Part Two: Street Medics: The People Who Wash Pepperspray Out of Your Eyes

Margaret talks to Kaveh Hoda about the decentralized medical infrastructure that keeps protesters safe.

Sources:

non-public training documents provided by a street medic friend
https://www.bu.edu/bostonia/fall10/street-medic/street-medic.pdf
http://web.archive.org/web/20250220125506/https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5024403/
http://web.archive.org/web/20241028174039/https://massleague.org/CHC/History.php
https://web.archive.org/web/20250212163349/https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/medical-committee-human-rights/2014-09

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/28/health/h-jack-geiger-dead.html

https://medium.com/@Hesperian/care-for-where-there-is-no-justice-the-modern-history-of-street-medics-and-how-they-support-social-a02e940523d4
https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/416-spring-2025/the-praxis-of-street-medics/

https://mutualaiddisasterrelief.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/kupdf.net_street-medic-handbook.pdf
https://tabpres.org/the-flying-black-medics/
https://web.archive.org/web/20071220215141/http://bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/other_stories/multipage/documents/02704493.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did
Cool Stuff. You're a weekly reminder that when there's bad
stuff happening, there's people trying and often succeeding at doing
good stuff, either to counteract the bad stuff or just
for its own sake. And I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy,
dividing the world into good and evil by saying that

(00:21):
some things are good and some things are bad. Although
I actually feel pretty strongly that some things are good
and some things are bad, even though it's not actually
black and white, it's all kinds of shades of gray.
But some things are good and some things are bad.
And some of the things that are good include both
my producer and my guest. And my guest is doctor Kabeijota.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
How are you. I'm good. I'm good, and I'm good.
Thank you for having me on the show again. It's
so much fun to be here. I've learned a lot
of fun stuff in the past. I've learned a lot
in the last episode. This is super fun and important
and relevant stuff. So thank you for having me on
to put things into my brain.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yeah, and actually, the reason that this episode's happening is
probably because at some point you reached out to me
and we're like, hey, I want to talk about street medics.
Wh should I talk to I wasn't the person to
talk to you, but I was the person to make
the connection.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
I did know that. Yeah, you're the person I turned
too for that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
Also, ontologically good is Sophie Lickterman.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Hi?

Speaker 1 (01:17):
How are you? Hi? I want to explain to you.
I think that you all appreciate this. I was thinking
about things that are ontologically good, and so, of course
my brain said dogs was the next thing. You all
know the idea of type one and type two fun,
where type one is fun at the time and type
two fun is fun later.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, like talk about I was not familiar with that,
but yeah makes sense. It checks out.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah, like the like if it if it builds character,
it's type two fun, right right? I learned this past
week about type three fun. More there's a dog. Yeah,
thoughts are fun And guess what I have Type four fun.
I have two dogs? Oh brag? Or is it type

(01:59):
six because it's too three? Anyway? Whatever, I'm good at math.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
I was told there'd be no math on this podcast.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Oh iou to bring you on for a math episode?

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Sometimes not your guy. That's why I didn't go into pediatrics.
There's too much math.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Well, all the patients are twelve.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
That's all right, they're all twelve. Yeah, to call back
to last episode, people.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
In case you missed last episode, in which case you
would not understand much of what we're talking about, but
you would know, because we're going to repeat it that
our audio engineer is named Eva. Hi Eva.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Hi Eva, Eva, you're the best. Thank you for cutting
out all my ums and making me sound smarter.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yeah, when you went on that long tirade about I'm
really glad Eva cut that out too.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
That was a mistake. I deeply regret saying things.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
About yeah, because that would actually be criminally liable for
you to have said, because actually I even agree with you,
just for any when he's listening in case it got
cut out by censors. It wasn't anything like even edgy
or like bad in an oppressive way, just the kind
of thing that doesn't look good in court.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
It was somebody that my good friend here and I
both agree should not.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Yeah exactly. Anyway. This is part two of a two
parter about this modern street medics who have a more
This is one of these things that you just like
take for granted. It'd be like the history of like,
I don't know, giving water to people when they're thirsty.
You'd be like, right, well, that just is a thing. Yeah,

(03:37):
that's always been a thing, right Yeah, as long as
I've been going to protest, there's been street medics at them.
But actually, as a culture, it came from somewhere, And
I'm sure there's precursors. I'm sure there's people doing this
in the barricades of the French Revolution and in the
you know, uprisings against the Ottoman Empire. And I'm sure

(03:57):
I can come up with other rebellions. And I do
a pot asks about rebellions and I can't come up
with any right now. I'll top of my head, okay,
but I'll give a talk about you know, I'll read
from my book or something. I ask for questions and
somebody be like, what books are you reading right now?
Like what books do you really like? And my brain
goes blank, and I'm like, what's the book. I've never
heard of?

Speaker 2 (04:16):
A book?

Speaker 1 (04:17):
I don't understand book.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
I do a segment on my show where every week
I ask at the end the guests not only to
plug something about themselves, but then something that's bringing them
some joy, some art, some piece of media, some books
and films, something that's bringing them some joy. And I
don't know why I don't prepare for it, because every
week I get the answers from my guests, and then

(04:39):
when it comes to me, I'm like pulling for straws
for the last second. I really should prepare ahead of time,
but I'm never am ready for the thing. And I
am generally an enthusiast of things, but when I need
to pull that out sometimes it's a real slow, slow process.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yeah. So anyway, street medics before I do us. The
same group of folks that brought us community health centers
brought us the idea of street medics, the idea that
wherever there is a police officer beating people over the
head with a baton, there should be a medical volunteer
ready to treat that head wound. The Medical Committee for
Human Rights is also best, as I can trace it.

(05:17):
The people who brought us the name street medic as well.
Street medics, though are less likely to be medical professionals.
Most of them are graduates of either a twenty hour
or twenty eight hour training program, which is like about
half of what you had to go through, right, Oh yeah,
for medical training, you had to do like almost twice
twenty hours.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah, I did the undergrad and I did four years
of medical school, year of internship, three years of residency,
a year of chief residency, a year of liver transplant,
three years of GI. So yeah, it's pretty much the same.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
Yeah, Like, but it's more than twice. Okay, it's more
than twice as much.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
A little bit more, a little bit more than twice.
I spent so much time.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
Yeah, I believe it. Medical professionals themselves end up taking
bridge trainings. We talked about that a little bit last time,
to you know, cover the things that you don't get
at residencies, but acknowledging like, hey, you do a lot,
you know. And one group, Chicago Action Medical, has a
street medic handbook that is a really fun, old timey

(06:18):
long title is like a modern medic handbook, but the
title of this handbook is Chicago Action Medical Street Medic Handbook,
containing a large collection of highly esteemed first aid tips
and trick namely spreading calm, patient assessment, not Dying Buddy
rolls selected by experienced street medics for the use of
publicans and protesters in general. Adapted from rose Hit Medical

(06:38):
Collective and other sources.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
Wow, just so good. It rolls off the tongue. That's amazing.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
I know I'm a sucker for that stuff.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
Medical professionals are great at branding. Yeah, I've never seen
a book title with the word containing in the book title.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
I think if you go back to Victorian era stuff,
you'll find the like subtitle will include that. Right, Okay,
but within this book they define street medics with a
shorter quote than the title of the book. The definition
of a street medic in that book is quote street
medics are an international, informal community of people who have
provided medical support during the last half century at protests,

(07:16):
direct actions, uprisings, and natural disasters that are complicated by
police or military targeting of survivors. The model goes back
to the sixties, including the idea that you have to
be cross trained from being a medical professional to become
a street medic. In nineteen sixty eight, there are these
huge militant demonstrations in Chicago for the Democratic National Convention.

