![]() ![]() My grandfather, his head was bleeding pretty bad, and the only thing they did was they asked us for a towel and they slapped a towel around my grandfather's head and they took off to the hospital." "When they came to the house," Starzenski says, "they didn't have any equipment. His grandfather suffered a fall in the early 1960s. Starzenski's family also experienced the difficulties before Freedom House services existed. By the time he reached the hospital in a police car, he had gone too long without oxygen he later died. ![]() left Hill District shops gutted - and hundreds out of work.įreedom House provided a solution, creating jobs for the unemployed and providing a crucial service for an imploding community.īlacks were not the only Pittsburgh residents who suffered from lack of care in those days. Riots that erupted in the wake of the April 1968 assassination of Dr. Make Way For Ambulances: They're Stuck In Bangalore Traffic In the 1960s, like many city neighborhoods, it teemed with racial unrest. Nowadays, the Hill District is famous because of its prominence in playwright August Wilson's work. The service became the national model, but it started out by serving Pittsburgh's mostly black Hill District. Starzenski tells the story in his documentary Freedom House Street Saviors. That changed with the start of the Freedom House Ambulance Service, the city's first mobile emergency medicine program. They didn't even sit in the back with you."Īmbulances existed, but they were privatized and didn't offer emergency care or go everywhere. "Because basically, the only thing they did was pick you up and threw you in the back like a sack of potatoes, and they took off for the hospital. "Back in those days, you had to hope and pray you had nothing serious," recalls filmmaker and Hollywood paramedic Gene Starzenski, who grew up in Pittsburgh. Police were the ones who responded to medical emergency calls. But people of all colors suffered from lack of ambulance care. In the 1960s, Pittsburgh, like most cities, was segregated by race. The program became a national model for emergency medical transport and care. “Rather than serving as a champion of democratic practice and a counterweight to authoritarian influence from countries such as China, Modi and his party are tragically driving India itself toward authoritarianism.Freedom House paramedics, who first were deployed in the 1960s, provided a crucial service for Pittsburgh residents. “The ruling Hindu nationalist movement also encouraged the scapegoating of Muslims, who were disproportionately blamed for the spread of the virus and faced attacks by vigilante mobs,” the report said. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi cracked down on critics and used coronavirus lockdowns to displace migrant workers, according to Freedom House. India, the world’s most populous democracy, dropped from “free” to “partly free” in the report. He said the communist country’s continued work to crush Hong Kong and intimidate dissidents worldwide is felt outside China’s borders. Abramowitz in August for his work at Freedom House, along with 10 other U.S. “Beijing ramped up its global disinformation and censorship campaign to counter the fallout from its cover-up of the initial coronavirus outbreak, which severely hampered a rapid global response in the pandemic’s early days.”įor democratic countries looking to counter China and other authoritarian countries on the rise, the report recommended that the democracies invest in alliances with other free countries, increase public support for democratic principles through civic education, and support free and independent media, among other moves.Ĭhina sanctioned Mr. “The malign influence of the regime in China, the world’s most populous dictatorship, was especially profound in 2020,” the report said. The group has issued its report annually since 1973.Īs America’s standing faltered, the report found, the authoritarian China was exerting authority outside its borders. He said coronavirus restrictions emboldened dictators, who used the pandemic to seize and consolidate their power. Abramowitz told reporters that the COVID-19 pandemic, the growing influence of the Chinese Communist Party and diminishing freedom in India marked some of the biggest changes in the past year.
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