Ottawa Street Medic Collective

The Ottawa Street Medics are no longer active, and have effectively disbanded as a collective.
OSM was a local collective seeking to advance social justice through mutual aid, direct action, advocacy and compassion.
This website remains as a record of their work and experiences. The accountability update below contains an account of OSM's goals, operations, struggles and lessons learned. This account may be useful to anyone seeking to advance social justice at a grassroots level.

OSM Accountability Update
Posted May 4, 2022

This is a 5-part update by the Ottawa Street Medic Collective.Part 1: A basic recap of the accountability process and a basic summary of our fundraising in 2020 and 2021.Part 2: A more detailed account of our fundraising and spending in 2021.Part 3: A general report on our 2021 operations.Part 4: Thoughts on OSM's impact, shortcomings and struggles to achieve our goal of advancing social justice.Part 5: Further reflections and lessons learned in mutual aid.

Part 1: OSM Fundraising basics (2020-2021)On Dec. 23, 2021, OSM paused all its operations. Many members were burnt out and unhappy. Internally, there were questions about how our donations were being spent, and conflict about financial accountability.Our last public update had been published on our Instagram account on July 7, 2021 (the post is still there).Since then, we had not been providing the public financial updates we promised the community.So, we pressed pause. While basic food drops and outreach continued at a small scale, we stopped taking any monetary donations. We launched a series of all-hands intensive meetings to hear member concerns and discuss the state of the collective.We had difficult conversations but made progress. In late January, so-called Ottawa was besieged by a convoy of conspiracy theorists, fascists and anti-vaxxers. Our members focussed on community work, which meant we had to pause the accountability process for
more than a month.We have finally assembled this update for you, our community and supporters.OSM started in July 2020, and quickly grew amidst the mass layoffs and desperation of the pandemic. In 2020 we raised $12,100 in monetary donations.October 2020 - $996
November 2020 - $3707
December 2020 - $7397As OSM entered 2021 the collective had grown and the needs we were trying to meet had grown as well. Unemployment was high and many vulnerable people were struggling to get by through the pandemic for various reasons. Around February 2021 the collective’s efforts gained media attention and our donations surged as a result.In 2021, we raised between $102,000 - $107,000 in monetary donations.That’s a big fundraising total, and it surprised many of our members when we first saw that total.Here is the month-by-month breakdown of our 2021 fundraising:January 2021 - $36,397
February 2021- $10,622
March 2021 - $10,816
April 2021 - $16,886
May 2021 - $7,553
June 2021 - $2,103
July 2021 - $3,453
August 2021 - $2,541
September 2021 - $4,212
October 2021 - $651
November 2021 - $2,537
December 2021 - $4,245Out of that total, we spent all of our donations with the exception of $400, which we plan to spend on reimbursing volunteer expenses.

Part 2: How OSM collected and spent your donations (2021)OSM mostly collected monetary donations from individual supporters and community members. In January 2021 we held an art auction with donated art to raise money.We also received many donations of physical goods like clothing, blankets, food, winter and hygiene supplies. These were handed out by street outreach teams, given to individuals in need or given to partner organizations for distribution. For example, in February 2021, in partnership with Hit the Streets we gave $6000 in donations to a Black Liberation Fund which went to Black community members.Later that month, we gave $500 to the Braided Warriors legal fund after an action in Vancouver. In December 2020, we had given $300 to Maggie’s Toronto in support of their Covid-19 Black Sex Workers Emergency Survival Fund. These were the only two donations given to causes outside our community.Sometimes your generosity was more than we could handle. At various times we had to repeatedly turn away donations of clothing and supplies because we had no space to hold it.In 2021 we raised a total of $102,000 - $107,000 in monetary donations.We give a range ($102,000 - $107,000) because some of our numbers conflict and we do not have access to the records we need to come to a precise number. We do not have access because those records were kept by members who have moved on from OSM.We have made every effort to access the records we need to create an accurate total.This is very frustrating for our members, many of whom feel very strongly about the need for financial accountability. We are sorry we cannot provide an exact number. Without dedicated people tasked to track all donations and expenses, it becomes an overwhelming task for a small collective to take on.After we put out the call for help in late January 2021, amidst COVID and extreme cold, we raised more than $30,000 in about a week. This was due to the incredible community response amidst the desperation of layoffs and sickness and lockdowns. We were blown away by that generosity.The collective had decided early on that we would not do any “means-testing” for the people who asked for our help. No hoops to jump through - the people who reached out to OSM for help would get that help. They were the people who had fallen through the cracks and could not access government or institutional support.We started a support line in February 2021 and kept it running until late May 2021. We shut down the support line when the labour involved became unsustainable.The most common support requests through the support line and our social media accounts were for groceries, dental care, utilities relief and clothing.Volunteer expenses in 2021 (what we spent to support OSM operations and members):$3,760 in physiotherapy for the OSM member hit by a car at the Nicholas/Laurier blockade in November 2020.
$9,700 (including license fee and later repairs) to purchase a used van for transporting supplies and people in need
$128 for two oil changes
$2,520 for gas reimbursement (March 2021 - Dec. 2021)
$525 for van parking (March 2021 - Dec. 2021)
$127 for two folding wagonsTotal: $16,760

