street medics, update

I have a few updates on the street medic situation.
Word is that all of the Portland street medics have been released, though other medics, as well as journalists and many others, are still incarcerated. They're nominally okay, but facing the theft of their equipment and possessions, including medical supplies, plus a mound of legal and travel expenses.
It isn't pretty over there. Report is they actually have mercenaries on the streets--even making raids. That's Blackwater--the same mercenary company under fire for their war crimes and murder of unarmed civilians in Iraq, the same mercenary company deployed after Hurricane Katrina and caught playing target practice with civilians.
Add Blackwater to the National Guard deployed in Minneapolis-St. Paul this week, and what you have is a government deploying military personnel--including mercenaries with little to no legal oversight and a history of brutal, trigger-happy tactics--against their own citizens.
If you've been accepting this as normal, as a status quo you weren't thinking about, please sit back and drink that up for a moment. Think of the more than 300 citizens dragged off by these soldiers on their own streets, for participating in a largely peaceful, nonviolent political protest. And if you're an American, think about how you feel when you read stories of that sort of thing happening somewhere else, and what you're willing to say about those countries, those governments, those people.
Now let's add more into the mix. They're by all accounts specifically targeting journalists--even journalists with high-level credentials--people who are paying attention to what they're doing and reporting on it. They're targeting medics--nonviolent volunteers out there to deliver medical aid to people and keep the crowds safe. They're raiding community centers, community kitchens, homes. They're pressuring independent media to shut down. They are kicking the legs out from under people's ability to know what's going on, stay safe, and protect themselves.
Are you seeing it on the news? Are you seeing it in your local paper? My paper ran a story on the dangerous, destructive protesters, with a picture of a beleaguered lone policeman firing pepper spray at frightening masked anarchists. That was their coverage. And then they went back to stories about a baby elephant at the zoo.
Military personnel performing police actions on US soil and arresting nonviolent protesters. No, not just that--preemptively arresting people they think might be protesters in a few days. And going directly after nonviolent people providing food, medicine, and information.
It looks like this. And this. And this.
Pay attention.

Street medics are trying to keep everyone safe in all this, trying to make sure as many as possible make it out in one piece. Many of them have traveled hundreds of miles on their own dime to do so, and are putting themselves in direct physical danger to serve others.
They're being thanked for it with violence, brutal arrests, incarceration, theft of equipment, felony charges, homophobic and transphobic abuse, and massive expenses both for legal support, new first aid gear to get back out there and keep helping, and to cover their travel.
Please, if you can, donate.
They're out there doing first aid for democracy, and now they're bleeding for it. Return the favor.