Street Medics

Street medics are volunteers with knowledge and skills in first aid and crisis management. We bring our varied backgrounds and experiences together to care for our community at events and protests, as well as cultivating a practice of mutual aid and looking out for the wellbeing of those around us.

What Street Medics Do

Street medics provide immediate care to protesters in need. This may require treating injuries and ailments resulting from crowd control weapons such as chemical agents; providing care for general emotional and physical wellbeing; or attending to other health events such as heat stress or seizures.

Our work is a combination of community care and emergency first aid. You might see us walking through the march or rally or find us at a First Aid stand. Look for the Green Street Medic / First Aid signs.

Why have Street Medics

The presence of Street Medics helps an action be more resilient to threats of violence, unexpected incidents and environmental hazards. Through education, raised awareness of threats, and providing first aid equipment and resources we increase the preparedness of protesters so that they may participate in actions with a sense of safety, resilience and confidence.

Street Medics have a commitment to equity and justice. We understand that mainstream medical services are not as safe for some to access as others, and we aim to reduce the necessity of calling them by managing simple problems by ourselves, and making educated decisions on when it is necessary to call an external service. We aim to increase access to protest events for people who might be medically vulnerable or otherwise limited by preventable barriers.

Become a Street Medic

We encourage all street medics to have a current first aid certificate or training in health care. While some untrained volunteers may participate in our team, they will be buddied with a trained volunteer and have limited first aid responsibilities. If you are interested in getting your first aid certificate so you can be a street medic, please contact us as we may be able to offer support.

For further information or to join us, fill in your details HERE.

Request a Street Medic team

We consider fielding Street Medic teams upon invitation, and according to our volunteer capacity. We work across diverse movements, campaigns, and protest events, so we need to prioritise our resources and capacity. When we need to choose, we tend to focus on protecting the political space of groups that are experiencing or resisting structural or systemic oppression; or are more likely to be targeted by police or state repression.

To request Street Medics at your event, please click on the button in the navigation bar and fill out the Request Action Support form (information goes to a secure email address).