excerpt from Power Makes us Sick 3. read the rest of the zine here.

Illegalist herbalism: we argue that this path is more fecund, more joyful and that it moves towards liberation. This is not a path towards personal financial gain, though we hope to be wealthy in our freedom. This is the path of the abuelitas, the crones in our relations, who whispered secrets at night when untrustworthy men were not around. This is nothing new, this is our history and we intend to reclaim it.

Some tenets of an illegalist herbalism:

• We have no respect for capital.
• We steal what we need. For white and/or able-bodied people it can be easy to take all we need from co-ops, health food stores and even gentrifying apothecaries. We, who can steal and get away with it, do it not out of self interest (read: “self-care”) but out of a strive for liberation, dispersing our loot to people who are not able to steal as easily.
• We do not need licensure – we must support herbalists who are facing state repression from regulatory bodies.
• We support broader liberatory struggles that are both attacking what we oppose and those that are building a new world out of ashes. (Standing Rock, Indigenous land defense, Olympia blockade, la ZAD, anti-authoritarian street medics in general, and others)
• We share knowledge freely. The collective knowledge gathered from thousands of years of deep connection to the land is not to be commodified. Share and steal expensive textbooks freely, openly discuss different relationships to plants, the land, and each other.
• Although we must make sacrifices to survive under the capitalist system, we remain committed to solidarity with our comrades who seek paths which allow them to live more freely outside of the systems that would prevent them from doing so.
• We are committed to organizing free clinics to make herbalism accessible. Both as a place for treatment and as a center to transmit knowledge.