ST. PAUL, Minn. — While Republicans and Democrats continue
to debate the hot topics that will influence America’s decision in the months
leading up to the November election, a group of volunteers decided to take the
issue of free health care in their hands and make it a reality in the streets
of St. Paul this week.

Nearly 60 volunteers, ranging from doctors and nurses to
students with basic first aid training, came to St. Paul to volunteer as street
medics during the Republican National Convention.

“Our folks — our street medics — they were right up there,
getting pushed around by the cops, trying to treat patients,” said Charles
Schiavone, a firefighter from Connecticut, Ohio, who was coordinating a group
of volunteers. eal”Some got arrested because
they refused to leave a patient. We had at least one team held for about four
hours because they got backed into an alley but they wouldn’t come off the
patient because they didn’t feel he would get the care that was necessary.”

The volunteers are part of the North Start Health
Collective, a group committed to helping those in need of basic first aid
assistance, regardless of whether they were protesting.

“We were treating folks who weren’t even at the protest,”
Schiavone said. “We were treating folks who got hurt when they got here because
this is the only place they can get the health care that wasn’t available to
them.”

Schiavone said he was “shocked by the level of brutality” in
the police’s response to Tuesday night’s protest when a group of nearly 2,000
people marched to the gates of the Xcel Energy Center in an attempt to deliver
an American flag and a “citizen’s arrest for crimes against humanity” to Republican
leaders.

Police responded to the protest with tear gas, pepper spray
and mace after the group refused to leave a street corner blocked off by
officers in full riot gear. Several protesters and journalists were taken to a
temporary treatment station in the parking lot of Central Park United Methodist
Recovery Church.

Once the convention is over, the volunteers vowed to
continue to provide free health care in the Twin Cities area.

“This is patriotism in my opinion,” Schiavone said. “This is
what it means to live in a democracy. Democracy is not a passive
process; dissent is the very definition of democracy. Just to sit by and
say, ‘Yeah, yeah, no problem vote for the lesser of two evils’ in a battle of
the lesser of two evils, both options are still evil, and that’s not
acceptable.”