When tragedies happen, it is often hard to know what to do. Here is a shining example of a positive reaction. When police refused to call an ambulance soon enough to save the fatally wounded Oscar Grant in 2009, Sharena Thomas and Lesley Phillips decided that too many people lacked knowledge of even the most basic emergency first aid techniques. Together, these Occupy activists founded the People’s Community Medics, and since 2012 they have been providing free first aid training and first aid materials to Bay Area residents.
Their website, peoplescommunitymedics.org, explains, “This project is an act of self determination. We resist the state’s disregard for our well being and are creating an alternate reality. We hope that one day every child will be taught basic first aid in school.”
Committed to teaching their community how to treat medical emergencies in the absence of an ambulance, Thomas and Phillips call their project “a people centered alternative” to institutional support that often is unreliable in its response to low-income communities and communities of color.
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