A group of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Monthly Meetings recognize that there is a permeable membrane between health and environmental justice concerns. They’re moving the selfcare sovereignty and environmental justice needle in meaningful ways that uplift the lives of many.
The Meetings act on their awareness that environmental toxicity found in Pennsylvania’s urban communities where waste incinerators and oil refineries abound translates directly into air, water, and food toxicity. Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) and chemical-laced agricultural run off water in Pennsylvania’s rural coal mining and farming regions does the same. Both situations are synonymous with abysmal health in distressed areas where quality healthcare is sparse, disappearing, or non-existent.
In response these PYM Meetings have become medicinal herb growers in partnership with the Swarthmore PA-based non-profit, Singularity Botanicals. They are responding to the need of the hour by offering a Complementary Integrative Medicine (CIM) lifeline to Pennsylvanians in dire need.
Chronology:
I. Holistic Covid-19 Pandemic Relief: Free Medicinal Herb Distribution
II. Medicinal Herbs Serve as Nexus for Cross-cultural Communication in Polarized, Economically Distressed Rural Appalachian & Urban Black Communities Plant Medicine is Integral to the Work of a Singularity Botanicals
III. Complementary Integrative Medicine (CIM) Team Serving Democracy Restoration Movements: Acupuncturist-MD, Acupressure & Asian Healing Arts Specialist, Nutritionist, Herbalist, Psychotherapist, Massage Therapist.
Monthly Meetings (MM) in four states, six of which are Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (PYM) members, first stepped forward in response to a call to action just before Covid highlighted the massive gaps in the healthcare system and the fragility of American supply chains.
Chester, Yardley, Harrisburg, and State College Monthly Meetings, and Media Friends Meeting & School, along with a Friend offering a 20-acre wildcrafting parcel in Cheyney, Pennsylvania cultivated plant medicine that saw hundreds of people in Pennsylvania’s most vulnerable communities through the pandemic. The network has subsequently gained traction and the momentum to be of service in the tumultuous times that are now upon us.
The Meetings participate in a network of growers that also includes Friends from Broadmead Friends in Ohio, Old Chatham Friends in New York, Austin Friends in Texas, a Buddhist Meditation Center, Community Centers, and Intentional Communities.
Phase I. The network of Meetings and (f) Friends began by methodically cultivating medicinal herbs that address chronic illnesses from which people of color suffer disproportionately: Heart disease, stroke, diabetes, hypertension, asthma, and lead contamination. The project mission is: Relocalized control of healing in anticipation of supply chain disruptions that limit access to medicines and healthcare.
The grower’s work supported medicinal herb distribution and skills-building workshops in Delaware County PA on the eve of the pandemic. Chester, a city of 30,000 with grit, heart, and an indomitable spirit was the epicenter of the service area. (The medicinal herb growsite on Chester Friends meetinghouse grounds is the largest site in eastern Pennsylvania.)
Chester has been a toxic waste dumping ground for the entire Mid-atlantic region for decades. 71% Black, Chester residents are caught in the grip of chronic health conditions that are prevalent in communities of African descent as a function of prolonged stress, poverty-induced diet, and longstanding institutionalized, and systemic health disparities.“Cancer clusters” precipitated by extreme environmental toxicity abound in Chester.
Phase II. As polarization worsened in the US, the Singularity Botanicals Plant Medicine Project created spaces for cross-cultural conversations around selfcare and healing between communities which otherwise would have had zero contact.
The Project began working in the former coal mining region in the Appalachian Mountains of Central Pennsylvania. The divide between Appalachian and African American community worldviews appears to be vast. Yet discussion of medicinal herbs invited both groups to achieve a shared goal and recognize commonalities.
Both impoverished Appalachian communities in Central Pennsylvania and urban Black communities have limited access to quality healthcare, and experience greater rates of chronic diseases.
Both groups suffer from rampant drug addiction and death by overdose. (Pennsylvania ranks third among states in the nation for fatal drug overdoses with 14 Pennsylvanians dying daily therefrom.)
And finally, It’s amply documented that African American and mountain communities alike are suspicious and distrustful of the mainstream medical system which has dismissed and mistreated them.
Collaborative cultivation, education, and methodical use of plant medicine can be an antidote to:
- The tragic, often lethal impact of inaccessible or inferior healthcare,
- Heightened vulnerability to more frequent and prolonged systems disruption,
AND creates spaces for expanded mutual understanding across the cultural divide.
State College Friends Meeting, located in the Nittany Valley foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, made initial introductions as well as medicinal herbs to support this effort.
After seven years of Friends medicinal herb cultivation and community relationship-building in urban and rural areas we can bear witness to how growing, and the sustained use of plant medicine has changed people’s lives for the better. This is especially the case in the management of chronic illness. The Project now regularly supplies medicinal herbs to hundreds of people in need who have become plant medicine enthusiasts.
Phase III. Fast forward to 2025. The mainstream medical system is morphing at a dizzying pace; deeply impacting the demographic groups that the Singularity Botanicals Plant Medicine Project serves. Whiplash policy shifts are wreaking havoc. Hospitals are shuttering in urban areas, and the already abysmal quality healthcare in rural Appalachian communities is rapidly evaporating.
Meanwhile 38% of American adults, around 94 million people, have gotten the selfcare memo and are using Complementary Integrative Medicine (CIM). (Rather than focusing exclusively on symptom relief, CIM considers the whole body as a complex living system promoting harmonious, dynamic interaction between our internal ecosystem and the external environment in which we live.)
A Singularity Botanicals Complementary Integrative Medicine (CIM) Team has been formed to provide comprehensive, multi-modality services to those who are ready for holistic rather than disease-focused selfcare. The CIM Team’s primary focus is on: 1) The most vulnerable of vulnerable populations who suffer disproportionately from lack of, reduced access, or inferior quality conventional healthcare, and, 2) democracy restoration movements and advocates. (Free medicinal herb distribution is ongoing.)
The Monthly Meeting herb cultivation work is the solid bedrock foundation on which all Plant Medicine Project initiatives, and the CIM team stand. Medicinal herbs are a key element in the CIM Team toolkit. Herbs provide entre´ into a broad spectrum of communities, are conversation starters, deepen and sustain healing relationships. This group of PYM meetings found a powerful way to appreciably impact the quality of Pennsylvanians’ lives. Friends are encouraged to discern their own pathway and at a juncture when people and the planet need you most.
More information: SingularityBotanicals.net, (484) 846-8993, pbs9@georgetown.edu, Pamela Boyce Simms