(07:36):
The Mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, said, quote, they must
be planning violence. They brought their own medics, Like, I
love that being prepared for someone to hurt you means
that you are there to.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
Look they like it. Why would they have medical professionals
if they didn't like getting hurt.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
Yeah, it's like when people wear like skate helmets because
cops shoot people in the head with tear gas canisters
and you're like, ah, you came ready for a tussle,
and you're like, yeah, because you all have guns.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
Got we came ready to be beats. That's what the
helmet is for.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
I know, it doesn't even stop bullets.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
Bastards.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
From that point onward, street medics knew that they really
were a threat to state power. I read a street
metic talking about being like, oh, the state is concerned
about the fact that we show up preparing to alleviate
state violence. When you speed run street medic history, you
can accidentally do the same abridgment that people do when
they talk about the left in the US in general.

(08:35):
You can tell this story that's like, well, there are
these big revolutionary movements in groups in the late sixties.
They fought against war and for black power and all
of that, and then there was like nothing for thirty
years and then you get the alter globalization movement at
the end of the nineties. There's a big picture way
of doing it, basically, where we have protests in the
late sixties and protests in the late nineties. That of
course is missing thirty years of history. It is true

(08:58):
that protest culture left the mainstream starting around the mid seventies.
We've covered that extensively on the show. But we've also
covered how there's been just so much stuff in the
intervening decades, from the anti nuclear movement to food not Bombs,
to Earth First to Act Up, to gay liberation, to
further struggles for civil rights and just a lot of

(09:18):
stuff in the US alone. And there have been street
medics the entire time. Because the concept and the people
didn't go away, they're less as a specific category. Sometimes
at that point though, even though there are people doing
street medicking the future friend of the group's Seeds of Peace. Like,
one day I'm going to cover this group called Seeds

(09:38):
of Piece. They're pretty cool. They're mostly known now for
setting up protest kitchens and feeding people. Right if you
go to a big demo, there's a decent chance Seeds
of Piece is going to be there. Cooking food for everyone.
But they used to teach action support all throughout the
eighties and nineties, and that included street mediicing as like
a you know, in the same way you teach people,

(09:59):
here's you cook for people, you'd be like, here's how
you flush up people's eyes.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
But with the rise of street metics as their own
unique culture, they stopped incorporating that into those trainings. With
the rise of the ault globalization movement of the late
nineties and early aughts, the Grand movement of movements, street
medics came really exploding back onto the scene, just as
police violence against protesters came exploding back onto the scene
in the Battle Seattle nineteen ninety nine. This movement of

(10:28):
movements used diverse tactics, mostly nonviolent direct action to shut
down the World Trade Organization, and street medic collectives and
trainers became everywhere and just started spreading all over the place.
And at this point I tried to trace the words
street medic, and I ran across people saying it in
the sixties, or like saying that people said it in

(10:49):
the sixties, But it didn't really coalesces its own culture,
despite day affinity groups and people doing it right. But
around the turn of the century, I know that everyone
is like, I really need to know the etymology. I
really need to know when it came into practice. But
they started getting like routinely called street medics, though action
medics was a common enough term too, that has more
fallen out of favor.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
I assumed it came from wartime medics, what they would
call the medics working with armed forces overseas, like in Vietnam.
You know, But that's based on my knowledge of movies
where there's a guy yelling get a medic, and someone
comes like running or over with liam to the tick
care of someone's like blowing off, like limb or something,

(11:32):
and they just transposed that onto violence they were seeing
on the streets.

Speaker 1 (11:37):
That's actually probably right. I would assume that the medic
part of that comes from that, because yeah, you're like, oh, okay,
we're in the street, We're in it. Yeah, yeah, no,
that makes a lot of sense. And then also, you know,
in the Vietnam War protest era, a ton of those
people are vets, right, God, just the whiplash effect of
being like, I did horrible things or avoided doing horrible
things in Vietnam, and then I come back here to

(11:58):
try and stop it, and now I'm watching violence happen
against me and everyone I know from the That must
have been so intense. There's a lot of movies about this,
but it's still just an intense thing to think about.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
Yeah, it is, you know. I just think about this recently,
about like that generation, the hippies that were at these protests,
and how so many of them have become disappointing adults
and older people in regards to the last couple of
elections and how they voted and where they swing on things.
But I really should not paint the whole generation with

(12:32):
the same brush. I don't think that is a fair
thing to do, Yeah, especially given what some of them
went through, as you mentioned, So, yeah, I think it
probably it's really important to keep in mind what they
were experiencing at that time, those people who are involved
at least.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yeah, No, it's interesting. I think about that a lot,
about how there's more multi generational memory currently within progressive
and radical movements now than there was when I was
coming up, because you have this sort of missing generation
of radical and they're not missing. They're there and they're
still there. There's a ton of old radicals who are
still doing amazing things. But yeah, overall that generation is

(13:06):
largely seen as kind of disappointing. A lot of people
like sold out really hard. It's like one of the
ways that gets talked about. And there's a couple things
going on there. I don't know entirely what it comes
down to. One is that you started getting some more
economic prosperity, so the option of selling out was more available.
But on the other hand, you get a lot of
it wasn't just like the seventies weren't like a rich time,

(13:28):
you know, right, but by the same again into the
nineties and stuff, like Western economies are on an upswing.
Another part of it is that do you know that
diagram of a plane with bullet holes in it? It
shows where people, you know, these planes were coming back
and they were like, oh, where do our planes get shot?
And they could look at where all the planes got shot,
and so they started armoring those points, and then it

(13:50):
didn't do any good. And it was because they were like, oh,
those are the planes that came back. That's actually where
planes can get shot and not come down, you know, right.
And so a little bit when we look at the
like hippie generation and you're like, oh, they all grow
up into such boring people, which isn't true, but you know,
as an element of truthiness, well you're looking at the
surviving people.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, survivorship bias. The survivorship bias meme, that totally makes sense.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
Yeah, yeah, that's what I think about with those But
I I don't know, I actually should spend more time
talking to folks with that generation and what they think
about it. And I think part of it also is
that you have, like you still only have this kind
of smallish percentage of people really involved, like in a
really direct way, you know, right, but you did have
this larger, broader support for social movements in the late

