Health Autonomy Convergence 2023

From https://www.healthautonomyconvergence.com/

Durham, North Carolina • Coming May 2023 •

A convergence about healthcare and beyond❋

Anti-authoritarian, abolitionist, and anarchist healthcare workers

Re-imagining and undermining the medical-industrial complex together✹

Conspire with us…

An invitation to deepen connections for health autonomy together.

We invite healthcare workers, caregivers and all who are aligned with our principles to converge in Durham, North Carolina in May of 2023 to find and support one another while creating exits from exploitative medical mazes.

Are you are a healthcare worker or caregiver who wants to share skills and knowledge, plug into an educational track, propose a discussion, screen a film or discuss something we haven’t even mentioned? Submit a proposal!

Interested in tabling for the event? Click submit proposals. Interested in volunteering during the weekend? Register and shoot us an email.

About the convergence

What to expect…

Three days and nights of discussion, workshops, speakers, hands on learning, films, food and fellowship!

We seek experts in their respective experiences, fields, and communities to share skills and knowledge that may be difficult or impossible to access outside of the space we create together.

For those looking to orient around specific fields for the weekend, we will experiment with tracks to (optionally) follow in order to foster self-organizing and reinforce long-lasting networks.

We will create space to vent and grieve all we have lost in the last few years and will provide ample time to nourish ourselves together.

Coming to Durham in May 2023 ❋
The Hospitals belong to the people <3

Who we are

We are anti-authoritarian, abolitionist, and anarchist healthcare workers re-imagining and undermining the medical-industrial complex.

We look towards a future that prioritizes collective care over individualized exploitation.

We honor expertise and undermine professionalism.

We believe that all humans should have access to knowledge of their bodies, unmediated by the hands of state and capital.

We work towards a future wherein all human and planetary life has intrinsic and non-exchangeable value, where we are able to live and die on our own terms.

We look to deconstruct the lines separating patient and provider and hope to collaborate on truly shifting the way power flows in these systems.

We are pro-autonomy, anti-individual, pro-intimacy, anti-commodification, and so joyful to be coming together to do this work.

We are an evolving network.

If these values resonate with you, we invite you to conspire with us.

There are 32 Comments

maybe someone from this group/event/convergence will speak to what "pro-autonomy, anti-individual" means? particularly the anti-individual part. otherwise, this looks like a great project.

autonomy is codeword for commie. they wanna sound wholesome, relatable and non-controversial, lower down defenses, get a foot in

anti-individual is the negation aspect of commie, much like some individualists claim to be anti-left or anti-commie

what this means in practice is usually not much more than awkward pauses and giddiness after certain words like “connectivity”, “networks” and “community” which gives these words an air of woo. but it can also mean that they’ll steamroll over any particular person for the sake of their projects

i should clarify, i would like to know what *this network* means by saying "anti-individual" since this bit is in the "about us" section.

maybe by "health autonomy" they imply that the category of health as a separate sphere separated from the whole of life has become autonomous and sovereign over the rest of the subordinated aspects of living

well, in that case health autonomy should be opposed with health anarchy in a similar way the concepts of food sovereignty and food autonomy have been critiqued, proposing food anarchy instead:

"Food anarchy and the State monopoly on hunger" by Hannah Kass

ABSTRACT

"This article applies an anarchist lens to the food sovereignty movement. It analyzes food regimes as capitalist agriculture regimes which rely on the State’s monopoly on hunger, wherein the State relies on the dispossession of people from their land and food systems, the protection of property, and the primacy of capital. The interdependence of this State-capital-property trinity is violently enforced, and manufactures compliance through counterinsurgent strategies of social war. The State monopoly on hunger justifies a new offshoot of the larger food sovereignty movement, a prefigurative praxis which dismantles all food regimes to build new counter-worlds: food anarchy."

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/D33SMDSY9EYFFQTRVTBK/full?target=10.1...

medicine is actually the opposite: pretty much every recommendation is pre-determined and completely controlled by cops (not "individualistic" by any stretch of the word) and pharmaceutical companies (also not not really individuals). Some folks who study psychiatric medicines/methods lament how outdated the SSRI for everything type of approach carries on due to lack of serious research and breakthrough...it's done for typical "individualist" capitalist motives, yet has all the trappings of collectivist nation states and bureaucracies, especially where morality and threat-addressing procedures are concerned.

In terms of the day to day basis, medical institutions are pretty anti individual, even though in the US. doctors still will shake you down if your insurance isn't perfectly amenable to your situation.

