OWS Medic Meeting, Wed 12/28/11¶

Attendance¶

Justin, Esther, Dave, Shirley, Jose, Sam, Max, Embi, Ed, JediDave, Bugz, Janet

REPORT BACK¶

we.riseup.net is up and running. It is still a work in process. 11 people have registered. All medics should register. At this time, Dave and Justin are administrators.

• 702 Vermont health concerns; many people are coughing up gray phlegm, it is thought this may be connected to mold in the basement.

• Mobile storage for medical gear: times up is working on getting us a bike with a cart for this purpose.

• Red and Shirley did a training at SPSA, this did no go so well. Shirley will be away, but Red will work on more trainings.

• Embi is now the person to give receipts to.

• Justin is on the dispatch phone now and it is working well. He can also be called for First Aide Questions: 917 657-6845.

• Charlotte’s place continues to be staffed by the National Nurse’s United. They have some supplies that we can use.

• Miriam will be returning after the holidays.

• During the meeting we heard that Oakland was being raided.

Up coming Actions¶

1. New Year’s Day 10am, March and Rally at Central Park, theme – We are angry and won’t take it anymore.
2. Zuccotti Park needs medics for New Year’s eve
3. Moon Dog from Philly needs a buddy at the Tombs, 150 Park Place.

Scheduling¶

1. We can and should sign up for events at we.riseup.net. We can give out this website to the community who may need medics.
2. Justin would like to have rotating counsel members and is willing to give up hand his status as scheduler and dispatcher to another medic in February.
3. 60 Wall Street needs medics. They can use the staff at Charlotte’s Place. Contact can be made either

CCMP Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals¶

1542 Remson Street, Canarsie, Brooklyn 718 469-5817
This organization is political, they believe that free health care is everyone’s right.
They are a gateway for patients who need long term medical care (not emergency care) and provide specialists, including, but not limited to: opthamolagists, podiatrists, and dentists. They provide transportation and write prescriptions as well.
They want to work with OWS medics, we can give their information out to anyone who could benefit from their services.
They need their roof repaired which will cost ~10k. Once this is done they are offering space for us to have our trainings, and sleep/shower space for volunteers.
They are having a pot luck on New Year’s Eve, everyone is invited.

Trainings¶

1. There is a street medic training in Ithica, Feb 3-5. Cost will be $20 – $60 on a sliding scale.
   Justin will look into renting a van to drive up and is willing to drive
   Bugz is looking into finding a place for us to stay.
2. Bugz met with Brian Dominique and Chris Schram, they will help us to manifest an occupy specific training combining street medic and community health.
3. On Friday 1/6/12, we plan to have a debriefing/knowledge sharing meeting at Justin’s apartment, to discuss our body of knowledge, we have seen and how we have dealt with specific situations.

We are planning to have the following trainings: (dates are not in yet)¶

1. Herbs
2. Bridge Training for RNs and MDs
3. Full Street Medic Training
4. A week long skills sharing in Atlanta before the RNC

Finance¶

• Dave will be stepping down from finance as of Tuesday and it was agreed that Embi and Max will be taking over. Dave will provide training. They are aware that they will need to go to the occupation office 2-3 times per week.
• Embi will now be collecting receipts.
• Dispatch Phone Shirley will be moving to Oklahoma, it was agreed that she will be able to keep the phone and we will pay the bill until she has an income

Requirements for being a street medic¶

After much discussion, we came up with a proposal for requirements to become a street medic.¶

• Accept the code of ethics (can be found on the we.riseup.net page)
• Shadow another medic for 3-5 different shifts, this can include Charlotte’s place, the
  churches, marches, protest events, etc…
• Attend some OWS training, this can include, street medic training, bridge training,
  Acadia’s Wednesday night skills sharing, etc…
• We agreed that it would not be productive to invite potential street medics to our
  meetings and that we will discuss our feelings of trust about new members.

There was also some discussion about some of our street medic actions that may not be appropriate¶

• treating out of scope of practice
• causing more harm than good
• giving herbs without doing a proper assessment

We did not come up with a consensus on how to deal with these issues internally, but we did agree
that we should be nice to each other and treat problems as learning opportunities rather than attacking and punishing each other.

Relationship with “Medical Clinic”¶

Jose was on a conference call with the Medical Clinic tonight. They continue to express a desire to
work closely with us and have expressed interest in attending bridge/street medic trainings. They are
presently staffing Charlotte’s Place and are working on clarifying their own roles and have not yet
developed a mission statement. Their finance people are now Mary and Rene.

We have had some issues with some MDs not working within our code of ethics. An example of this
has been with the hunger strikers. It was observed that one of the MDs was identifying the hunger
strikers by name on public forums and saying disrespectful things about them to other medical staff
behind their backs. This MD was also disrespectful to one of the street medics.
It was agreed that we would like to have a process to deal with situations like this. It was suggested
that we approach other MDs to speak with anyone we feel is out of line, as some of the doctors may
be more receptive to speaking with someone with equal training.
We plan to have more discussion on this topic.