Her preparations began the day before this march, when she evaluated hourly weather forecasts and the event's expected turnout. Because so much of their work is dependent on what they can carry, medics carefully assess a protest group's demographics. "If what you packed isn't what you need, you're kind of screwed," says Williams, who often makes do, using protest signs and poles to make splints. "All you have is your bag."
And your beliefs.
Mark Manger
Zoe Williams joined Colorado Street Medics as a preteen — and heads the group today.
Occupy Denver inspired both Bobby Guerrero and Liz Kitchen to train as street medics.
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Born in Englewood on Valentine's Day, Williams had earned the nickname "Mother Teresa" by age four, both because her middle name is Theresa and because of her strong belief system. When asked what she wanted to do when she grew up, Williams answered that she wanted to give to the poor. When that didn't prove feasible, she rotated through a string of aspirations: marine biologist, art therapist, regular therapist. In an ill-fated response to her favorite childhood TV show, ER, she briefly landed on actress. And when that didn't work out, she opted for ER tech.
Williams's blunt conversational style reflects that of her parents, a retired postal worker and a self-employed contractor who spoke honestly with Williams and her older sister early on — as long as they promised not to share the conversations with their classmates. During dinner, with the TV turned firmly off, the family discussed politics, religion and racism. In second grade, Williams was accidentally allowed to see Dead Man Walking, and the concept of death row horrified her. "I talked to my mom about what people do when they want to stop something bad from happening," Williams remembers, "and she said they make petitions." For months, Williams circulated a handwritten petition opposing capital punishment during breaks at her elementary school.
Williams had just turned twelve and was headed for what she thought was a poetry reading at the Mercury Café when she instead stumbled into one of Rosen's three-day medic trainings, during which he ran students through proper procedures for questioning, assessing and treating their patients. Rosen took one look at the preteen and asked, "Are you here for the street-medic training?"
"I am now," Williams hesitated, "but I'm just a kid. Am I allowed?"
"I'd rather have most kids I know give me medical help than most adults," Rosen assured her. "Have a seat."
Over the next two days, Williams timidly cemented her status as the youngest trainee in the collective. During the final test, when Rosen's friends and fellow medics donned fake blood and pretended to suffer unknown ailments, Williams chose the victim farthest from Rosen. This was a mistake: Her patient, claiming symptoms of head trauma and internal bleeding, developed into the toughest case. But by the time she had whispered a treatment and pretended to call EMS, she'd learned the first lesson of the street medic: confidence.
In her teen years, Williams rotated through the political punk-show circuit, where her pink, black, red and then blue hair slammed to bands like Bikini Kill, Anti-Flag, Crass and Good Riddance. She'd found fliers for the shows at Food Not Bombs, the anarchist outreach group she and her friends worked with. Each time she left the house, her parents smiled and warned her not to get arrested.
"We told her we couldn't take her out to nice restaurants, but we knew she was just expressing herself," says her mother, Valerie Williams. "She didn't fit in here in Englewood and got bullied a lot, but only because she ran for student council and didn't get elected because she didn't want to work on prom. She wanted to service the underserved."
At age fifteen, she quit high school, earned her GED and enrolled at Metro State as a political-science major. During a class on environmental politics, she learned that she was an anarchist. Long before she graduated and continued to pursue medical studies, she was already an official street medic.
At marches, medics run either marked (covered in insignia) or as anonymous backup, depending on their skill and comfort levels. They walk in the buddy system, with medics facing opposite directions but connected at the shoulders as they survey the scene. They keep to the outside of the action and close to the exits. "To run marked is to take extra responsibility, but it's all up to you," Williams says. "We trust you when you're ready, but we also put the fear of God into you. Someone might come up to you with a stab wound and need you to help while an ambulance is on the way — and you had better be prepared for that."
The Colorado Street Medics roster has fluctuated wildly over the years, with the sharpest rises during particularly mainstream moments of political unrest. Since Occupy Denver moved onto Broadway in late September, the group has trained 88 new medics, though only thirty regularly participate. During two sessions, each two long days, Williams and other medics instructed their students in increasingly difficult aspects of the first-aid system: how to dress, what gear to pack, what questions to ask, when to call EMS, how to determine consciousness, breathing, circulation and disabilities. They taught them how to help road rash, and never to use hydrogen peroxide. They practiced controlling bleeding, examined the three degrees of flesh burns, and checked for sprains, strains and fractures.