(14:38):
sixties that you didn't have in the eighties.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
And also, these people don't podcast very well. They're not
like amazing guests. Like if you were of an older
generation and you look at the younger generations today and
all of the people podcasting, you would assume that I
think we probably still stand out from the typical population
of people are a but you know, we have the

(15:01):
loudest voice, we have microphones, and we go out into
ear holes, so it seems like we have we may
be a little bit more common than we really are totally.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
It's also you get the bias of like everyone was
doing street theater, and you're like, oh, it's probably a
hundred different groups in street theater, you know, like there's
a lot of groups, but that's not everyone. Yeah, so
thinking of everyone doing street medicking. One history I found
specifically says that three groups really led the boom of
street medics at the turn of the millennium. One of

(15:31):
them is the Black Cross Health Collective, which I believe
was an anarchist organization that came more directly out of Seattle.
One was called on the Ground, and I can't find
out any more information about them because their name is
on the Ground and I can't google it successfully.

Speaker 2 (15:45):
Yeah, it seems like it'd be a little too hard
to google Black Cross though, by the way, it sounds
like an awesome heavy metal band.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
Well, okay, so Black Cross I knew as an anarchist organization.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Sins.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
They said that because the Black Cross goes back to
the anarchist Red Cross of like nineteen five six Ukraine,
where basically all of the like after the nineteen oh
five failed revolution of against Russia. This is totally what
everyone's excited.

Speaker 2 (16:10):
To hear about.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
After this failed revolution in nineteen oh five, all of
these prisoners were in jail, right, and so people got
together to try and do jail support.

Speaker 2 (16:20):
And then that.

Speaker 1 (16:21):
Group continued once the Bolsheviks in after the almost more
successful revolution nineteen seventeen, after they started repressing all the
anarchists who had been their allies, and so they started
as the anarchist Red Cross doing all this work, but
they like switched. I think it's blurry exactly how this
history came about. They switched to Black Cross, either because

(16:43):
the Red Cross was becoming more and more of like
a specific thing that was more medical and they were
like not trying to be confused, or because like within
the Russian Civil War, black was the anarchist color and
red was the Bolshevik color. Oh, and so they were like, oh,
we're being repressed by the Bolsheviks, were going to use
their color. And so Black Cross has been used as

(17:04):
like it's usually a prisoner support organization, but then it
also in this case was like oh instead of the
Red Cross for the Black Cross, Like yeah, yeah, anyway,
and also you're breaking my rule. I have my maxim
that anyone says anything and someone says, oh, that would
be a good band name. They're always wrong, that's my rule. Yeah,
but you're right, I'm wrong. Black Cross would be a
really good metal band name. It would be really good.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
You would have to spell it with a K though.
That's the one thing. It'd be crossed with a KNA.

Speaker 1 (17:32):
See you lose me though, because.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
I lost you there. Sorry damn it.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
But it's a specific thing where like anytime anyone replaces
a C with a K, I'm like, I don't know,
I know.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
I hear you, I hear. I'm not saying it's the
right choice.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
I'm just saying it would be the choice.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
Yeah, the record company would say, no, you have to
have a K.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
And yeah, yea, and the K is backwards.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
Yeah, exactly what I was gonna say, Like corn R K,
the R is backwards, the same concept there.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
And then because they're terrible, like cheesy teenage anarchists, they
put an A in the O of Cross, so it's
actually just his black crass.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
Everyone's say, what is black crass?

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah, Cross, we just wanted to put a We wanted
to a our circles.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
We got to get back to that one.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah, all right, Well, we're gonna keep workshopping this. You're
sending you a guitar and some notes for the first album.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
Let's do it all, right.

Speaker 1 (18:27):
So there's Black Cross Health Collective on the ground. And
then the one that I can find the most information about,
partly because there are many of the people who wrote
a lot of the documents that people use is the
Colorado Street Medics. This was started by that guy, Doc Rosen,
and Doc Rosen he's our acupuncturist kung fu artists who

(18:48):
it turns out he was one of those super activist
types who's kind of a wingnut who everyone either loves
or hates, or somehow people did both at once. He
died from a brain hemorrhage in two thousand and seven,
and there are a lot of remembrances of him that
people have posted. He'd been taken in as a relative
of the Lakota Nation and given full membership of the

(19:09):
American Indian Movement, which is a very high honor for
a non Indigenous person, and the reasoning was basically, well,
he's a veteran of Wounded Knee. He was shot there
caring for us during Wounded Knee. He became the first
registered acupuncturist in Colorado, and he brought sixteen street medics
to Seattle in nineteen ninety nine to tie in with

(19:31):
the Direct Action Network, which we talked about on a
different show, and just to follow his story to the close,
Doc Rosin this sort of interesting man. I straight up
don't know where I would have fallen on the like
this man or hate this man beause not boring. I
wouldn't have been bored by this man. That's how I feel.
Doc Rosin was an anarchist for forty years. He spent
his final decades training people and traveling around the world

(19:53):
to help people. When a tsunami hit Thailand, he went
with a group of Native American doctors and EMTs to
help out there. His own work there was largely to
help people, especially kids, fight PTSD, and he did this
by literally being a clown. He would perform magic tricks
for kids in the tsunami zone. Real Patch Adams, I
know at some point I'm gonna have to talk about

(20:14):
in the show just because of West Virginia, but I
don't know enough to know how I feel about Patch
Adams going into it. I just straight up don't know,
right He also wasn't afraid. He's not young when he's
going and doing this stuff. He goes and he helps
move dead bodies because it's a nice thing to be
able to do for people if it's their.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
Relative is yeah, not make them do it?

Speaker 1 (20:33):
Yeah, And showing up in building houses. And when he died,
he was buried on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota,
and that was an honor that was granted to him
because he was an adopted member of the Lakota tribe.
And I would bet money that I have met him
and don't remember it. I know I was at several
of the protests. When I'm reading about like just literally
where he was and what he was doing, I'm like,

(20:54):
I was living in Denver and working alongside the American
Indian movement. Like this makes me sound like I was
doing more than just being like a grunt work protester.
I was a grunt work protester when we were like,
who's gonna help blockade the following street. I would never
do crime. We all got permits to whatever. It was
a long time ago. I used to break laws. I
would never do such a thing now in the world.

(21:17):
Interruptive lower capital and colonialism and what they're talking about.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Not something I could see. Yeah, I'm trying to google
the picture of Doc Rosen, and I'm seeing a lot
of doctor Rosen's, But I don't think any of these
doctor Rosens are the Doc Rosen, So.