Part 3 - Operations and internal communication (2021)The 2021 fundraising total was surprising to many of our members. Before we paused operations for the accountability process on Dec. 23, there had not been any general meetings of OSM members for almost 6 months.Unfortunately, operations and fundraising did not stop when the general meetings stopped. They should have, but they didn't. The need hadn’t stopped, and so OSM members continued working, trying to answer the requests for help. Unlike before however, the outreach teams and other volunteers were not being updated regularly.The fact is, in the fall of 2021, internal communication had fallen apart. It takes a lot of time and effort to organize safely and thoughtfully. Some of our key members left Ottawa for life or work reasons in summer 2021 and OSM no longer had their organizing skills or support.Food outreach teams (volunteers towing around food wagons), continued on their rounds believing some members were being compensated for food expenses by donations. Compensation had been given to cover expenses for some non-food items like clothing and hygiene products. However, all donated food was being bought with various volunteers’ own money.A few core members were giving much of their time responding to individual needs, responding to pleas for help with their time and OSM donations. Some examples include groceries, clothing, transportation, finding shelter and accommodations, and emotional support.Sometimes donations were raised through specific fundraising requests through our social media accounts. In other cases, general donations were used.In late fall 2021, lack of communication between outreach teams and core members handling direct aid and donations prompted internal calls for financial accountability. This resulted in OSM pausing operations to give you this report.

Part 4: Community aid, shortcomings, and strugglesThe collective, and by extension all supporters and the community, genuinely helped many people. Hundreds of people. Many people who had been failed by institutions, knocked down by life, the state, capitalism, the pandemic, found someone who cared.Hundreds of our vulnerable neighbours on cold streets were given hot homemade meals, warm clothes and blankets. Families with bare cupboards were given grocery cards or e-transfers to buy what they needed for dinner.Look through our Instagram posts. It’s an incomplete record, but it’s a record of what we accomplished with your help.Although many of our members feel disillusioned and demoralized by the inadequate accountability we can provide here, they are not done with mutual aid. They will continue distributing remaining donated items to neighbours in need.But we’d like to acknowledge our shortcomings here. Our collective’s goal was to advance social justice through mutual aid, direct action, advocacy and compassion.Our members are still dedicated to contributing to this movement. However, we found how difficult it is to balance these goals while responding to ongoing crises, and at the same time organize strategically to dismantle the systems that create these crises.We’ve put a lot of energy into this update. This accountability is less than what we wanted to provide, but we hope it gives the answers our community needs. We have limited capacity to respond to follow-up questions, but if you need to ask, you can do so through Instagram or at [email protected].On a related note, we did learn some invaluable lessons that we would like to share with you (please see Part 5).

Part 5: ReflectionsWithout deliberate efforts to properly define a common political perspective and goals (aligned values), we ran into major issues, especially when it came to addressing internal conflicts.We continue to face various crises that need immediate responses every day. Without an intentional effort to reflect on how to respond collectively and strategically, we never made progress challenging the systems and thinking that was causing these crises.The lack of organization led to the unintentional formations of hierarchies, as well as an unequal distribution of labour. Women and femmes were the backbone of the organization, contributing an outsized amount of the labour, food and items we redistributed. It is important to centre and acknowledge their contributions.We have learned the importance of creating and maintaining personal boundaries. If we don’t set boundaries and create those systems of care, we end up draining the energy that we need to organize and fight unjust systems and create structural change.Without taking active steps to counteract the power imbalances we experience daily under oppressive structures, we risk replicating those toxic structures.Finally, trust is everything in community organizing. We learned that you can't build trust and community through one-off events. Calling people out to protests and events without making proper preparations depletes trust and goodwill.We built trust through low-risk activities, meeting weekly to walk around the community to distribute food and supplies. We developed friendships and community ties by having small outdoor gatherings, telling stories, packing meals together, and a lot more.We hope this account of our experience is useful to anyone trying to organize against inequity and state-corporate violence.In solidarity,Ottawa Street Medic Collective

About Us

The Ottawa Street Medic Collective is a leftist group of like-minded individuals with a shared vision and passion for fighting the status quo and creating radical change. We are committed to advancing social justice and abolitionist initiatives through mutual aid, direct action, advocacy and compassion. We seek to build community capacity to resist oppression.OSM is explicitly anti-capitalist, anti-reactionary, and anti-oppression. We believe in building healthy and resilient communities through mutual aid, direct action and grassroots organizing. We do this without the involvement of the state. As such, we do not work with police or other government bodies.Ottawa Street Medics primarily provide mutual aid to our neighbors, with a focus on the unhoused and other oppressed populations. In our secondary capacity, we also attend protests to provide basic first aid and emotional support to our comrades fighting for change.

Ottawa Street Medics in the news