Rebecca Daignault-Walker went to Spokane’s BLM protest ready to help. Now Spokane Street Aid turns eyes toward larger goals

If you’ve attended any protests in Spokane in recent weeks, you’re likely to recognize Rebecca Daignault-Walker.

She usually wears a nondescript black top and blue jeans, plus some sturdy boots, to the protest events. But the red crosses on her back and shoulders, plus the bright floral scarf covering her short hair, make her easy to spot in a crowd. That’s by design. She wants you to run to her when you’re in trouble.

This is not at all what Daignault-Walker thought she’d be doing this year.

Up until recently, she was “college shopping,” considering taking her Spokane Falls Community College credits to the University of Oregon or Eastern Washington University. She grew up dreaming of a career as an English teacher; as a young adult, she thought she might want to become a medical assistant or forensic pathologist.

Then, George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer.

Suddenly, Daignault-Walker found herself on the front lines of a massive social movement. She’s now the primary organizer – “and, I guess, founder,” she said – of Spokane Street Aid, a group that provides support wherever needed during Spokane’s recent protests.

On the night of the city’s first Black Lives Matter protest, Daignault-Walker went downtown alone, armed only with a backpack full of basic medical supplies and bottles of water. She’d watched other protests around the country and seen protesters and passers-by alike harmed by police projectiles and tear gas.

“My heart was just aching,” Daignault-Walker said. “And all I could think of was if that happens here and I don’t do anything, I’ll remember that. I won’t be able to tell my future kids that I helped, I just stood back and was too scared to go.”

At that first protest, she saw a handful of other informal medics , but there was no collaboration or organization. She got in touch with some of the protest’s organizers to see if any group existed for medic volunteers. There wasn’t, so a group chat was quickly thrown together with Daignault-Walker as its lead.

She brought some medical experience to the table – she’d previously been a certified nursing assistant, and most recently a childcare provider trained in CPR and first aid. More importantly, she has demonstrated an ability to bring people together.

“It was overwhelming at first, I didn’t really ask to be in charge,” Daignault-Walker said. “But I’m really bossy, and I’ve always had this need to ‘mother hen’ people. So it worked out.”

The hastily-created group chat of loosely connected volunteers became Spokane Street Medics, then Spokane Street Aid as later protests cooled down and medical assistance was less frequently needed. Daignault-Walker said the organization consists of about 25 volunteers, nearly all medical professionals in some way, including emergency care doctors, nurses and medical students.

With recent protests being entirely peaceful, the group’s work has shifted toward helping where needed. At a Lilac Bowl protest on June 14, Daignault-Walker stood in the middle of Spokane Falls Boulevard to direct traffic away from marchers as they started down the street. Her trademark headscarf soaked by the pouring rain, she directed medics to other intersections and signaled waiting cars around detours.

Later, as marchers completing their route poured back into Riverfront Park, Daignault-Walker pressed water bottles and granola bars into the hands of drenched protesters. The day’s events had been peaceful, but as she said later, Spokane Street Aid exists to render help in any way possible.

“Days are getting hot, and I don’t want anyone getting dehydrated or their blood sugar going crazy,” Daignault-Walker said.

Another medic with the group, Sailor Guevara, has served as a mentor and sounding board for Daignault-Walker since she unexpectedly took the reins. Guevara has been involved in various protest movements for over 25 years, often as a volunteer medic. But when Daignault-Walker stepped up to lead Spokane Street Aid, Guevara was happy to take a step back – it’s the younger generation’s turn to lead, she said.

At their first meeting, Guevara said Daignault-Walker came prepared with a list of what needed to be done, and fast, before the next protest. For someone who’d never organized like this before, Guevara was blown away. She provided a few pieces of advice from her years of experience – for example, communicating with police to let them know where Spokane Street Aid would be setting up and what they’d be doing. But largely, Daignault-Walker had the right ideas, Guevara said.

“I think she’s found her calling here,” Guevara said. “I trust her gut. Most of the time, I am helping confirm her instincts, not telling her what to do.”

As protests slow down, Daignault-Walker is setting her sights on a more expansive role for her organization. Soon, she hopes, Spokane Street Aid will be serving everyone on the city’s streets,

On Saturday, Street Aid volunteers partnered with other community groups to take packages of snacks, hygiene items, clothing and other essentials to encampments of people who are homeless around Spokane. Daignault-Walker hopes this is the first in a long series of community service projects for Spokane Street Aid.

She dreams of Spokane Street Aid becoming a fully funded nonprofit organization with a network of volunteer medics, social workers and donors who can help anyone “living and working on the streets,” from homeless residents to sex workers and anyone in between.

“We want to hear their needs and to help with those where we can,” Daignault-Walker said. “We want to give them a community with no strings attached.”

Though some of the groups Spokane Street Aid partners with are politically engaged, including Eastern Washington Progressives and Spokane Community Against Racism, Daignault-Walker said her group doesn’t espouse any one political agenda. Many organizations that already provide resources for poor or underrepresented groups in Spokane are religiously affiliated, Daignault-Walker said, and some people may not feel comfortable looking to a group with different beliefs for help, so she hopes to provide an alternative for care.

Beyond that, she hopes to provide services she said are desperately needed in the area, including free STD screening and clean needle exchanges.

“Providing care is what we want to do for anyone who needs it, regardless of who you are,” Daignault-Walker said. “You could be making seven figures a year, but if you’re hurt and need help on the street in Spokane we would be there to help you.”

She’s working to build relationships with city officials to draw attention and support for those goal projects, she said. She’s also planning a fundraising push in the near future, and hopes to get support from like-minded locals who want to donate time, supplies or money to the cause.

In the meantime, Daignault-Walker said she and other volunteers have been providing most of their supplies out of their own pockets.

“My college fund is drying up quickly,” Daignault-Walker said.

While she’s frequently the face people see at a medic table, Daignault-Walker said the group is not just her – it’s about the other volunteers who care deeply enough about their mission to donate their time and expertise to helping where it’s needed. She’s often the one in meetings talking to other groups or planning shifts for the next event, but she said a lot of her day-to-day is arguing with the rest of the group because she doesn’t want “a dictatorship.”

Guevara said she thinks that innate bossiness Daignault-Walker often refers to is really what’s allowed her to shape a group chat into an organization with the potential for change.

“As women, we are called bossy instead of leaders,” Guevara said. “I always tell her not to say she’s bossy, instead say that she’s a leader. Because she is.”