“I had to join. It was almost like a calling.”

July 10, 2019 9:36 AM

The First Responders - "The black men from Pittsburgh who made up America's original paramedic corps wanted to make history and save lives - starting with their own."

How Pittsburgh's Freedom House Pioneered Paramedic Treatment

Freedom House Street Saviors, the documentary and trailer

The First Paramedics
Freedom House Ambulance -- 'We were the best'
Pioneering paramedic honored

posted by the man of twists and turns (10 comments total)

This is amazing, thank you for posting!
posted by clockzero at 10:58 AM on July 10, 2019

Was totally unaware of this, thank you.

Any idea how to watch the movie?
posted by M-x shell at 2:39 PM on July 10, 2019

Festival circuit, apparently. It's hard for me to find scheduled showings.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:44 PM on July 10, 2019

wow, this was great. thank you.
posted by mwhybark at 3:33 PM on July 10, 2019

Read this other day. Found it weird how much hedging there was about the racist mayor. When you decommission an ambulance service and replace it with a whites-only one, that's racist, I don't see the need to split hairs to allow for the possibility that Flaherty just wasn't paying attention while some other part of city government did the racist. The buck stops at the mayor's desk.
posted by axiom at 4:30 PM on July 10, 2019 [5 favorites]

This was amazing. If only they had the chance to continue onward: who knows how many lives could've been saved then?
posted by storytam at 12:05 AM on July 11, 2019

Great writing in that first article. I've lived here for thirty years and never heard about Freedom House.
posted by octothorpe at 3:57 AM on July 11, 2019

Thank you for sharing this. It stuns me how many great people who made big advancements there are out there whose names I will never come across, and (as always) how stupid and self-defeating racism is.
posted by sallybrown at 5:43 AM on July 11, 2019

Though Safar is now hailed as the father of CPR, the medical establishment initially disagreed with his notion that the method could, maybe even should, be taught to private citizens. To prove them wrong, Safar paralyzed volunteers with curare, the compound used by Amazonian tribes to make poison-tipped arrows, and trained Boy Scouts kept them breathing using only mouth-to-mouth.

holy yikes

And this is an amazing story all around. So much I did not learn about Pittsburgh living there. Here too I'm sure.
posted by away for regrooving at 2:28 AM on July 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

Please tell me that there's no way the curare + boy scout experiment would pass review nowadays.

I'm amazed at how the mayor's racism trumped his self-preservation, too.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:23 AM on July 14, 2019