Black Cross Health Collective is an affinity group of health care workers who live in Portland, Oregon. We formed after the WTO protests because we saw a need for medical care that is specific to the radical community. We think our needs as radicals are different, and that groups like the Red Cross don’t give us the skills we need to keep ourselves and each other safe in the streets. So we called upon our own medical experience (as nurse practioners, nurses, EMT’s, clinical herbalists, and more), as well as our experience in demos and direct actions, and formed Black Cross. Since then, we’ve done first aid trainings in Portland and around the country, provided medical support at local and national demos, and are conducting trials looking for a way to neutralize pepper spray.

We believe that health care is political. The kind of care we do or don’t receive, where and how we receive that care, who provides that care, who has access to training to provide care, and what kinds of trainings are smiled or frowned upon, all involve inherently political issues.

We believe the system needs to be changed… the health care system right along with all the others.We’ve put this zine together mostly to go along with a first aid training. While doing the trainings we realized there was way more to say about first aid than we would have time to say it in. So we thought a little reading would maybe be helpful to y’all.

Remember the most important words you can ever learn to say are “I don’t know.”

Fight the power, do no harm.

– Black Cross Health Collective

Read the PDF version