Freedom to Grow
is an abolitionist-driven initiative at the intersection of art, land-based healing justice, community empowerment, plant power and archival practices. The three-year vision for Freedom to Grow is to establish a permanent Legacy Center and Archive in New Orleans dedicated to documenting the lives and contributions of leaders who began their organizing journeys while incarcerated.
By engaging artists, archivists, organizers, plant lovers, community herbalists, and dreamers, the Legacy Center will serve as a space for visioning a new world, responsive to our ever-changing landscape - and as an incubator for growing our imagined future. In illustrating the relationship between past and present, planet and human, abolition and possibility, we believe Freedom to Grow will activate the present.
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Building on a radical tradition in which connection to the land serves as a source of collective agency and resilience, Freedom to Grow will grow a landscaping business to help systems-impacted people implement permaculture and sustainable landscaping practices. Training will involve critical discussion of how land, ecology, and incarceration intersect. The homes that sign up for Liberation Landscaping services will also provide a percentage of plant material to the Apothecary and Herbal CSA
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Scalable, monthly Herbal CSA, which allows community members to purchase monthly shares of herbal medicines (teas, tinctures and salves) as well as participate in monthly workshops directed towards community care and herbal medicine, grown in our Liberation and Solitary Gardens.
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Abolitionist Apothecary staffed by a systems-impacted community member. The apothecary will offer sliding scale access to herbal medicines for directly impacted individuals & organizations doing transformative work.
The apothecary aims to develop a sustainable income source through an herbal CSA, which allows community members to purchase monthly shares of herbal medicines, as well as participate in workshops on herbal medicine.