Speaker 1 (21:33):
I don't we didn't find a photo of him.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, I'm not finding one right now.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
I suspect that it was his vibe to not be photographed, right. Yeah,
that is my guess, based on the fact that, like,
I looked at so many remembrances of him, partly because
I was like, do I know this guy?

Speaker 2 (21:50):
You know? Yeah, But I think it's almost like a
very interesting person. My relationship to acupuncture is a little
bit complicated because on one hand, it doesn't seem to
have a lot of downsides if it's done correctly and
in a sterile way. But I think there isn't great
evidence for its use for the most part. If there is,

(22:13):
it's for chronic pain issues. I got in trouble once
on my podcast for somebody once mentioned acupuncture in passing,
and I got a lot of messages from people who
were upset that I didn't push back more on it
because there's not a lot of great scientific evidence for
its use. These days, most of it has been disproven.
I think there's still a role for it in very

(22:33):
specific cases, things like ibs it seems to maybe have
a little bit of benefit and chronic pain issues not great,
but I think there's some role for it. So there's
a part of me that's like, I really wonder what
he was providing, But I have to assume when he's
in these emergency situations, when he's acting as as street medic,
he's doing the other things that a street medic would do,

(22:56):
cleaning out wounds and that sort of thing, taking care
of injuries.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
I fully expect that to be the case. I have
never in my life seen people attempt to do acupuncture
in the streets at a demonstration. And my theory is
that he was heavily involved in writing the stuff that
street medics use, and the stuff that street medics use
is very evidence based and is very like, yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:19):
Right, proven over years of you know, of care.

Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yeah, And so that's my guess. I would guess that
his it's almost more just that it's interesting that his
there's a lot of like alternative medical practitioners who become
street medics. There is both a ton of like nurses.
I guess when I think of the street metics, I
personally know this is anecdotal at this point. I know
a lot of like nurses, hospital workers in sort of
almost a lay worker way. I don't know if that's

(23:43):
the right terminology, you know, but like and on also
like herbalists and things, right, yeah, but that's a separate
kind of thing beyond like, I don't know, crossing a
bridge and having a nervous breakdown because there's cops on
both sides of you. And someone is like, you want
to smell this lavender, and I'm like, I do want
to smell that lavender, dude, that does sound nice right

(24:05):
right now?

Speaker 2 (24:06):
You know, it is interesting because I guess I can't
complain too much about, you know, the type of background
that people are providing, because I, as a medical doctor,
am not providing a background myself there. I actually think
you'd be very interesting to see a medical school and
maybe one of your listener knows about this, and I

(24:26):
just don't, but to see like a medical university, a
training center that has rotations for medical students in the
street medicine, I think that would be an amazing thing.
I don't know in this current political climate how that
would be accepted by most medical schools, which tend to
be conservative, but you know, it's an interesting thing. I

(24:46):
would love to see doctors be more involved these days,
because it sounds like from what I've heard so far
in these episodes, it started out with medical doctors and
over time shifted to a framework that's enacted by other
healthcare professionals. I would like for doctors to remain involved. Yeah,

(25:06):
in this.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
I am also under that impression that it has shifted
sort of a de professionalization, but not a complete one.
They're still very specific, like you know, if you just
show up and are like, ah, I know, some first date,
I'm a street medic. The other street medics like it's
a specific culture, and they're going to be like, yeah, yeah,
where'd you go to your twenty hour? You know?

Speaker 2 (25:26):
Yeah? Right?

Speaker 1 (25:27):
And much like as a podcaster, if I just showed
up into a conversation and didn't pivot to ads, everyone
would know.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
Are you really a podcaster? Not at all?

Speaker 1 (25:37):
Here's some ads and we're back. I find it fascinating
because in some ways it's the de professionalization of street medics,
but in other ways it's almost not the professionalization but
the like codification of what street medics are, right, because
the first ones were like, oh, we're doctors, we should
just you know, if you've worked in an er, you

(25:57):
probably know what to do when someone gets hit in
ahead of a baton, as my guests, I don't know
more or less, but you might not know how to
handle the police who are currently hitting the person at
the baton, right, you know.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
And to work without the stuff we have in the hospital.
It's a very big difference working in a hospital where
we have all our equipment that we know when they're
accessible to, and have all the access to imaging and
that sort of thing. It's a very different kettle of
fish than being out on the street and not having
any of that stuff or very little of it.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
No, it makes sense. I mean, like the single tool
that I think mos street medics are using the most
is literally a squeeze bottle of water. There is actually
a thing. There's a difference. Street medicine is different than
street mediicaing. And I learned this by trying to google
street medicine or whatever and finding lots of results about
providing healthcare to homeless folks. M I never know whether

(26:45):
I should say homeless folks or folks are on house.
But I only know is that one of my social
worker friends that I talked to about this a lot
who work specifically with on house folks or homeless folks,
was like, whenever I try to refer to people as
on house, They're like, man, I'm homeless, you know, right, right,
So I don't know if I'm using the current prefer
terminology or whatever, but yeah, so street medicine is actually more,

(27:06):
but it's actually still very similar, right because you're like
going out into the streets and then like doing medicine
where people are living, which is under bridges and shit.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
After Seattle nineteen ninety nine, tens of thousands of protesters
were trained in the basics doing the twenty hour things,
and often many of those people go beyond the basics.
And in the first five years or so the Alter
Globalization movement, people learn how to treat wounds inflicted by
the police, but they also learned how to spread calm
and respond to crisis because actually, in a weird similar way,

(27:37):
where like the first doctors who went down were like
people kind of look be like, oh, there's a doctor here,
we're okay, right h or like ah, there's a person
over thirty here, you know whatever. A lot of the
stuff I have read from street medics and talked to
street medics is that like one of your roles if
you're a marked street medic, is you're there to be like, hey,
we're okay, Like hey, whatever comes, we got it, you know.

(28:00):
And street medics from this era went on to work
all over the world. More than a few made their
way to Palestine, for example. I've talked with a bunch
of folks who've gone there at various points over the
past couple decades, and more than a few have entered
the medical profession since. And so it's almost like how
people end up in, especially nursing in my experience, but

(28:22):
lots of other medical professions.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
This. You know, if I'm on an application board for
a medical school, which I have been in the past,
or if I'm working on a residency program and looking
at applicants, which again I've done a lot of, that
would be huge. If I saw someone had gone abroad,
and you do see this and worked abroad or been

(28:46):
a street medic, that would cover a lot of sins
on an application. If their GPA, if their scores, if
their publications and scientific journals weren't as strong as another candidate,
I would still say there is, and not just to me.
I think a lot of people would. There is a
need in a room for someone like this in our
medical program. I think that would be awesome.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
Yeah, that makes sense because you're like, well, this person
clearly cares about doing this thing.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
Yeah, you know, right, yeah, and they have experience that
most people don't have. Every medical school applicant has a
certain amount of experiences that you know, but that's a
different one. I think that if you're listening and you're
on an application committee somewhere, if you're in a medical school,
look for those things, please. Those are the kind of
people we want. Hell yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
Street medic collectives started cropping up everywhere because trainers like
Doc Rosen would travel around city to city and teach
people what they needed in order to set them up.
So not just train you to be a street medic,
but also train you to become a trainer. The trainings
to become trainers are much longer than the twenty hour trainings,
and they are also formalized, but they're also constantly shifting
and developing as police tactics change as best practices around. Like,

(29:57):
you know, getting consent from patients is like probably always complicated,
but getting consent from patients during a riot is like extra.

