Colorado Street Medics also turn down requests here at home, usually because the members of a certain cause are all white or religious, or their action doesn't fit within the medics' standards of practice. But the group remains the go-to care provider for the state's American Indian Movement chapter and one of the first collectives to provide Spanish-language care. Although a handful of medics studied or are currently taking Spanish classes, those who are unfamiliar with the language bring bilingual pamphlets to protests and point to lines such as "Where does it hurt?" And when she's approaching an injured party who speaks English, Williams introduces herself and first gives the patient permission to use female gender pronouns before asking his or her own preference.
"You have to challenge your Great White Savior complex," Williams says. "Because we are so focused on consent, we have got to step outside of ourselves to connect with these communities. Before we accept any call for medics, we ask ourselves if we're actually wanted."
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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And that holds with Occupy Denver, too, which has resulted in more than physical bruises. Some members of the collective, offended by the group's gender politics and past decisions, no longer respond to its calls for medics, while others are disappointed that their supplies have been squandered. Each medic purchases his or her own materials, sometimes with added funds coming from training fees (an optional donation of $5 to $50) and the group's WePay account. Williams and fellow medic Mel Van Nice estimate they spent $5,000 on supplies in the first two months of the occupation, and most of those were later lost or trashed during altercations.
When Colorado Street Medics first visited Occupy Denver during its second week in Lincoln Park, when the group decided to take on a support role, there was already a "medic station." But Williams places the phrase in air quotes: What Occupy actually had was a tote bag filled with a haphazard mix of Walgreens medical supplies, condoms and bleach; protesters shared a single tube of toothpaste labeled "Don't touch this to toothbrush." The original medical committee included a veterinary technician and a woman who claimed to work at a hospital that doesn't exist; one man carried five blood-pressure cuffs but didn't know how to use them. As actions escalated into violent skirmishes, many of the original volunteers left and never returned, leaving Colorado Street Medics to do the brunt of the work.
But they keep working at Occupy, dedicating as much time to preventing injury as to healing hurt. Among the mistaken notions that Williams has had to discourage are the beliefs that protesters should lie down in front of police horses and also cover themselves in egg whites and toothpaste to help fight pepper spray. Good Samaritan laws prevent street medics from being prosecuted for any mishap that results from their efforts, but common sense is equally important on both sides. "They can't come after you for doing the best you could," says Marschall Smith, program director for the Colorado Medical Board at the Department of Regulatory Agencies. "That's important in order to encourage people to do the right thing." But at the same time, he says, citizens should be aware of what they are choosing when they elect to be treated by a medic without a license.
"If someone is taking care of you and washing your eyes out or cleaning the split scalp you just got from a nightstick, you're not asking, 'Excuse me, are you an M.D.?'" Williams says. "'Are you board-certified?' We care about you, we train ourselves to help you, and you will forget all the alphabet soup that comes after our names." Street medics have what they can carry around their waists, and they have their judgment. That has to be enough.
"At Occupy Denver, it took weeks for them to realize that there is a reason to have trained medics," she remembers. "They thought anyone could do this, which is true — anyone can learn the skills — but you have to learn them first."
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When "Doc" Rosen died, he had no health insurance. A longtime believer in working outside of for-profit medicine, he suffered a heart attack in July 2007.
While he was in the ICU at Saint Joseph Hospital, drummers from the American Indian Movement visited him, alongside Jewish religious leaders and medics from across the country. Hospital employees moved the gathering to the Catholic chapel when it would no longer fit in Rosen's room. Williams, true to form, distributed water bottles and granola bars she'd purchased from the gift store. "Are you street-medic-ing this event?" other medics asked.
A brain hemorrhage ultimately killed Rosen, and he was buried in a space reserved for veterans of Wounded Knee in South Dakota, where his tombstone bears his real name, as well as "Doc," his Hebrew name and his Lakota name, Wanble Tokahe, or First Eagle.
A month after Rosen died, Williams had the shen, the Chinese symbol of his long-time acupuncture practice, tattooed on her left forearm. It balanced her right arm's image of a Littmann Cardiology III stethoscope, which she calls the best model in medicine. And for many more months, she taught herself Rosen's magic tricks out of books that she bought on eBay, learning how to poke a needle through a balloon and brandish a magic wand.
