Read and discuss (1) Mama Cat, (2) MCHR, or (3) DNC ’68.
Then read (4) Medic ethics.
"The work I do in the movement – care, comfort, and nourishment – and the work the medics do – they offer first aid, comfort, and care – intertwine. Medics treat the people if there’s tear gas, if there’s rubber bullets. I’m feeding people. Sometimes when they’re going through stressful situations, I’m going to be their ear to talk to. [We met] on the front line. Marta [and Andrea were] the first [medics] to come talk to me.
"We did a wellness event…the day after Christmas. I did the food; kitchen was my area. Marta and the medics brought massage therapists and psychologists to [help people with trauma] issues they were dealing with…. You should have seen the smiles. We fed probably around two hundred and fifty people…. We’re a family. We was chatting and just having a good old time. [And it got all the] orgs together.
“One of the medics [did] trainings at the Andy Wurm lot across from the PD so we can learn more about how to help ourselves, training us at the front line: ‘How do we take care of us?’ When we go out on actions, we always try to make sure we have a medic and legal…. [The police, the people see that and say], ‘Well, these are people who take care of their own’…, because you know they always say we lazy bums, right?.”
Source: Interviewed for “A Political Medicine” (2015), on Grace’s website.
"One night in June, 1964 three civil rights activists were arrested for speeding in Neshoba County, Mississippi while investigating the burning of a black church. The sheriff claimed to have released them shortly after their arrest. A month later their savagely beaten and mutilated bodies were found buried 18 feet under a clay dam…. The killings of Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman resulted in a panicked telephone call to Tom Levin [a New York doctor who raised money for civil rights organizations] from James Forman, head of the Council of Federated Organizations…. A series of hurried phone calls resulted in a meeting two days later of twenty-five to thirty largely older black and white professionals in the home of Dr. John Holloman.
"One of the doctors present was Edward Barsky, a surgeon who had served as the chief medical officer of the Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War [between fascists and leftists in the 1930s]…. It was proposed that a ‘sort of Abraham Lincoln Brigade’ be sent to Mississippi.
"Once on Mississippi soil…those sharing a public health perspective…spent their time investigating segregation in local health facilities and exploring the local health establishment, particularly the black medical establishment, in search of people willing to meet the needs of civil rights workers. They concluded that what needed to be done was to directly fight segregation in southern health institutions.
“The seemingly more militant camp…pushed the notion that the MCHR should be a support organization for the civil rights movement, providing medical care on the front lines…. Later the civil rights movement would be replaced at different times by the antiwar movement, the Black Panthers and the Young Lords, the American Indian Movement, the prison reform movement, poor Appalachians, and workers on the job. The MCHR would never escape the legacy (some would say the curse) of being a service-and-support organization.”
Source: Kotelchuk and Levy (1975) “MCHR: An Organization in Search of an Identity.” Health PAC Bulletin 63.
"Action medical was started by…doctors from the Medical Committee for Human Rights who were…involved in the civil rights movement. When the peace movement hit the streets…, there were nowhere near enough medical professionals willing, able, and available to do medic kinds of work, to take care of things like head injuries from nightsticks and particularly tear gas. And the physicians themselves didn’t really know how to do this unless they had been in the streets and had figured it out.
"Look at medical history: it wasn’t until the late ‘60s or early ’70s that people were thinking in terms of paramedics or…emergency medical technicians – people who knew CPR and could be first responders. The best you could do in a place like Chicago in the 1960s were firefighters, who were terribly enmeshed in the police department and were basically told, ’don’t go there.’ It was our goal to have everyone have some rudimentary knowledge of first aid so that if something happened and there wasn’t a medic in arm’s reach, they could start taking care of things.
“Professionals…felt…their title and their white coat would protect them. Unfortunately that did not turn out to be true…. [In] Chicago in ’68, Mayor Daley literally got on TV and said they must be planning violence, they brought their own medics, get the medics.”
Source: Luis Manriquez (Director) (2004). Street Medic (DVD). Archival and new footage from the U.S., 1968-2004.
"You can trust our medic crew to:
If we mess up, please remind us to hold each other accountable to these ethics. You can also directly hold us accountable. Our ethics are really important to us."
Source: Street Safety. Based on ethics statements by medics with third world debt forgiveness movements, the free clinic that provided the first civilian health services in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, New York City Occupy Wall Street, and the Movement for Black Lives.
When the 5 minutes are up, trainer calls small groups into council.
Spokesperson from each small group shares 1-2 insights from their group.
The medic training site is hosted by sdf