Speaker 2 (30:04):
Weird, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:06):
Street medics in Ferguson during the uprising in twenty fourteen
gave twenty minute trainings like four times a day, just
teaching people like here's how you I flush chemical weapons.
You know, here are some basic psychological first aid. Street
medics are consistently one of the better organized groups of
people at any demonstrations, and so they end up taking
on additional roles, perhaps too many. I have been prone

(30:27):
to talking shit on street medics as a culture before
in my life. Since they're marked with red crosses made
from tape, that's the usual thing, right, It's like a
red duct tape cross. They're just like more likely to
be calm in any given situation than the average protester, literally,
just because they've done it more often. And they are
also see being calm as one of their jobs. And
it's interesting because that's actually what I do as a

(30:50):
protester these days, is I'm like mostly there to just
be like, hey, everyone walk, we don't have to run.
We've got this. I also always know where all the
exits are. I don only get mass arrested. Yeah, yeah,
I've had it happen to me twice. Never want to
do it again. Disaster relief got added to the roster
of crises that street medics would respond to, most famously
with the Common Ground Clinic in New Orleans after Hurricane

(31:11):
Katrina in two thousand and five, which we've covered on
this show before. But you can find report backs from
American street medics sailing into Haiti and Thailand, or respond
to crises wherever there's a direct action mutual aid organization.
There are street medics, and they're not an American phenomenon
specifically either. Although I know less about street medics in
other countries despite having been to a few spirited demonstrations

(31:34):
in other countries myself, I have seen slightly different street
medic cultures. One of the core principles of street medicking
and I think this is like a medicine thing, but
I don't actually know, is the do no harm thing
that's like part of the whole deal.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
Yeah, it's usually part of some hippocratic or variation of
it oath that people.

Speaker 1 (31:53):
Take is the idea of that, don't make the situation worse,
don't provide treatment that's likely to fail, make everything worse.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
I think there's a lot of interpretations to it, but
one of them is if you don't know what you're doing,
then you shouldn't do something. If you're experimenting on a patient,
for example, that's another interpretation of it. You shouldn't be
doing that if you don't have their consent to do so.
If there's a better option to do so, okay, don't
muck with things that don't need to be mucked with.

(32:21):
No when to stand back and not do something. That's
a big part of medicine. As you get trained more
and more in medicine, you start to feel like everything
is a nail and you're a hammer, and you want
to do something. You want to operate, you want to
get involved, you want to treat with a medication. Sometimes
the answer is to say no, let's stop, well, let's wait,

(32:43):
let's watch, let's figure out what to do. So that's
kind of another sort of interpretation.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
But don't give out antibiotics like candy.

Speaker 2 (32:50):
Yes exactly. That's another good point. Yeah, which we still
do because a lot of it because patients expect that
people want that, But we have to be the one
sometimes to say, look, you're not going to be happy
about this, but I'm not going to prescribe you this
medication you asked for because it's not the right medication
for you.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:07):
It's been our job to explain why that is. Yeah,
as opposed to just saying no and being patronizing about it.
It's our job to explain why we don't feel that
certain thing is necessary and should be with help.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
Right, No, that makes sense, that's yeah, you shouldn't prescribe
the wrong medications to people. That makes sense to me.

Speaker 2 (33:25):
Right.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
There are some knock on effects from do No Harm
that impact kind of one of the moral questions that
street medics talk about amongst themselves a lot, specifically, who
do you provide care for? They provide care for protesters
and bystanders for certain do they provide care for fascists
or police? And this is a contentious issue, and I've

(33:47):
talked to a couple of my street medic friends about this,
and I've gotten a couple different answers, but I've gotten
related answers. Do you use a specific and strange example
the time that I learned that this was a contentious thing.
I was at the Yellow protests in France the number
of years ago. It was a spirited protest, we will
call it, and police are throwing tear gas and protesters

(34:09):
are throwing other things at police, and I'm like, man,
I don't want to go forward attention. I wish I
wasn't here. And the Yellow US protests were an interesting
set of protests. Did you hear much about these when
they're happening.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
Yeah, yeah, I saw a little bit on the news,
but I don't know much more.

Speaker 1 (34:23):
Largely, these are populist revolts. Basically, they were like, you're
making it too expensive to live, so we're going to riot,
which is a very French thing to do. But this
means that at the beginning of this, because populism is
not a left wing thing or a right wing thing,
it's just a thing, the far right tried to capture
the spirit of the protests and turn into fascistic directions.
According to the best analyses I've read of this and

(34:44):
some conversations from people on the ground, this attempt by
the right wing was stopped because anti fascists win in
the protests would just like drive out the Nazis, be like,
you all are Nazis, you're not part of this protest.
We are going to drive you out. So we're marching
along and all of a sudden, people are yelling shit
in French, and they're not yelling umbagatsuvuple or Jenna Parlapofrance says,

(35:07):
so I have no idea what they're saying, because those
are the only two things. I lived in France for
a month and all I knew how to do is
order bagas and say I don't speak French. People loved me.
It was the south of France where no one speaks
English anyway, whatever, So I have no idea what people
are yelling. And I see this guy running bleeding into
a park, and I see medics running after him trying
to treat him, and then other medics, I think, start

(35:29):
fistfighting those medics about the whole thing. And what it
was was that a well known far right influencer got punched,
Richard Spencer type got punched, and some medics went to
treat him, and other medics were like, don't treat him,
we punched him for a reason, and go no. I'm curious.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
I have a lot of thoughts.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
I'm going to get into more of the answers that
other people have told me, but I want to hear
your thoughts.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
I have taken care of a lot of people in
the past that I don't like, but that's not my job,
right My job is not to like them in that
way and let that affect me. I am not going
to that would make me like a cop. I'm not
going to treat someone bad because they're a cop and
they're my patient. I'm not going to treat someone bad
because they're a convict and they're my patient. That's not

(36:15):
where I'm there to do. And this is something that
I feel kind of strongly about and bothers me when
I hear the same way, like you'll hear like a
nurse every now and then we'll say, oh, I put
the big IV in him because he was a real dick,
and I'm like, that's not what we're here to do.
And it bothers me the same way if someone were
to say I didn't want to take care of this
person because they were on the opposite side of the

