Occupy Seattle
We are excited about the wave of occupations that are sweeping the country. In particular, we are glad to see that people are occupying spaces here in Seattle and that a team of independent medical volunteers have formed at Occupy Seattle. We have provided some support to them in the form of training and resources. If you are interested in plugging into the Occupy Seattle medical team, find the first aid tent at SCCC and ask how you can help. They would certainly be appreciative. Alternately, you could carry a basic first aid kit with you and be prepared to help your friends.
According to our contact at Occupy Seattle, the folks who you’ll want to talk to are…
Dr Brenda – First Aid Coordinator
occupyseattlestreetmedics@gmail.com
509-429-3383
Nurse Mike is the other medical coordinator
678-988-1039
No Mas Muertes
Last month, one of our collective members spent some time in the desert volunteering with No More Deaths. Below is a brief report on how things went.
After spending a day at camp going over how to use the maps and GPS units and getting oriented to No More Deaths policies and procedures we were ready to head out.
Our first day out on patrol we drove for an hour or so south of camp into the Coronado National Forest. We came across Border Patrol arresting 3 people. After parking the truck, we walked over and discovered a couple of plainclothes BP agents with their guns trained on the folks they were arresting while they were signing paperwork waiving their right to a deportation hearing. After giving the folks being arrested food and water and offering medical care, we stuck around until they were loaded into the G4S transport van. While we were waiting we learned that all three of them were between the ages of 15 and 17. We also overheard BP talking about having apprehended 5 more people who were part of the same group. We drove a bit down the road and came across the rest of the group. BP had handcuffed them to each other and were forcing them to hike down the mountain to the waiting van. Again, we offered them food, water, and medical care. This time, BP told us not to bother with the food because they were going to be spoiled in detention and fed Burger King. Inexplicably, they also said that there would be chicken salad for the vegetarians. They were also openly mocking the people they arrested and talking about how much fun they were having.
Later that day, we passed by one of the failed pieces of the electronic border fence. These towers have an assortment of high tech surveillance equipment designed to detect people crossing the border and alert nearby BP agents to their presence. They don’t really work and the program was recently determined to be a failure.
We also passed by some of the low tech tools that BP uses.
These are drug behind their trucks to clear all of the tracks off of the dirt roads, making it easier to tell if there has been recent foot traffic.
The next few days were significantly more sedate. Other patrols found water bottles that had been slashed by BP. Their official policy is that they have to dump the water and carry the jugs back to their trucks. In practice they often just slash them.
We did a lot of hiking, combining food and water drops with new trail exploration and mapping. These hikes also gave us plenty of time to talk about politics and get to know each other. I spent a lot of time talking about what it meant to approach this work from the perspective of solidarity instead of humanitarian aid and how my anarchist politics motivate me to offer assistance to people who are crossing the border.
The last day out we hiked to Josseline’s shrine.
This shrine marks the spot where a No More Deaths volunteer found the body of Josseline after she had been missing for a couple of weeks. She was hiking with her 10 year old brother trying to meet their mother in L.A. (she was 14) when she became to ill to continue. She told her brother to keep going, which he eventually did. After successfully reaching their mother he was able to notify people about her death. A search party went out, but to no avail. It was an unrelated volunteer out exploring who found her remains.
This story really drove home the senselessness of border policy and enforcement and was certainly a turning point in how I view the region and the work that is being done there.
Hello World!
We’ve been on hiatus for the past few months as some of us were
finishing up with nursing school and the rest of us were attending to
the banality of everyday life. We are excited for the new energy that
the conclusion of school and the long awaited summer weather has
brought. Though we haven’t been updating our website, we haven’t been
completely inactive. We were present at the 15th annual Dead Baby
Downhill where we set-up a first aid tent and treated the inevitable
road rash that comes from racing bikes. One of us went to T.W.A.C.
and presented our first aid and self care for cyclists workshop. It
was well received and we are all looking forward to improving upon it
and presenting it here in Seattle. We have also felt the effects of
the most recent round of police repression directed towards the
radical community here in Seattle.