It says “The Hospitals belong to the people”. Which people? Is this like a patient-run hospital or a worker run hospital like a co-op? Will they be critical of hospitals and the clinic and how they resemble prisons, factories and schools? Will their abolitionism only for the abolition of prisons, but not factories, schools, and hospitals?

abolish hospitals! abolish restaurants! abolish houses! abolish cities! abolish language! abolish the internet! abolish abolish! destitute abolish! make total destroy!

inb4 makhno comes in to ask what’s their mask and covid policy

Masks will be required only for white men. Upon donning the mask the white men will be required to say "Covid is a real virus," or not be allowed to attend. Hilarious video montages of grown men crying about masks will follow.

Oh, you get lost in the long game. The comment was adding to the extended lulz of the one above it. No entry for you.

....whattaugunna do? You gonna call security, who're gonna call the cops

Yes... Checkmate.

It's a useless exercise to entertain here because you'll never show up. Just like the last loudmouthed internet warriorman that threatened to show up at the last few anarcho events which requested people wear masks indoors, stating they wouldn't wear a mask but "pEoPLe caN tRY tO MAkE mE!!" Probably you, still hiding at home, afraid to show.

But but... am I not supposed to "stay home", you liberal tool? I'm confused now.

"anti-individual" sounds like a weasel word to indicate a rejection of personal autonomy in the face of ideological conformism. suss af. has anyone shot them an email to ask for clarification?

Terrible, who on earth would like to oppose all individuals collectively?

>anti-individual
>anarchist
please pick one

if my nurse said they were anti-individual and pro-intimacy id run. just start my iv and go away.

you can tell this was made by actual nurses because theres no mention of this convergence being for chronically ill/disabled people or anyone who needs to pass through them to access medical care.

Its because some of the commenters have misinterpreted anti-individual to be the egoist one, when the health autonomy crew mean a rejection of the Randian-individual societal model which favors the wealthy and successful individuals more.

that's a lot of assumptions packed into one sentence. if that's what the organizers meant, then they should say so since there has always been an acknowledgement of the role of individuals in anarchism. in fact, one of the main failures (among many others) of marxism and the left more broadly is the distinct lack of discussions about individuals; it's mostly about masses and classes, leaving very little room for radical subjectivity and a healthy distrust of peer pressure and other mechanisms of social conformity.

My assumption stems from a deep understanding of the unique individual lurking within all of us, and how " it's " been coated and obscured by a materialistic selfish Randian self-consciousness, which liberalism is largely based upon.

to people not liking a vague and not very well clarified description of an event, not to mention horribly "been there, done that" in terms of alternative approaches to medicine. Durham , where the event will be held, is a fairly large city, and you can't have anti-capitalist communities in such a setting. In other words, its more of the same anti-individualist proselytizing thats part of the day-to-day in US anarchist culture. It would be nice if anarchist writers wouldnt spare so many details. "We don't like individualism" interestingly has a lot in common with the big pharma and pro-state way of doing things.

So you may not like angry responses, its a form of weakness to you...and...nice trolling. If you don't like "individualist" anons, you might like twitter and facebook a little better.

While I appreciate your comments, it's s also important to notice that "anarchist" comes in last on the list of organizers. Clearly the folks putting this thing together are aware and sensitive enough to *nominally* delineate and separate anarchism from anti-authoritarianism and autonomism. This should raise a few (ahem) red flags. Since the mid-1980s in the USA, "anti-authoritarian" has been code for maoist; since the early 2000s, "automonist" has been code for leninists without Lenin. This would very easily explain the "anti-individualist" proclamation.

But an attempt to appeal to folks who don't like oppression and cops, but the organizers are certainly more left-wing than anarchists and would say that stalin and mao are preferable to hitler...not saying i'd prefer some racist fascist, but there's really no way of knowing which of the three was the worst. I was born in the 80's and don't have much of a feel for the types of political programs that hardcore leftists have flirted with.

Looking at site though, it does seem kinda maoist in terms of the appeal to the 60s stuff. "Abolitionist" has been being used by a lot of writers in response to the recent criticisms of police brutality.

Oh, nice leftist gymnastics addressing the problem of big pharma domination, but by actually calling for "the whole of humanity" to receive every single booster shots...

In related news, "Freedom" News keep doing their shit deep down the sewers of Western anarchism, and I'll avoid looking down this shit abyss for too long.

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