State Violence Is A Public Health Threat. Radical Care Is One Way We Fight Back.
Wellness Debrief 005 has a simple premise: Caring for yourself is how you stay in shape to care for your people.
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Healthy Futures is a future-forward, public health, and human rights-focused newsletter, and ICE has never worked in the interest of any of those pillars. Our country and the people who live here would be better off if the agency were abolished. I’ve been struggling with what, if anything, I can offer outside of that. The onslaught of news is exhausting, but I know that I must continue to pay attention. We all must continue to pay attention, and we all must understand what we are seeing: human beings killed in cold blood on icy streets, children kidnapped and used as bait, hospital patients handcuffed to beds, and due process thrown to hell. ICE agents are even going door to door in Minneapolis—and not being deterred when the resident refuses to open up, which conjures images of the Gestapo, understandably so.
None of this is good for our collective well-being—not as victims or witnesses—and I’ve been wondering what it means to take care of ourselves and each other right now. Being a student of history, I always look to what people have done in the past and pull those lessons into the present. Lately, the public health and self-care work of the Black Panther Party has been top of mind. I totally get that “self-care,” as it’s currently understood, has become synonymous with “treat yourself,” which really means spending hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on items that might make someone feel good in the moment but don’t change the systems that prevent people from being well. Instead of using self-care to uphold the workings of capitalism, racism, and xenophobia, we can lean into an ethos popularized at the community level by the Black Panthers: caring for yourself is how you stay in shape to care for your people.
While many activists and authors have emphasized the idea—specifically Audre Lorde in A Burst of Light and Toni Cade Bambara in The Salt Eaters—the health activism of the Black Panther Party offers the most robust execution of self-care as community care. The Panthers created a community health model that acknowledged the need for individual preservation but positioned it as being in service of a community’s longevity. This movement began within the Party when leader Ericka Huggins was incarcerated and began practicing yoga and meditation. This led to an attorney for the Panthers suggesting that Angela Davis, who was also imprisoned and dealing with depression and anxiety because of it, do the same to preserve her well-being.
Upon release, both women moved from an individual to a collective approach. Huggins and Davis both began teaching that adequate nutrition and physical exercise were ways to protect one’s mental health while navigating unjust systems. As a result, the Party went on to establish wellness, educational, and other survival programs for adults and children in recreational centers nationwide. The Panthers provided free health clinics offering screenings for sickle cell anemia and preventive care. The Winston-Salem, N.C. chapter provided a 24-hour ambulance service. The Black Panthers’ Free Breakfast for School Children Program fed tens of thousands of children. The Party believed that failing to address all forms of state violence, including law enforcement killings, poverty, unemployment, inadequate access to education, and other factors, was the cause of adverse health outcomes in Black communities. They understood that serving one’s community meant taking care of each other and themselves.
They were right and we have the opportunity to carry that knowledge forward.
Whatever caring for yourself looks like right now, do it. That doesn’t mean ignore what’s going on in the world. Don’t be ridiculous in that way. Instead, ask what you can do to steel yourself so that you can show up for your community. Some options include eating as well as you can; booking that PCP appointment; getting your bloodwork done; getting vaccinated if you haven’t already; meditating; or going for a walk or getting a lift in.
Do what you must so that you can be a witness. I’ll leave you with this lesser-known quote on self-care from Audre Lorde, also written during her battle with cancer:
I am saving my life by using my life in the service of what must be done. I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am going to write fire until it comes out my ears, my eyes, my noseholes—everywhere.