HAC 2023: Report Back

In May of 2023, the first Health Autonomy Convergence (HAC) took place over a long weekend in Durham, North Carolina. A small group of organizers worked for over a year to plan, create, and implement the three-day convergence. We were a group of old and new friends and comrades, many of us having met through various anarchist and radical organizing over the years. Additionally, most of the organizers are licensed health care workers. The original intention for the gathering was birthed out of some kind of desperation for togetherness. We wanted to gather, to share our stories, to make connections, to share skills, to learn from each other, and to no longer feel so alone in this work. Just in the years prior, we collectively had gone through a pandemic, an uprising, so much loss, as well as moments of potential horizon. We had been inspired by other gatherings and work related to health autonomy, and an understanding of our collective liberation beginning with the end of our corporeal and mental oppression. We also felt a lack of theoretical and practical discussion regarding the role of health and care in our radical circles. We wanted ways to create more robust national and international networks, as well as a shared space to process the world as seen through a lens of caregiving while recognizing we aren't solely caregivers. To these ends, our stated values for the convergence were: "We are antiauthoritarian, 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 an evolving network." 

With these principles as our guides, we wanted to create a convergence that would bring together people who work in health care institutions with licenses and for pay, as well as those who are committed to providing health care outside of the medical industrial complex, and often without pay. We wanted to create a blending of comrades with institutional knowledge and resources as well as healers working in mutual aid, community care, and harm reduction projects. We had not anticipated such an overwhelming positive response, and quickly reached our limit in terms of venue and organizing capacity. To help manage registration, venue limitations and keep true to our vision for the event, we had to cap our total number of attendees at 300. We also came up with a fist-come first-serve two tiered registration process. One registration date for licensed healthcare workers and a second date for unlicensed healthcare workers. We felt this would allow us to create an intentional mix of attendees.

Our next goal was to create a diverse array of topics to be discussed, to highlight health and  care in its most holistic and expansive worlds. We created "tracks", into which talks and  presentations could be grouped. These included: mental health/antipsychiatry, insurgent care, FTP/anti-carceral, sexual and reproductive health, transhealth, harm reduction, grief/death/spirituality, disability justice, integrative medicine, health systems, and labor organizing. These were based on ideals we had going into the organizing as well as what presentations were submitted as areas of interest. The sessions were flexible in terms of presentation style (lecture format, discussion, multimedia, hands-on skills, small group sessions, keynote speakers, etc) and time format.

Our third goal was to foster connections between people, and continue to build networks that grow power in wider liberatory movements. We wanted attendees to feel free to go to as many or as few sessions as they desired, have unstructured time, and socialize at organized events outside of the formal talks. We offered space for ad-hoc presentations as they arose, we hosted a dance party on the final night, regional lunch gatherings, and a BIPOC dinner was informally organized by attendees. We proposed the idea of regional gatherings with a potential for more national gatherings in the future, and attendees created several email lists to stay in touch.

In the end, we had nearly 300 attendees from all different aspects of care work, and over 50 workshops presented over the course of 3 days. The depth and range of presentations was impressively imaginative and broad with workshops about how to kick cops out of the hospital, a Mass Casualty Incident (MCI) drill, a panel on abortion care from the past to the present, a grief circle, a writing workshop, and much much more. The excitement and participation from everyone who attended really filled our cups. Finally we were able to find connections with other people in healthcare, and soothe that achy loneliness we all felt. We heard this sentiment echoed from many participants, as one attendee wrote in the feedback forms that we supplied after the event: “[The] most meaningful part was connecting with so many really brilliant and cool health workers invested in creating new ways of caring for each other...an incredibly special few days, I'm so so glad that I made it.” And another, “It was the sweetest time I've had in years. Spiritually and emotionally filled from it and reinvigorated to stay in the work.” 

As with any experiment, there is much room for improvement. One aspect that as organizers we fully understood going into the organizing was a lack of BIPOC representation in the organizing team as well as in attendees. Some feedback also pointed to a lack of discussion of racial dynamics in healthcare organizing as well as a lack of historical grounding in black and indigenous healing traditions. Additionally we felt there could have been more content surrounding queer and trans healthcare. We were overwhelmed with the amount of interest in the convergence which forced us to be more selective than originally planned, which some felt was elitist and exclusionary of non-licensed health care workers. In a large convergence, there is a balance between theoretical and practical skills, with feedback requesting more of both. Also, requests for more content but also more free time to socialize and connect. In the future we plan to address this feedback to help facilitate a more comprehensive and improved gathering. 

Almost a year later, we are still feeling empowered by the impromptu community that we created for those three days. As we watch hospitals being bombed in Gaza, and hospitals here continuing to crumble in front of our own eyes, we are still looking to each other for inspiration and connection to determine how we can continue to care for each other in the midst of ongoing crisis. We hope that the spirit of HAC can live on in smaller, regional gatherings, and (hopefully) in more national gatherings in the future. As we slowly tend to this project behind the scenes, we encourage you all to continue to check back to this website for updates and future events. If you are planning a HAC related event or project that you would like us to promote, please send us an email. If you have ideas about how to further collaborate, please send us an email. We anticipate releasing a “How To HAC” zine sometime this year, and have made an archive of presentations from HAC 2023. If you have not already received access to the archive via email, please get in touch at hac.archive@proton.me Stay in touch!