These Frontline Workers Are Protecting Protestors at All Costs
For volunteer medics and legal observers, confronting police violence can come with mental and physical tolls
Shortly after midnight in Seattle in June, cars passed the street where Danielle Meehan kneeled with an unconscious girl lying on a cot. Aubreanna Inda had been hit by a flash-bang grenade in her chest, and she’d lost her pulse several times.
A registered nurse, Meehan had been volunteering as a medic at protests in Seattle since May 30, following George Floyd’s murder. Meehan and her team of medics had shifted Inda to a “safe location” five blocks away from the protest zone; they evacuated her after police launched flash-bang grenades on the crowd of protestors.
When Meehan asked for an ambulance on the 911 call, the dispatcher told her they couldn’t come to their location, which was still too close to police activity. “They asked us if we could get to an intersection two blocks away,” Meehan said.
