FA+
Shop
National First Responders Day
12 years ago
How many of you see a distinction between servicemen and women who serve with the armed forces and defend Americans from abroad, and with first responders such as law enforcement officers, firefighters, paramedics, and EMT's who protect Americans on the home front?
While there are certainly distinct differences between the two: laws governing them, their areas of responsibility, their uniforms, the people they interact with daily; at their core is the same thing. Someone who is willing to put his or her life on the line to protect others.
Both protect and defend America. Servicemen and servicewomen do it from without and first responders do it from within. But deep down they all have the same mission.
Andrew Collier; the younger brother of slain MIT Police Officer Sean Collier who was murdered by the two Boston Marathon Bombing suspects earlier this year; has set up a petition to create a federal holiday to remember the first responders who lost their lives or who were gravely injured in the line of duty protecting those they serve. Something like a Memorial Day for first responders.
I think this is a sublime idea. We already have Memorial Day as a day of remembrance for our fallen servicemen and women who have given their lives defending Liberty. Why not also a day to remember the first responders who gave their lives defending the public?
I think I'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who would argue that cops firefighters, paramedics, and EMT's are not heroes to the same degree that soldiers, sailors, pilots, Marines, Coast Guardsmen and women, and other servicemen and women are.
If you think this idea for a National First Responders Day is a good idea, I urge you to visit 2makeachange.org and sign the petition. I've already signed and I can't wait for it to become a reality because it is long overdue.
As I was signing my name to the petition and writing up this journal, I remembered our fallen furry first responder friend
Lemonade_Coyote aka 
BlueEyedCy who was killed in the line of duty earlier this year while serving and helping the residents of their city. I know he is smiling down on all of us from above every day and I think in return for all he and other fallen first responders have done, this would be an enormous act of gratitude to create a national day of remembrance towards first responders. To show them that we do not simply let their sacrifices go by idly. To show them that we don't forget about them after Taps and their 3-volley salute has ended at their funeral. To show them that like the honor we bestow upon those who put on camouflage fatigues every day as their daily uniform, we also honor and cherish those who pin on a badge every day.
Dedicated to Indianapolis EMT Pvt. Timothy McCormick who made the supreme sacrifice while serving his community.
Some will always answer the call...
While there are certainly distinct differences between the two: laws governing them, their areas of responsibility, their uniforms, the people they interact with daily; at their core is the same thing. Someone who is willing to put his or her life on the line to protect others.
Both protect and defend America. Servicemen and servicewomen do it from without and first responders do it from within. But deep down they all have the same mission.
Andrew Collier; the younger brother of slain MIT Police Officer Sean Collier who was murdered by the two Boston Marathon Bombing suspects earlier this year; has set up a petition to create a federal holiday to remember the first responders who lost their lives or who were gravely injured in the line of duty protecting those they serve. Something like a Memorial Day for first responders.
I think this is a sublime idea. We already have Memorial Day as a day of remembrance for our fallen servicemen and women who have given their lives defending Liberty. Why not also a day to remember the first responders who gave their lives defending the public?
I think I'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who would argue that cops firefighters, paramedics, and EMT's are not heroes to the same degree that soldiers, sailors, pilots, Marines, Coast Guardsmen and women, and other servicemen and women are.
If you think this idea for a National First Responders Day is a good idea, I urge you to visit 2makeachange.org and sign the petition. I've already signed and I can't wait for it to become a reality because it is long overdue.
As I was signing my name to the petition and writing up this journal, I remembered our fallen furry first responder friend
Lemonade_Coyote aka 
BlueEyedCy who was killed in the line of duty earlier this year while serving and helping the residents of their city. I know he is smiling down on all of us from above every day and I think in return for all he and other fallen first responders have done, this would be an enormous act of gratitude to create a national day of remembrance towards first responders. To show them that we do not simply let their sacrifices go by idly. To show them that we don't forget about them after Taps and their 3-volley salute has ended at their funeral. To show them that like the honor we bestow upon those who put on camouflage fatigues every day as their daily uniform, we also honor and cherish those who pin on a badge every day. Dedicated to Indianapolis EMT Pvt. Timothy McCormick who made the supreme sacrifice while serving his community.
Some will always answer the call...
What about the nurses who care and save the patients? The Doctors and Surgeons that ultimately makes all the diagnosis and decisions that allows others to save people of the public.
What about the people like me who create all the technology that allows doctors and nurses and first responders to have the tools to save the public? There just no end to it really.
We don't needs more holidays and excuses or marketing to use and abuse, we need America working more days to keep them out of trouble
Those are all viable arguments, but they are not the issue here and are for another day.
