AUSTIN, Texas – As demonstrations escalated over the weekend protesters, Americans and Texans watched as protesters and police collided. What you might not have seen though were acts of kindness among the crowd.

Demonstrators offered food and water to each other, even handing out sanitizer to strangers. One group of volunteers in Austin joined together to perform first aid on the injured.

“We’re here strictly in a neutral capacity, offering medical help,” explained Volunteer Medics organizer Brenton Donnell. “It doesn’t matter who gets injured— if it’s a protester or cop— we’re gonna pull them aside and we’re going to treat them.”

Donnell is a small business owner in Austin and he knew he wanted to help when he heard about the protests.

“Minorities have been oppressed for thousands of years, and especially those of us that are white, small business owners that suffer along with our communities have a special weight to provide back to those communities.”

Donnell gathered some friends and started work providing first aid at the protest early on Saturday. Before long more volunteers joined their ranks.

“About half of these people that you see are just they just came because they have training and they know what to do and they have supplies and they want to help,” said Donnell.

“People have been showing up with water, they've been showing up with medical supplies, and showing up with antacid. And it's really the community building what it needs itself,” he said.

From heat exhaustion to eyes streaming from pepper spray and wounds from beanbag pellets fired by police the volunteers treated a range of injuries.

“We sent three people to the hospital for rubber bullets, one person had a fractured skull, another person had a fractured jaw and lost some teeth,” said Donnell.

But in the middle of the protest against police brutality ambulances had limited access to injured participants.

 “I had a moment earlier where protesters actually really got in the face of some APD that were here to escort EMS. And that was really hard. A lot of us got maced. It was understandable because of the tension,” he said.

Donnell ended up coordinating with the Austin Police Department EMS commander to figure out the best way to get patients to the hospital.

“Both he and I felt that it was unsafe to bring an ambulance over here, because an ambulance requires police support, and that police support is triggering protesters. So he was more than happy to work with us about putting EMS over there. And as we have to call ambulances, we are able to move, patients over to that direction,” explained Donnell.

The efforts of Donnell and his volunteers showed strength within a community, even as it was grieving.

“We're here because Austin is a community and it's important and we care about it,” said Donnell.