We are the Tender Fruits Collective and Land Project. Tender Fruits Collective, our peer support spaces and the land space are all accessibility centered spaces for Queer, Trans, Mad Sick, and Disabled, Survivors to heal, grow and learn in sacred containers made for and by Disabled babes, for our collective care. The land we help to steward is located in Ndakina, also known as colonized Vermont, in the Northeast Kingdom.
We are Sick, Mad and slow. We move on Crip time because our amazingly brilliant bodyminds demand it. Even when the Ableist world doesn’t respect it. We prioritize slowness.
We are multiracial, multi-state and multi-national babes invoking Queered and Cripped, cross-species Ancestry and learning, while being committed to Land Back, Land Rematriation, and Indigenous Sovereignty.
Our Ancestors were artists, healers, hearers, and seers. Our Ancestors were Queer and Trans, as in transmuting tangible love by fighting to be who they were. Our Ancestors are Sick and Disabled weavers of intricate and beautiful networks of care.
Our Ancestors were medicine makers and Earth beings, stewarding relationships with our other than human kin. Our Ancestors are fungi who make life from decay and seeds who roots new possibilities of freedom.
Some of our Ancestors were Colonizers and harm-doers. Some of our Ancestors were Colonized peoples and Survivors. Many of us hold both trauma lineages simultaneously. This is why we feel called to support the ongoing Land Back, Land Rematriation, and Lifeways Back work of the living Indigenous people of the land we steward.
We are not a non profit.
We are a grassroots collective of Mad, Cripples.
We are an underground network of Queer, Crip Mycelium.
In a world under capitalist consumption, the money we mobilize in order to do movement work is just as political as the work itself. This means that we collectively fund from community through mutual aid so that we don’t need to rely on government, state funding, or corporations with interests that don’t align with our work and purpose.
In fact, as Queer, Trans, Neurodivergent, Mad, Sick and Disabled people we know that our ability to do the work we do and to protect ourselves and our communities is dependent on our autonomy away from state-sanctioned prisons/institutions, surveillance requirements in exchange for funding, and Abled care.
We are Survivors who understand that systems and institutions were not made for our healing, but for our incarceration and eradication.
We are low and no income babes committed to creating abundance in our communities through mutual aid, reparations and reciprocity.
We know that with connected community, we can share support of all kinds from a place that honors our capacities and resources, and build expansive networks of collaboration and care.
We create spaces for Queer, Trans and other gender expansive, Neurodivergent, Mad, Sick and Disabled, Survivors to just BE without threat of violence.
We support our communities from a place of collective capacity while honoring our needs as individuals.
We hold peer to peer support groups, virtually, multiple times a week to allow for more spaces for Mad, Sick and Disabled, Neurodiverdent, Survivors to heal collectively without State, Federal, Medical, Psychiatric, Child Protective or Police Intervention.
(For more information about our peer spaces check out our OFFERINGSand FAQ pages)
We send several care packages a month to Mad, Crip, Survivors specific to the needs of the babe receiving the package.
(For more information about our care packages visit our OFFERINGS page)
We steward land, farm, and make herbal medicine for our Disabled families that are seasonal, made with Crip hands, and deep deep reverence for our plant Ancestors and Mother Earth.
(For more information about our herbal medicine visit our OFFERINGS page)
We prioritize slowness.
We want the right to self-determination, autonomy, and self-sovereignty over all decisions that impact our bodyminds and our lives. We want a world where our consent matters, always.
We want a world free of White Supremacist, Colonial, Ableist, Hetero-Patriarchy. Free from Police, the Military Industrial Complex and Prisons, the Medical Industrial Complex and Psychiatric Wards, Social Services and Child Protective Services. A world where our communities have the resources we need to respond to the harm within our own communities. We want a world where we take care of us.
We want a world based on mutual aid, reparations, and reciprocity. A world where we give, freely and lovingly, not because we feel like we must, but because we want to. A world free of Capitalism, where resources are distributed according to needs, not accumulated and used to leverage Power.
We want a world without borders, barricades, or cages. A world where all beings can move as freely as the winged ones above, where we celebrate difference of all of Earth’s creatures as necessary to our collective survival. Where being is belonging.
We want a world where our other than human kin are treated as autonomous, community members in the collaboration with us in the making of a better future.
We want a world where we belong to our Earth Mother, and make collective and individual decisions that reflect our responsibility and roles as stewards.
We want collective liberation for all.
Want to mail us donations?
You’re in luck because we have a mailing address!
TENDER FRUITS COLLECTIVE
P.O. BOX 396
DERBY, VT, 05829