Who & What are Street Medics?
You’re among thousands at an antiwar demonstration when police start using pepper spray and firing tear-gas grenades. You’re choking and blinded. People around you are shouting and panicking. Ordinary fire and rescue services are standing idle–they are instructed never to enter areas until police declare them secured, and to tear-gas a crowd is to define it as insecure.
Who will help? The Street Medics. A band of volunteers with varying levels of medical credential but all specially trained in the treatment of the injuries most common at demonstrations. Street Medics walk purposefully alongside frightened crowds, urging them to “walk!”. They move in buddy pairs, carrying medical supplies and wearing eclectic uniforms–a fishing vest with MEDIC and a star of life emblazoned on the back or a jacket with a Red Cross made of duct tape.
Street Medics aren’t just at protests. We travel wherever we can to offer medical care. Be it an anti-war demonstration, a natural disaster or a war zone, the Street Medics will travel to help those in need.
Colorado Street Medics are one of the original street medic collectives organized to assert that healthcare is a human right. We band together as medical providers ranging from herbalists and paramedics to doctors and acupuncturists. We believe in participating in solidarity, not charity. We participate in events as community members, not saviors or heroes. We work to deconstruct oppression in ourselves and our communities as well as supporting social movements that work to do the same.
