by Crimethinc. Workers' Collective
Available in 284 free installments
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arrest wagons never did show up. Still spinning in a delirium of adrenaline, we hastily packed all the equipment out the back door and into the van, while the locals drifted slowly off into the night, exchanging grins of disbelief and dehght. For the nejrt weeks, whenever two of us who had been there passed on the street or in a library or coffee shop, we exchanged a knowing glance: we had seen that all the placid neighborhoods and strip malls, even the convenience stores, were a mere front, behind which a wild world lurked?just waiting for a chance to bust out.
Health Care
Hijacking Conwentiona! Health Care
Countless texts have been written on various forms of radical health care, including free Instructions
clinics, herbalism, needle exchanges, midwifery, feminist gynecology, and organizing street medic collectives for demonstrations. Here, we can only go over the broadest smattering of topics not often covered in those treatises, to give a humble indication of all there is to learn about health care outside the institutions.
If you need immediate medical treatment from a hospital but you can't aflFord their exorbitant, extortionist fees, don't despair. Emergency rooms are required by law to treat anyone in need regardless of their ability to pay. If you don't want to deal with the hassle of bills and debt, give them a false name, a false address, and a false social seoirity number.
Give a name that is familiar enough to you that you can respond to it instinctively and give it exactly the same way every time. Give an address that exists, so it will not be obvious that it is made up, but cannot be tied to you. Give a social security number that has the same first five digits as your own or that of a friend of a similar age, but different numbers for the last four?the first five digits designate the place and time you were born, so you don't want to give a number that doesn't represent a region or that indicates you should be a much different age than you are. It might also help to present yourself as homeless, jobless, and destitute, assuming your outward appearance gives the impression that this might in fact be the case; there may be drawbacks to this, too, however. 275
Developing Your Own Health Care: Taoist Lymph Pump
Health Care
2j6
Unfortunately, this technique will not work for obtaining long-term therapy or treatment, but it will serve to get a broken bone set or a cut stitched; one of the crash test dummies who test-ran it in the field even had a ruptured appendix removed free of charge. Another option, which may help you obtain medication and other longer-term treatment, is to travel to a foreign country where health care is available at more reasonable rates. A different crash test dummy got a whole mouthful of dental work done in Mexico, and paid for his travel and living expenses, too, with less money than it would have cost to get the work done domestically
Did you ever notice how much chemistry is involved in heaHng? More often than not, getting well means swallowing something. The chemical goes "down there" to do {or not do) its thing, while you do something else. In and of itself, herbal healing is not much different. While it may be your friend rather than some robot zombie doctor giving the prescription, herbs alone are just another thing to swallow. Whatever your experience with chemistry, it's worth diversifying your toolbox. There are many sophisticated and ancient schools of thought on healing and maintaining health through postures, movement, breathing, and massage. Any of these is worth a lifetime of study, but in the meantime, here's a simple technique for arousing the immune system that I have employed with great success.
When you think "circulatory system," the heart and lungs come immediately to mind, but the body is composed of many circulatory systems. Your iromune system, for example, is a circulatory system, though it doesn't have a dedicated pump like the heart or diaphragm?instead, the lymph nodes serve as pumps. Your lymph nodes are located around your joints?armpits, crotch, neck?and are pumped sympathetically when you move. Often sickness accompanies or follows a period of limited movement. Whatever the reason you feel sick, one of the first things you do is stop moving as much: you stay at home all day.
skip the show, spend a lot of time in bed. No doubt you should get rest. But to your regimen of chemistry and rest, add the following simple exercise. It will help activate and circulate your immune system without adding too much stress on a body that has its hands full.
