#mediccorps

Right?? It's all about global humanitarianism until we're talking about the middle east/Africa 🙃(not to mention the Bates probably have a default pro-Israel stance like most far-right Christians).

I sat on this for too long. I so badly wanted to see something come of this, and silence wasn’t helpful when MedicCorp deserved to be called out. The reports that came in from their doings in the Bahamas were not verified, but I tend to believe them.

This happened in 2019, so to recap-

MedicCorp is a limited liability company (so not a non-profit yet). One article states that the company was established by John David Duggar, Nathan Bathes, and a Dr. Esli Gollapalli. So John David, Abbie, Jana, Jason, James, Austin, Nathan and Lawson Bates traveled to the Bahamas during Hurricane Dorian under the guise of ministry disaster relief services. Reports about MedicCorps activities and behavior came out from a reporter named James Lea.

Lea alleges that:

-MedicCorp took over resources intended for multiple NGOS and tried giving orders to military organizations.

-They were not forthright about where they were taking the 3,000 lbs of cargo

-They didn’t allow an elderly survivor to use their air conditioned quarters

-Asserts that Nathan Bates repeatedly lied about non-existent orders that they were to handle and distribute the resources

-The $20,000 dollars MedicCorp requested for fuel was commandeered, so they did not use the donated money to pay for fuel

-John David behaved aggressively towards other volunteers and coordinators. John David and Lawson had photos taken of them with their hand guns, handcuffs, and badges on them.

-The MedicCorp volunteers had been provided with hot food every day. A MedicCorp post had circulated where the Duggars stated they hadn’t had “real food” in days, so a pilot flew them Chick-fil-A from the mainland. He also says, “they were working in an air conditioned office. Unlike the other NGO workers who were sleeping in tents and hammocks which were hung from the broken airport perimeter fence.”

Some people had commented, “isn’t it still better that they are over there and trying to help?”, and I would argue that the disaster survivor’s situations were not made better by MedicCorps presence.

Disaster events are scary for anyone to endure, but racist structures become more visible in the aftermath of natural disaster. The suggestion that disaster survivors are likely to endanger others for resources in the fall out of a storm is used to stigmatize those who were vulnerable to the storm. Marginalized peoples are often pushed into higher flood risk areas, and neglected when it comes to first response initiative.

The tactic of painting vulnerable people as rioters allows responders to exercise greater and excess authority in these situations. During Katrina there were false reports of riots in a majority black neighborhoods, racist assumptions affected responders willingness to give aid to those areas or to instead militarize. MedicCorp stigmatized the survivors by taking an authoritarian approach. There is no way they handled national disasters with this aggression, and Christian volunteers have no business wearing weapons on their hip. It’s impossible to trust a law enforcement officers and first responder volunteers who would conduct themselves this way.

Not necessarily a bad thing. Can’t research the non-profit yet since they’re still pending for approval. The website mentions the following:

“Medical Evacuation Disaster Intervention Corps is a non-profit organization based in the USA with IRS 501(c)3 pending status.

Our current team members are 100% volunteer and choose to donate their valuable time and resources to support our mission — all donated funds and charitable gifts go directly to provide supplies and resources for our Medic Corps volunteer staff as they serve those in need.

Medic Corps volunteers have various levels of training including search & rescue, EMR/EMT, paramedic, firefighting, technical rescue, law enforcement, active and former military and other related training. In addition, Medic Corps volunteer staff include doctors, specialty physicians, professional pilots, lawyers, pastors & chaplains along with catastrophe relief and crisis volunteers. If you are interested in volunteering or know someone who may be qualified and willing to help serve with our team, please contact us.”

John David is a licensed pilot, so that part is right. Are any of the boys that went ordained pastors? James? Jason? Lawson? Jana - all though she isn’t a boy, of course.

Idk I have a hard time with MedicCorps. I like 90% think they're trash and like 10% think "well, if they even help one person it's worth it" so I've decided to not really have a hardline opinion about what they're doing rn.

I typed out a whole long thing as a response yesterday after doing some digging on their website/socials but then felt too conflicted and deleted it. I have my own pessimistic ideas of what they're up to over there but can't find anything to support it, so I'm just going to abstain from that conversation lol.