(36:37):
protest to me, and I know that's people are going
to be mad about that, but that's just not how
I that's not why I went into this field. Yeah,
I would have been a policeman if I wanted to
pick a side like that, And so I feel pretty
strongly about that. But that being said, when I did
my episode on Street Medics and I had a guest
on who is this street medic? And that question came

(36:58):
up and I said, have you ever had to take
care of a cop before who got injured? Their response
was part of the earliest training you get is those
people are trying to hurt you, So you don't want
to put yourself in those situations where you can get
hurt in that. Yeah, I understand that if there is
a threat to you as a medical provider, you have
to take care of yourself first. You have to put
on your own mask in the airplane before you take

(37:20):
care of others. I get that, But in general, if
I'm there in any capacity that's medical, which generally I
would be, I have to be responsible for helping wherever
I can.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
That makes a lot of sense to me, And I
think your argument around like the point of being a
I don't turn people away medical provider is not turning
people away. This makes a lot of sense to me.
The two arguments that I hear from street medics about
this one is and this one I have seen and
talked to people who experienced this over and over again.

(37:54):
It is dangerous to put your hands on a cop, sure, yeah,
and they will not let you, and the infrastructure that
they are there, Like, I actually think that there is
and maybe I'm wrong about this, I think there is
a fundamental difference between a higher level of care or
like a clinic or a place that people are going to, right,
like a hospital, and a street demonstration in that like

(38:18):
I would think it's messed up if cops came into
the hospital, or like I'm bleeding and you're like, wow,
we don't like what your job is, right right. I'm
sure I could come up with the counterexamples of like
Mussolini bleeding or something, right, but like street medics have
learned the hard way. And the interesting thing about this
is that the reason I see this a lot is
that even though street medics go and like learn like, hey,

(38:38):
we're here to help this side, street medics all the time,
if someone is injured, including people on the other side,
go and try and help that person. Yeah, because like
that actually does seem to be the stronger thing. But
then the other argument that I've talked to someone about
is that if you do no harm policies to not
make the situation worse, and that cop is literally there

(39:00):
to hurt people, are you making the situation worse? I'm asking.
I'm not trying to say I know the answer to this,
but are you making the situation worse by helping them
get getting the armed person back into the fight against.

Speaker 2 (39:10):
Okay, I think it's a great point. This is a
really interesting talking to me, But I don't feel like
you're gonna go help somebody get back up and get
right back into hurting people. That person's removed essentially from
the point the field of battle or contest at that point.
And I also want to make it very clear I
am not for healthcare professionals being abused in any context.

(39:32):
And healthcare professionals get hurt even in the hospitals. Nurses
get attacked all the time. I have no threshold for that,
like I and not even that. Yeah, like when doctors
will tell me like how sad they feel after a
patient yelled at them, and then those situations, I also
feel the emotional verbal abuse that healthcare professionals get I

(39:56):
don't stand for Yeah, like, we shouldn't have to put
up with that. It's too much of that. We should
never have to deal with that. We can give people care,
someone else can take care of that person. If someone
is berating you or making you feel less, that's not
something you need to be involved with. I think in
an emergency situation, I think being there to assist everyone

(40:18):
is a goal that we in the healthcare professional have
to continue to believe if we don't. I hate the
slippery slope argument, but that's one of the things that
makes the job special.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
You know, when I was a kid watching mash in,
Like there's a scene where like the Korean soldier gets
wheeled in and the surgeons want to help the Korean
soldier who's dying, and then like the military people come
in and they get mad. You know, when I was
a kid, I didn't root for the military people to say, yeah,
I'm rooting for the doctors to save them. And that's

(40:50):
a big part of what inspires people to be good doctors,
and I think we have to keep that focus. Now
this is all being said, Like, if there's a guy
with a who seems like he might shoot you try
to help him. Yes, you do not need to do that.
You do not need to get involved. I completely understand
that concept. We should be safe.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
Yeah, I suspect. I'm not a street medic. I'm not
a medical professional. I'm like, I've had some stop the
bleed trainings and some like self defense trainings, and I
could imagine a situation in which, like, because literally in
my mind, when someone's no longer a threat, they're no
longer a threat. And if I could hypothetical land here,
someone tries to kill me, I shoot them. I have

(41:30):
neutralized the threat. They are not dead. I will then
try to save their life. Yes, like I wouldn't sleep
at night if I didn't.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
Absolutely, absolutely, these are things I run through my mind,
by the way, when I'm like, out, would I go
to a protest? When he went to the No King's protest?
These are things that I think about, Like, part of
my brain is always like, I'm very creative when it
comes to things that can go terribly wrong. It's part
of what makes me a good doctor. So I'm like
analyzing every situation to see, like what could go wrong,
And that goes for both sides of the thing. But

(42:00):
My biggest fear in those things actually these days isn't
even necessarily the police. It's some sort of far right actor,
someone driving a car through a protest something like that.
Those are the things that concern me the most, and
those can affect both sides obviously, but those are Yeah,
so I'm constantly thinking about these situations and how that
might play out, like and so another the reason why

(42:20):
I don't get into fights even if I've been a
situation where I've been really upset by somebody, because in
my brain, I'm like, if I do happen to win
this fight in the very rare situation, I don't put
myself in situations where I like, but there's very rare
situations where I have a conflict with somebody and it
escalates to like words that get raised, and I'm like,
what's the point of finding this person? If I happen

(42:42):
to win, right, then I have to take care of them.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
Yeah, totally, uh huh, because.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
I'm like, I can't just like run, beat the person
up and then run. So it is pervasive in my
brain thinking about these things a lot. So anyway, sorry,
That's why I'm passionate about it, because I think about
it a lot.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
I specifically, as I was writing this, I was like, Oh,
this is going to turn into an interesting conversation. I
think that that is a It's interesting to see the
experience of being in demonstrations. As a medic, I've seen
understanding police psychology and specifically their desire to control any
given situation, like while there at work, not like every
moment that a cop is walking through their life, although

(43:19):
I suspect whatever, I have a negative opinion about policing
as a profession, but like specifically in demonstrations, entire purpose
is to be in control of every situation, and that
is the single most important thing. If people get hurt,
that is less important than being in control, and probably
in the cop brain, in their mind, that is a

(43:39):
good thing, as an okay thing, because control is what
will allow the situation to pacify.

Speaker 2 (43:44):
Right right.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
But understanding that that police desire this level of control
and will lash out at anything to make that possible
is really important and why street medics have learned the
hard way. Whenever it seems life or death, I have
always seen street medics intervene, but it's like, you're not
eye flushing the fascists, You're not eye flushing the cops

(44:09):
you might respond to gunshot wounds, you know, Yeah, right.
I think it's just a really interesting There's a conversation
where I'm like, man, there's like all kinds of directions
and blurrinesses, and I know.

