Intros

Please leave a comment down below saying as much or as little as you like about yourself and what direction you’d like for the group.

14 Comments Add your own

1. fleabite | May 30, 2007 at 6:41 pm

I am a 3rd year student nurse and involved in community politics. I’m a feminist and an Anarchist.

I started this website in order to get things moving after months and months of discussion.

However I don’t want any network or association to be limited by only my ideas by what we could be. I believe that it will be made stronger, more coherent and thoughtful if YOU get involved, and put forward the “obvious” “common sense” proposals that actually YOU are in a unique position to have because of your life experiences and individual makeup.

Please get involved, let me know where you think we’re going wrong or could do better, take responsibility for the direction we’re going in, and lets fight for justice, equality and real patient care.
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2. magnifico | May 30, 2007 at 9:40 pm

Great site fleabite, glad someone had the organisational skills to do it!

I’m a second year occupational therapy student and part-time healthcare assistant. I’m also an anarcho-syndicalist.

I think health (and social) care is one of the most important areas for political and economic struggle at the moment, both in terms of defending workers’ jobs and the social wage of the working class. I also think that the structures which people have traditionally relied upon to safeguard the free provision of healthcare since WW2 (the Labour Party and trade unions) are now more than ever showing themselves to be dedicated to doing the exact opposite, making initiatives like this one absolutely vital.

I’m also interested in radical critiques of healthcare delivery under capitalism, particularly the way it usually ignores the social/societal causes of ‘illness’, be it physical or mental. I’m not as knowledgeable as I’d like to be on this kind of thing, hopefully this website will help me learn more!
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3. germs90 | May 31, 2007 at 4:39 pm

I am a healthcare technical officer for the National Blood Service, where I have worked for just over 3 years.
We are in dispute at the moment over reconfiguration plans to condense local processing + testing sites into 3 big supercentres further away from the hospitals. 100s of workers’ posts are at risk.
I have been a UNISON shop steward since February, + am also a wobbly. I passionately believe in the altruistic non-profit ethos of a public health service. The will to defend our NHS is strong amongst healthworkers, but union leaders seem afraid of this. Democratic organisation + effective action are being discouraged, even suppressed.
This site is a great idea + I really look forward to it growing!
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4. poliakova | June 2, 2007 at 11:55 am

‘magnifico’ above is me by the way, when I signed up to be a contributor to the site magnifico was already taken. My new name is in memory of Maria Poliakova, a Russian anarchist nurse imprisoned and exiled in 1925.
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5. jenni | June 3, 2007 at 6:22 pm

Hey, I’m a medical student involved in a community group (uni based) of libertarian communists and have an interest in an anarchist and feminist discussion/critique of medicine.
Would like to know more about how health workers might use anarchist ideas in their work. Oh and what poliakova said.. ignoring the social/societal causes of ‘illness’.. will be interested to hear more about how healthworkers can combat this – I’ve noticed a severe lack of any (good!) social analysis of things among doctors and other medical students I’ve met. unfortunately don’t really know the situation with other HCWs since i don’t meet many. Ace site btw 🙂
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6. Morag | June 4, 2007 at 3:24 pm

I am a student midwife with a wide interest in women’s health, radical healthcare and feminism.

As radical healthcare workers I think we have to defend free healthcare for all, and decent working conditions for the people delivering it. While ‘choice’ is a word that’s been abused in many a government report, I do think we at least need to work towards a personalised service that isn’t completed constricted by guidelines and legislation.

As a midwife, I believe it’s equally important to support healthcare workers outside the NHS. The ongoing persecution of Independent Midwives is just one example of how state control is limiting those healthcare workers who want to provide alternative models of care.

This organisation is a great idea for information sharing but I look forward to working on more practical solidarity measures – soon I hope! 🙂
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7. pingtiao | June 5, 2007 at 12:56 pm

Hello all.
I’m a third year medical student and also one of the libcom group and a member of the anarchist federation. Jenni-hello there from another med student!
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8. Mike Markey | June 8, 2007 at 4:18 pm

Hi All
I am a staff nurse based at a small community hospital in Ebbw Vale been nursing for 29 years my background has been in socialist activity joined the IWW about 2 years ago now a member of anarchist federation.currently involved in local dispute with introduction of parking fees see website below
http://www.gwenthealthcare.unionweb.co.uk/PageView.aspx?Page=1441
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9. Mark Harper | June 22, 2007 at 3:11 pm

I’m a Psychiatric Nurse in North Devon. Its really good to see that other health workers have similar political ideas to myself. I’ve been active in fighting against cuts in the NHS since qualifying 3 years ago. This activity has mainly been via UNISON of which I’m currently chair of the local branch. UNISON’s response to these cuts has been luke warm to say the least as the leadership do not want to upset their friends in government. I’ve been a member of the IWW for some time now and would like to become more active as i believe it is only through radical organisations like the IWW that real change can be made. I’d like to help out in any way I can. Maybe i could write about some of the campaigns ongoing in the south west.
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10. 4.3.3 | July 2, 2007 at 3:00 pm

Hi all,
been working in psychiatric nursing for past 23 years.
pissed off with the unions lack of drive, their failure to do the very basics of what they purport to represent i.e. the interest of the membership, and their inability/unwillingness to take on “new labour” on a whole raft of issues effecting the NHS and the working class.
also a member of the wobs in edinburgh.
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11. Andy | July 4, 2007 at 2:47 pm

Am also a psychiatric nurse and in the iww. Maybe we should network. are you two other iww psychiatric nurses on the iww internal email list?
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12. Doc | July 12, 2007 at 1:25 pm

I’m a radical Healthcare worker and Mediical activist so thought i’d check this site out.
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13. antoine | December 14, 2007 at 5:26 pm

not a medic as such, but am a street medic and trained first aider. great news that this site exists, best of luck for the future 🙂
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14. blaze | January 4, 2013 at 1:35 am

Hi. I’m a medical student – upon qualification, wish to join MSF (Doctors Without Borders) – currently investigating intensely all anti-capitalist theory, especially anarchist – am scheming to form a kind of doctors-and-medical-practitioners syndicate or union type thing: run from bottom up rather than top down; doctors considered as workers whose work is patching other workers up (none of this ‘pillar of upper-middle class society, complacent bourgeois respectability’ dog-crap); purpose for existence of this union is to help any people who need help, not make profit or carve out a high-status niche in a crook society; to offer medical education completely for free to like-minded people (and, as a side, also spread knowledge about evolutionary theory and ecology (it all comes under the umbrella of biology, ‘bios’ = life, ‘ology’ = the study of) to anybody who’ll listen, with a mind to shaping and propagating a healthy and responsible and switched-on mindset about human nature and an individual’s exsistence as an organism in an ecosystem). For starters. Think something like this got set up in Spain during the Civil War, breifly.

In the most of the west, the medical system seems to be very rigidly heirachacal and very strongly bound up with current class interests (ie. background of most doctors, for instance, and insurance, welfare systems etc), so I reckon this doctor’s union-syndicate thing’ll have to set up a base outside the west, from out of which to spread and to diffuse the good word: Chiapas, in Mexico, with the Zapatistas, and Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa, with the Abahlali baseMjondolo (a shack-dwellers association) and the Treatment Action Campaign people, look like the two most promising places to being getting stuck in with. Accordingle am learning Spanish and Zulu, which is the language with the clicks and tounge-pops. Anybody out there in the world keen to jam ideas : bfor495@aucklanduni.ac.nz
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