Upcoming trainings
May 1st @ Emma Goldmans Finishing School
-We’ll be teaching a short first aid training
May 20th-22nd @ Evergreen State College
-We’ll be teaching a 20 hour street medic training. This weekend long intensive training will cover the basics of street medicine and ethics along with how to prepare for an action, patient assessment, basic first aid, how to pack a kit, dealing with chemical weapons and so much more.
Thursday, March 3: Eyeflushes for Protests Skillshare
In response to recent police violence, Seattle Street Medics will hold a brief protest health and safety skillshare on Thursday March 3rd, 6:30pm at the social center recently opened in the Central District. The primary focus of the skillshare will be eyeflushes, useful for treatment after exposure to police chemical weapons like pepper spray, mace, teargas, etc so we can get back in the streets where we belong!
This skillshare is free, but if you can please try to bring an unused water bottle with a sport top (you know, the “squirty” kind). The medics will have a few favorite health and safety zines on hand for distro, either free or by donation. Donations accepted but by no means required.
Hope to see you there, and in the streets.
Thursday March 3
6:30pm
social center (was Cafe of the Masses, new name TBA)
600 24th Ave So. (24th & S Lane) in the Central District
Please forward and re-post as you see fit.
Update for September 12th
At a recent meeting the members of the Seattle Street Medic Collective put in place some idea of our internal structure. Namely, that we currently have very little and like it that way. We like our working groups and our projects and we also want the rest of the community to participate if you want to. Currently we have a bike safety zine in the works, along with a zine about low income and free medical resources. We also are in the process of figuring out what kind of training(s) we want to bring to the larger community and gathering the tools and information to do that. At our current juncture we are open to all members of the community with an interest in radical health and community support to work with us on this. But! Please be seriously willing to contribute and respect the diversity and boundaries of our current members.
Love,
Seattle Medics
New Email Address for our Group
It has come to our attention that the email we have been using is not filtering incoming emails properly, which has been leading to incoming emails not being received, so we’ve gone ahead and created a new Gmail at seattlemedics@gmail.com
From now on, please send all emails to our group there, and not to our address at the googlegroups account.
For those not aware, Seattle’s second anarchist book fair will be happening at the Vera project on August 21st and 22nd. Dozens of radical vendors, book sellers and groups will be present, providing a great introduction to different aspects of the regions diverse radical community.
This year, we’ll be staffing a table and providing a 2 hour basic protest health and safety workshop. Any who are interested are welcome! Also, we are hoping to have some zines and merch prepared by then, so feel free to stop by and chat us up. We’ll be there all weekend =).
More information about the anarchist book fair from their website here.
It’s coming! First Aid and Self-Care for Cyclists
Expecting to have a first run of the zines in time for the Seattle Anarchist Bookfair. Here’s an excerpt, we’re still sweating away at the rest (in between riding our bikes, of course!):
Who we are, why you’re holding this in your sweaty, bikey hands:
The Seattle Street Medics are a loosely-based collective who seek to dedicate themselves to the health and well being of our communities by providing on site and grassroots-based first aid and medical support within the Seattle area. Our members range widely in experience and scope, from 20-hour medics to Wilderness EMTs and nurse practitioners. Many of us have trained or worked with Portland’s Rosehip Medic Collective at one time or another. Our utmost principle as medics is always thus: FIRST DO NO HARM. As individuals we are very diverse and have a wide range of ties to many communities, including the cycling community. Many of us rely upon cycling for recreation and transportation, and we have spent a lot of time caring for cycling-related injuries. This zine and training focus on self-care and first aid, primarily from an allopathic (Western medicine) perspective, with some very basic herbalism. We teach from the breadth of our experience the methods we have used on the streets, with hopes that you will put this information and training to use in your own communities, making cycling more accessible for everyone. Additionally, we hope to help you and others in deciding when to seek emergency medical attention when it is most crucial. Remember, an ER bill is nothing in comparison to the loss of life or limb. That ER bill can be written off by the hospital or fundraised for, but your contribution to your community is unique!
Would you be interested in a Medical Training?
Our medical collective has many different projects currently going on, but we’d be interested in gaining feedback from the community as to what kind of medical training people would like.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated; and if you don’t find a training below that you’d be interested in, please feel free to send us feedback about a training that you would be.