Speaker 2 (44:20):
There's gonna be people who are going to take issue
with what I said, And I totally get it. They've
been in situations that I have not. I have not
had to be in a situation where I've had to
take care of a cop being injured on the street, right,
I mean in the hospital definitely, but not like on
the street. So I get it. It's a different kettleficsion,
I can't judge somebody for some of the stuff they're

(44:40):
doing when they're out trying to help people.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
Yeah, So this is one of the core things I
was excited to talk to about. So I really appreciate
your viewpoint on this.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
Most of the time in protests, street medics don't really
do much besides stand around and hand out sunscreen and
band aids. Other times, the police riot and there's dozens
or hundreds of injuries. Marked medics are targeted for a
rest and violence, and this is a thing that comes
up again and again. It's basically like, Okay, I had
this friend who is an EMT, and he was also

(45:10):
a punk kid and not white and and all these
things that made the police not really be a big
fan of him. And he had just gotten his EMPT
license and he was working for the city, and I
believe in that city, in that place, that meant if
an accident happened, he was not only allowed to but
required to give the police orders if it was around

(45:31):
a medical situation.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
Yeah, I've heard that.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
A car accident happens outside my friend's house. He runs
outside empt bag in tow. Cops are already on the
scene and they won't let him a minister care. He
tries to come in and say, I am licensed as
an EMT, this is now my scene. I am now
doing this thing. And the patient died as the cops

(45:55):
just stood around, and he came in crying and was like,
I've lost the first patient.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
He didn't lose them, the cops lost them. No.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
I agree, God, yeah totally. And so being a marked
medic just means nothing to police, except sometimes it means
that you should be targeted for arrest in violence because
the people who are seen as necessary for the functioning
of the protest are singled out and targeted, including National
Lawyers Guild observers are often targeted for arrest. I remember

(46:27):
one time being at a demonstration watching our lawyer who
is the police liaison, who was just wearing her nice
lawyer suit and was just like, Hi, I'm here to
negotiate the situation between you and us, and you know,
and they just handcuffed her and throw in the back
of the police van pretty much right away. And because
of this targeting, more and more street medics run unmarked,

(46:51):
so that if the police attempt to arrest everyone involved
in the process infrastructure, there are still people with medical
skills and supplies on hand.

Speaker 2 (46:57):
Yeah, I've also heard that. I've heard doctors who will
always wear a fanny pack, for example, whenever they go
to one of these protests, because when they were working
as a medical professional there to support they felt like
their crotch was being targeted by like cut those rubber bullets,
like the bean bag guns and that sort of thing.
So now they always wear like a fanny pack there

(47:19):
just to help protect themselves.

Speaker 1 (47:21):
I just not get shot in the junk. Oh my god. Yeah,
that's real lord, one of the more interesting and kind
of in a negative way of developments of Well, actually,
before we talk about anything negative, I want to talk
about something positive. I want to talk about the fact
that it was a positive part of the fact that way,
it adds that I have an income.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
Yeah, that's super positive. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
My dog loves eating food. It's amazing. He eats food
every day.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
You should like it too.

Speaker 1 (47:49):
I also like eating food, not dog.

Speaker 2 (47:51):
Food, but like you know, you food. You should enjoy
eating that. You deserve to eat that.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
I agree. And you all can either listen to ads
pressed for thirty seconds a couple of times. I don't care.
Here's ads enter back. Okay. And so this terrible full
circle sort of thing has happened. Early on the progena,
the people who started street medics had to treat gunshot
wounds at wounded me Then for decades it was almost exclusively,

(48:19):
as I understand it, impact weapons, chemical weapons, batons, sun exposure.
Lots of bad medical things will happen, and bad things
happen at demonstrations, but it was very rarely gunshot wounds.
With the rise of Trump and American fascism, medics have
had to deal with gunshot wounds.

Speaker 2 (48:35):
Again.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
I'm going to tell a version of a story that's
anonymous from a friend. The first shooting at one of
these protests in the modern era that I can point
to was on January twentieth, twenty seventeen, the literal first
day of Trump in office. Within hours of Donald Trump
being sworn in as president, the former alt right star
Milo Ianopolis. He's not former altright, he's just former star.

(48:58):
People don't care about him anymore, including on the right.
Fuck him.

Speaker 2 (49:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:02):
He was giving a talk at the University of Washington,
and he has since faded from prominence, partly because he's gay,
although he's actually ex gay now oh really, Yeah, but
fascists only like gay fascists for a little while. That's
the thing you learned by reading fascist history. Yeah. And
there were hundreds or thousands of people protesting his talk,
and a thirty four year old member of the Industrial

(49:24):
Workers of the World, the same union that I'm part of,
was shot in the stomach by someone who is there
to see Milo. A friend of mine was on the
scene as a street medic, and they'd done lots of
medical training for protests they've been running. As a market medic.
They hadn't learned how to deal with a gunshot wound
as part of street medic training, because that's not a

(49:44):
thing that people faced.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
Very challenging to learn how to do on the street am,
particularly an abdominal injury. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
Still, they and a few other medics, as far as
I can tell, save that person's life. My friend doesn't
frame it that way, my friend and I think is
being humble about it. They got the patient onto the
ground and started to staunch the bleeding, and I've watched
the video or researching the episode and cried at my desk,
And the cops come in seconds later after they start

(50:14):
performing care and they do nothing. No, they do instead
of doing nothing, they physically throw the medics away from
the patient. Ah. Yes, it's either one or the other. Yeah.
And then the cops stand around do nothing for a
while while a street medic, screaming and crying, is holding
out a trauma pad being like, please, for the fucking
love of God, take this and use it. Eventually, the

(50:36):
police did then move that person to his police medic.
After a while, the person did survive, and since then,
more and more of us anti fascist types go to
stop the bleed trainings. I've never done a twenty hour
street medic training. I've been to like several multi hour
just basic like how to stop the bleed. It's a
specific type of training as a stop the bleed training,

(50:57):
and they're very comparable to like don't move the spine
kind of thing, where it's like, yeah, this doesn't teach you,
like I don't know how to take off a tourniquet,
you know, like, yeah, that's higher level of care. That's
what er doctors are for, you know.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
Yeah, there's a very specific set of skills that are
required for the immediate acute purpose and it's very different
from the long term care of these injuries.

Speaker 1 (51:22):
And I think that generalizing the like how to deal
with the gunshot wound, I also think literally anyone who
trains to carry a gun or carries a gun needs
to before you carry a gun, learning how to deal
with a gunshot wound is more important.

Speaker 2 (51:36):
Yes, that would be I mean it's hard enough to
get the most basic background checks, but like, yeah, that
would be amazing.

