Street Medic/ine Training at Wild Roots Feral Futures 2013

Note: If you have workshops, skill shares, teach-ins, etc. that you would like us to list ahead of time, please post them on the workshop forum and/or contact us at feralfutures@riseup.net 

Register for the Street Medic/ine Training now!


Wild Roots Feral Futures is very excited to announce a 2.5-day Street Medic training at this year's WRFF, taught by members of Chicago Action Medical (CAM), Mutual Aid Street Medics (MASM), and Finger Lakes Action Medics (FLAME).

National first aid systems in most of the world came out of the medical corps of popular and liberation movements in the 1950s and 1960s. This was also true in the United States, where street medics were operating and training in Mississippi and New York City at least four years before Maryland established the first statewide EMS program.

Street medics are an international informal community who have provided medical support during the last half-century of protests, direct actions, uprisings, and militarized natural disaster aftermaths. Becoming a member of the street medic community involves completing a 20-28 hour training, working at an action as the buddy of an experienced street medic, and maintaining relationships with the street medic community.

Students who attend this training are expected to attend all of it. The training covers (1) street medic field operations and prevention, (2) emergency response, (3) patient assessment and first aid, (4) community health work, and (5) operating in unsafe scenes. Scenarios, skills stations, and critical thinking exercises are based on recent experiences of street medics in backcountry and urban situations.

All students will get non-latex gloves and a 70pp street medic handbook, and may purchase a basic first aid kit.

Itinerary:

• June 19-21: 20-hour street medic training.

• June 23: 3-hour Intro to herbal remedies for base camp and blockade.

• June 23: 2-hour Wildcrafting high-desert medicine for common camp maladies.

Trainer bios:

GRACE KELLER is an internationally-recognized street medic trainer and a member of Chicago Action Medical. She trained as a street medic in 2001 and apprenticed as a street clinician in 2002-2003. She has spent the years since volunteering as a front-line health worker, clinician, educator, and health systems designer in urban, rural, and backwoods environments.

Ms. Keller grew up among pokeweeds, corn fields, and ramps in a parsonage beside a country church in the south. She began formal study of clinical herbalism in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. As a survivor of psychiatric abuse and former assistant director of a peer-run, recovery-based state mental health agency, she takes a strong interest in how complex social situations and trauma can be addressed by lay health workers.

BECCA PISER works as a registered nurse. She was trained as a street medic in 2002 and is active in Mutual Aid Street Medics and Philly Street Medic Collective as a medic and trainer. Becca is a founding member of Peoples Medical Relief, providing medical relief and recovery work with survivors of hurricane Sandy in New York.

Becca has challenged medic trainers across the Eastern and Central US to update their trainings to meet current realities, and helped develop new curricula for training street medics, affinity group medics, and community first-aiders. Becca started two prison arts programs and is working on starting a third.

GREG is a street medic, herbalist, Wilderness EMT, bicycle mechanic, farmworker, Reiki practitioner, and community builder. When he is not summit hopping he spends his time in Ithaca, NY, where he organizes with FLAME (Finger Lakes Action Medics and Educators) and the Ithaca freeskool.

Greg offered ongoing herbal support at Occupy Wall Street and other protests, has helped maintain campaign health at longer forest actions and encampments. Most recently, he organized medical care for the 50,000 person Forward on Climate rally in Washington, DC and the Earth First! Climbers Guild's week-long climb training which took place in the snow-covered Finger Lakes National Forest.