Thank you for considering medics and planning care infrastructure into your direct action, jail/court support, or community event!
Please keep the following asks in mind:
- Allow us time to coordinate. The more time you give us in advance of your event, the more likely we are to find medics available to support you. Best practice is to contact us as soon as you begin planning your action or event. We prefer at least 1 week’s notice, and we are unable to relay medic requests with less than 24 hours of notice.
- Designate a point person on your planning team for coordinating with medics to streamline communication and prevent duplicate requests. We often receive multiple requests with multiple points of contact for direct actions, particularly from larger organizations and coalitions. This can lead to confusion, uncertainty, and miscommunications, ultimately impacting our ability to support you.
- We are not an alternative to 911 or EMS. We are also not a rapid-response alternative to formal medical care. We are a peer-to-peer mutual aid collective of care workers.
- NYCAM medics are unpaid comrades who offer time, care, and labor to our community because we believe care infrastructure makes the movement stronger. Sometimes no one is available—we appreciate your understanding and patience when this happens. We cannot guarantee medics for any action or event.
- Street medics work in autonomous buddy pairs and take informed consent seriously. Buddy pairs make their own decisions about pairing up, risk, and placement. Treat us as comrades and co-conspirators, not subordinates.
- A medic without a buddy is off-duty. Therefore, a single medic cannot commit to a medic role.
- We will not relay requests for direct actions in opposition to our values or points of unity.
- While individual medics within our Dispatch may be open to occasionally receiving direct messages with medic requests, please submit medic requests through the designated channels. The protocol described here is standard practice and allows us to ensure equitable distribution of labor in our collective, to distinguish duplicate requests, and to capture a fuller understanding of the demand for medics on the ground. Please respect individual boundaries regarding communication preferences.
To request street medic presence from NYCAM, please complete the linked CyrptPad form.
New York City Action Medical 