Doctors and nurses and surgeons have noble professions, but comparing them to cops and firefighters and EMT's, for me at least, is like comparing a soldier to a commander. The soldier fights the war on the ground against the enemy trying to kill him and the commander fights the war from behind closed doors in a protected environment far away from the actual battlefield.
Today, we're talking about the men who braved gunfire and bombs being hurled at them to apprehend two fanatical terrorists who killed and maimed dozens. About the men who strap on a hundred pounds of breathing apparatus and walk up a hundred stories up into two burning skyscrapers as thousands run away after being hit in a kamikaze-style attack by hijacked jumbo jets. The men and women who don't just have a job of making peoples' lives better and healthier; but who risk, and in many cases, sacrifice their own lives in that pursuit.
Also if our goal was to create more work days to keep people out of trouble, why not just cancel Memorial Day? After all, it's just a symbolic gesture right, nothing more? And that day we take off work to remember our fallen service personnel could be better spent working to help the economy recover. But we don't cancel Memorial Day because we know it is a duty we have towards those who protect us from our enemies abroad to show them that they are not forgotten.
So what's wrong with taking one day out of 365 days in a year to remember those who lost their lives defending us at home like we do for those who lost their lives defending us from enemies afar?
And besides, before the nurses and doctors and surgeons can operate on the sick and injured, an EMT has to get them to the hospital first. A firefighter has to save them from the burning building they're in before they can be delivered to the EMT who will take them to the hospital. A police officer has to stop the crazed gunman running amok before the area is safe for the EMT's to enter and retreive the wounded in order to bring them to the hospital where the doctors and nurses and surgeons will work on them.
But to make a single day a day where everyone would honor one single kind of people sounds a bit like celebrating Christmas because you think there isn't another way to honor your own family.
What's more important: Honor a single group/kind/subject for one single day and then ignore about it, or hold their deeds and memory every day, through inspiration of your own actions and living?
Doubleofox has a very decent point: we need to draw a line to decide to make another national day for something, because you can be for sure that you are not the only one who hold the idea to honor someone, a group or symbol for a specific day. I do understand your notion of distinction, there are differences. But to say that one group is so much important that they should be honored for a single day, gives the very strong impression that other groups are notably "less worth", which I think isn't your intention to say, but which is the very reason why I reply now on this journal. You give a very strong impression that you hold several groups above the others, only because they were first. While there are a lot of other situations where the other groups will be first instead. So you should take that into account in my opinion.
If you still want to have such a national day to honor your brethren, then go ahead: you have your own reasons, which are important to you, to honor them in that specific way. The point I want to make is that there are a lot of different ways to honor those we care about and that your way of honoring is not superior to that of someone else, or to another group.
Alsatian echoed a a lot of my arguments such as the "class separation" however was not explained fully. How I look at it, is your "ultimate goal" is for brave people like yourself and other who have lost their lives as at home service(men/women) to be honored just the same as those away from home. Therefore, I feel the appropriate solution is to petition for all those to be included into MemorialDay itself not a separate day. It would show that all those like yourself are just as brave at those soldiers giving their lives everyday, not less than or more so than, as it would always be the conversation if there were to be a second added day.
To your last paragraph, as a someone who works in the medical field outside of the actual practice of medicine itself, I can tell you that it is the EMT and likes that ultimately are the one that really do make the difference in life and death, ~there is no debate~ about that fact from me. Unfortunately society has made it to where those positions are considered "unfavorable" and therefore pay and fame is adjusted accordingly. There are countless Doctors and I am sure Commanders that are some of the most illogical and outright clueless on how to do anything other than their one skill, which is important to the society as a whole.
Personally, god forbid, I get critically injuried, I hope a first responder/EMT performs all the treatment I need before I get to a hospital.
Signed, "some civilian hipster know it all"
But to return to the point, this journal is merely to spread the word about a petition to create a new day of recognition for our first responders who are no longer with us because they lost their lives protecting us. It doesn't have to be a federal holiday, it can be like Patriot Day (September 11th) where it is still a regular work day but is a day of remembrance. But the point is to pay heed to the heroes who lost their lives protecting us.
If you like the idea, great, then I urge you to sign it or to spread the word. If you don't like the idea because it is unfair to the other unsung heroes out there or it puts first responders in a separate "upper class" that is likewise unfair to others; also great; well-intentioned people can disagree. But please everyone, this journal is not meant to be a forum to discuss which heroes are really heroes and which deserve more or less recognition. It's merely a calling for those who support the idea to tell them where to go. If you don't like the idea, you're more than free not to sign.
But let's not turn this journal to dozens of ppl debating about the issue. It's meant to inform, not to incite.
That is all.
Again, if your definition is "people who give their lives for society", then statistically no, first responders are no heroes, according to that list I showed you.