend. Excuse me? I said maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a few more days. You said if the police came tonight, we should pray for you all. So yeah, the police are regularly evicting camps, so that means burning people's belongings, taking people's tents and belongings. I met a man whose the cops, he, the cops were taking his tent and his sleeping bag and he said, oh, can I just get my glasses? And the policeman was like, yeah, sure, I'll get them for you. Got his glasses and then threw them on the floor and just like stamped on them. And this guy literally couldn't see. So we, you know, we took him to the optician stuff, got him some new glasses, but it was just like, yeah, you know, the things that go on behind closed doors, basically like, and you know, they won't let other volunteers and stuff. Like there's some human rights monitoring groups that try and monitor evictions. But yeah, it's super, super repressive.