Speaker 1 (51:45):
Yeah, It's like, you know, I think people know that
I train with firearms occasionally, and like what I've gotten
for various like concealed carry licenses and things like that
has been like learn the laws and shoot a piece
of paper, right, Yeah, would rather have proven that I
know how to use a tourniquet and you know, know,
like what chess seals are and whatever. More and more

(52:10):
people go to Stop the Bleed trainings and learn how
to respond to gunfire and a crowd how to stop
the bleeding, but also how to help people find cover,
what the difference between cover and concealment is, how to
not become an additional casualty, and how to help a
crowd remain calm and how to delegate tasks. Yeah, I
don't know. I asked one of my medic friends what
they would recommend for anyone interested in becoming a medic,

(52:31):
and they told me, quote, search for your local street
medic collective and ask them. Get trained in whatever first
aid skills are being offered. Wherever you are come to
an action with a kid of gear you know how
to use, prepared to help people if needed, prioritizing patient
consent and autonomy. That was the one oh one how
to get involved.

Speaker 2 (52:49):
Yeah, I think that's pretty reasonable. I mean it would
be great to see people get more basic. You know
life saving, learn how to do compressions, and learn how
to do the very basics in terms of resuscitation as well.
You know, there's courses that are available. I think Stop
the Bleed is a actual like website from the American

(53:10):
College Assurgeons. I think they actually have like a website
that goes over the basics of it, but I've never
actually looked at it, so I don't know. But you
can probably can find online courses there as well. And then,
you know, what's interesting to me is what everyone can
bring to a protest, even if they're not a medic.
And if I had to say one thing, the one

(53:32):
thing I would add to that is always be prepared
with extra water. Yeah, you know, have something to cover
yourself from the sun, because that's gonna be a major
factor for a lot of people. Most injuries, as you
mentioned before, are sun related dehydration, that sort of thing.
And water. Just always have more water than you think
you're gonna need. That's but I don't say that for
almost anything. That's almost true for almost any setting, whether

(53:53):
you're on the hike or whether you're going to a protest.
It would be spectacular, though, if more people in the
protest movements got more medical training. I think that's fantastic.

Speaker 1 (54:06):
I agree. I think that carry basic medical supplies and.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
We should incorporate this. I do, like I said earlier,
I would love to see medical schools. I have an
elective for this, Yeah, you know have like you know,
you got your fourth year of medical school. There's lots
of time for electives and people kind of coasting. I
feel like this is the kind of thing that would
just be so spectacular if someone could offer it. So
I don't know. Now that I've said that, I feel

(54:32):
like I need to then talk to people about doing it.
But I'm not ready for that in my life. I
don't know if I have the bandwidth for that. But
it's something that we do do a lot, you know,
But that does seem so worthwhile I would like to
get it. I'm not going to pretend I have any electability.
If we were in the stream and a street medic
was next to me, that's the person that i'd probably

(54:52):
turn to for advice on a lot of these things.
So I could have learned so much from it myself.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
We should do a bridge training and then tell me
what it's like, because I don't know because I'm not
a medical professional.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
It's fair. Actually is not a bad ide different episode maybe?

Speaker 1 (55:04):
Oh yeah, dude, exactly. That's the way to get things
done on our podcaster content minds contents right, it's so
hard to being like, what do you do for a living? Now?
I make content?

Speaker 2 (55:16):
What does that even mean? I don't know intellectual content.

Speaker 1 (55:22):
Well, if people want to hear the kind of podcast
stuff you've already done, would you recommend? Do you have
any podcasts?

Speaker 2 (55:29):
Yeah? I have content all over the place. I love
my content all over the place.

Speaker 1 (55:36):
As a French would say, it's just a week content.
I also know how to say I am happy. That's
the only other thing I know to say.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
That's good. That's the important things you needed them. So
I have a podcast. It is fun. I think you
will like it. It's called The House of pod and
we talk about medical topics, science topics, about what's happening
to the healthcare infrastructure. We take a look at medical grifters,
well scrifters, and we have generally a good time. It's

(56:03):
humor adjacent and I think you will enjoy it. Please
go check it out. It's really fun to do and
I love hearing from listeners as well, so if you
have ideas for shows, I'm open to hearing them. You
can also email me at hop Questions at gmail dot com,
where you can suggest top it to the show, and
I oftentimes make them happen with guests like the people

(56:23):
that you listen to right now, Margaret and Sophie, two
of my favorite people, so you'll have fun. I promise
or your money back, and it's free, so no money back.

Speaker 1 (56:35):
I also like running a humor adjacent podcast, so I
appreciate being humor adjacent right next door. I have other
content and some of its books. My most recent book
is called The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice. And if
you want to read a story about elves in the
Midwest collecting people's skulls or a troll king who is

(56:56):
involved in World War Two, you can read The Immortal
Holds Every Voice. And oh, well, your kids like board games, yeah,
and I was slightly involved in a board game called
Defenders of the Wild, in which you play different animals
defending the common wood. I believe it's called from the
machines that have come out of the earth and are
destroying everything. But I was heavily involved in the tabletop

(57:17):
role playing game side project of that, which is also
called Defenders the Wild, or it's called the Defenders Almanac.
You think I would know because I'm one of the
credited authors, but I'm not the person who put it
all together. So it's called Defenders of the Wild. And
I got to write lots of fun backstories about different
creatures in the War against the Machines.

Speaker 2 (57:36):
Oh that sounds awesome. Where can I find it?

Speaker 1 (57:38):
Well, it was put out by out Landish Games, and
it should be available through most like game distribution places.
That Landish Games is pretty good at what they do.

Speaker 2 (57:48):
In San Francisco, we have a number of like these
places that have all the board games.

Speaker 1 (57:52):
Oh yeah, all that stuff cool?

Speaker 2 (57:53):
So I bet you I can find it here. Yeah,
pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
I suspect as much. The people who designed the board
game have a bunch of pretty big board game credits
behind them. And I managed to get my dog rentraw
in as an anthropomorphic fox as a character. Of course
you do so if you want art that. And I
also got to name one of the medic characters after
my pa friend.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
Oh that's awesome, I want Kafe is a great name
for a character. I'll have you know, oh, Kave, just
consider it for the future, true for an awesome characters.

Speaker 1 (58:24):
That's a good point.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
I'm looking at Defenders of the Wild and it is.
It looks awesome, It's so fun.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
I think people will like it. I believe that the
Almanac just came out with the RPG. I believe it
just came out last week when you are listening, because
it came out two days ago as I record this,
and I should have led with that as my plug.
And I'm bad at remembering what things I have coming
out when. And my publishers love me. Thanks for having
me on your project. So if you guys think you
want plug.

Speaker 2 (58:50):
Had a dog, if they want you to do, if
you want you to.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
All right, I will see you all soon. Nay. Cool
People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool
Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.