A small tale of three protests in Washington, DC, this calendar year, and their sequelae*…
January 20, 2017: Roughly 230 protesters, street medics, legal observers, and journalists, were mass arrested on Inauguration Day in DC during a black bloc anticap/antifa march that broke chain store windows. Police surrounded the march and did not allow anyone […]
Ever since I checked social media after medicking the Inauguration Day protests in DC, I’ve been seeing bad, frustrating takes on the black bloc. For the uninitiated, a black bloc is a group of protesters who wear all black, including bandannas or other masks, to anonymize themselves, and usually move as a group or set […]
I already told you all some stories about the RNC. Here’s a few more. You may notice a theme emerge.
During the flag-burning protest arrests, my medic buddy at the time, N (a tiny trans man, maybe 5’3″ or 5’4″ with a slight build) and I were caught in a crush. After it became slightly […]
I became infuriated, during the RNC, when someone showed me this NPR piece referring to what the police were doing there, particularly the tactic of hitting people with bikes, as “soft force tactics.” The first time the police did this, I was nearly knocked to the ground, as the person in front of me was […]
I spent last week running around medicking at the RNC protests. Here is a partial list of things that happened:
Edited to add: I forgot to add what some people would probably consider the most interesting bit. I got a ride from the Akron airport to Cleveland with Vermin Supreme.
– I helped set up […]
Unless you’re a brand-new reader, you’ve probably seen my posts about street medicking before. With the 2016 RNC and DNC looming, and large Black Lives Matter protests around the country, I thought it might be worth a post on what a street medic is. Not only does most of the public not know, but neither […]
As some of you are probably aware by now, Creating Change, the big annual LGBTQ+ activism conference, had a higher-than-usual controversy quotient this year. There were a bunch of reasons for this, but probably the one that received the most publicity centered around a Friday night reception given by an organization called A Wider Bridge, […]
November 8th, 2015 | Activism, Politics | Tags: climate, environmentalism, freedom of speech, keystone xl, Occupy, policing, street medicking, theory of change, tw:police violence, we ARE struggling together | By now, many of you have seen the news that President Obama rejected a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. While TransCanada is reviewing its options to keep the project alive, but experts are dubious. This is a major victory for environmentalists – as a friend commented upon hearing the news, five years ago it […]
August 6th, 2015 | Activism | Tags: Baltimore, Black Lives Matter, Ferguson, Ferguson solidarity, freedom of speech, New York City, Occupy, policing, street medicking, tw:police violence |
It was September 2012, and I was in Manhattan, acting as a street medic at the Occupy Wall Street first anniversary protests. They’d been happening all weekend but the biggest ones were going to happen next morning. Meanwhile, a bunch of protesters were crowding into Zuccotti Park, which was ringed by barricades and NYPD […]
Hi readers! I’m sorry I have not posted anything here in forever! Life got in the way for a while.
I spent three days last week street medicking in Baltimore. It was an odd time to be there. There was a lull in protest activity, with almost no actions going on. There were, however, plenty […]
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