as small as a world and as large as alone

8:53pm September 17, 2014

fullyarticulatedgoldskeleton:

angryladies:

Ok but that post that’s like ”WHAT WOULD A CORRUPT FIREMAN EVEN LOOK LIKE??”

Here’s what it would look like:

• Refusing to put out fires in poor or minority neighborhoods
• Claiming that fires in poor or minority neighborhoods were too far away or that there was “nothing that we could do”
• Refusing to hire firefighters of color
• This stuff has happened before, you guys
• http://www.theroot.com/blogs/blogging_the_beltway/2013/03/racism_and_the_new_york_fire_department.html
• http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/fire-rescue/report-las-vegas-fire-department-medics-abandoning-poor-minority-neighborhoods
• Institutions with power will pretty much inevitably attract people who want to abuse that power
• Please stop thinking that it’s only “certain” powerful institutions that we need to keep in check
• Please stop thinking that it’s only the police that reflect our societal prejudices
• All of our institutions of power will reflect our societal prejudices unless we stay active, vocal, and informed to prevent this sort of stuff from happening!!
• Please stop reblogging that post 

I’m so glad you said it.

There have also been cases of paramedics who deliberately let people die because they were fat and disabled, or because they were trans. So firefighters, paramedics, police, they all do horrible things.

I’ve had firefighters who came out as first responders who openly mocked me because I had fallen on the floor and was too weak to get up.  They’d say things like “Oh so you threw yourself on the floor again!?”  This was during the initial health crash where everyone medical in my life was horrified and scrambling to figure out what to do for me (I apparently looked horrible physically to the point people would take one look at me and say “Why aren’t you in the hospital?” – but my actual doctor wanted me far away from the hospital because he was afraid in my weakened state I could catch a superbug and die), and these firefighters instead chose to mock me.  

This was when my adrenal insufficiency and myasthenia gravis were creating a serious clusterfuck where I could barely get around the house in a wheelchair without falling, hard, and injuring myself, over and over and over.  (And don’t get me started on loose joints combined with muscles the consistency of limp noodles.)  At one point I was so limp that the paramedics couldn’t get a response out of me even when they pressed hard on painful locations, so they assumed I was unconscious.  So while everyone was scrambling to get me a hospital bed, a Hoyer lift, a bedside commode, a tilt-in-space powerchair, and other “welcome to severe physical disability, we don’t know how long you’ll be staying so here’s a crapload of equipment you’ll need” stuff, the firefighters were happy to just make fun of me for all of this, or put me through mental status exams so intense that the firefighters themselves were unable to pass them, trying to declare me incompetent so they could do what they wanted with me.  That’s what a bad fireman looks like.  How is that hard to imagine?

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