TJ Gilmartin Denied Parade Honoring 9/11 First Responders

The city has denied a request from a disabled Ground Zero worker to organize a ticker-tape parade honoring 9/11 first responders.

51-year old TJ Gilmartin from Queens said that despite filing all the necessary paperwork and receiving support from community members, the city's lack of financial resources ultimately killed his chance at a permit.

Gilmartin went even further to say that first responders have never been properly thanked:

When everybody 10 years ago were running out of Manhattan, including probably most of the politicians, we went in and nobody has ever said thank you. I don't know what kind of game is being played, I'm sure police want the parade. It's called the 'Canyon of Heroes;' they've called us all heroes, so why can't we walk down that 'Canyon' just like the Giants are going to do.

This isn't the first time that the former construction worker has voiced frustrations with post-9/11 management of first responders. Back in 2010, he told The Post he had gone broke from disabilities he had acquired from work at Ground Zero and that lawyers were pressuring him to sign unfair compensation settlements.

Gilmartin made headlines again when he claimed he was rudely ignored by Senator John McCain during a visit to Washington to lobby support for the Zardoga 9/11 Health Compensation Act. According to Gilmartin, the exchange went as follows:

I stepped in front of him, and I was very respectful. I told him who I was and I asked for his help on the Zadroga bill.

"It lasted maybe 10 or 15 seconds.

"He said 'Thank you for your service.'

"And 'I can't help you.'

"Then, bang, he stepped around me and onto the elevator.

"If his eyes were daggers, I'd be dead. They'd all be in my heart.

"John McCain was pathetic. I would have thought more of him."

Controversy ignited again during the tenth anniversary of the attacks with the city's decision to keep the ceremony reserved for victims' family members, excluding the 90,000 emergency workers identified as first responders.

Watch TJ Gilmartin discuss his encounter with McCain below:

Comments

[legal127]

05:28 PM on 01/26/2012

Part I:
Its commendable, what you have done as a 'First Responder', but unfortunately, from the figures given on one of these stories about your plight for a Parade, to Honor these people that responded. Something like 900,000. Searching for what, anyone still inside the 1st Tower to come down, pulverized anything in its path, with that amount of ruble, compounding more so, by each floor falling on the ones below, until it was literaly down as far as it could go! Then came everything around it, including the 2nd Tower. I kept up with it from the very first aircraft actually flying into the Tower, and day's after. But, I maybe wrong, but I have never heard of anyone, being pulled from that amount of concrete and steel. There was just No One who could have survived that mass. I don't think that anyone even found a finger nail! And, as the saying goes, Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust! Everyone hopes for someone to survive, but a terrible thing happen that nice sunny morning. And, the loss was great.

[ZC1968]

03:15 PM on 01/26/2012

That parade will cost taxpayer alot of money that people don't have. A parade is not needed. Those first responders are not heros. They only did their jobs, nothing more or less.

[fgdgndg]

07:17 PM on 01/26/2012

i know while it costs money people don't have but the 1st responders are heroes

[ZC1968]

08:18 PM on 01/26/2012

Well the main thing that matters is these so-call heroes don't become a burden on the taxpayer. Their five minutes of fame is over.

[VA Jill]

12:47 PM on 01/26/2012

WHAT??????? How out of touch can officials be......let alone thoughtless and uncaring........

[Giblatsai]

09:39 AM on 01/26/2012

http://stj911.org/blog/?p=947

[bealebkk]

03:57 AM on 01/26/2012

This is a national disgrace, not just NYC

[Rendy Bee Mulyono]

02:16 AM on 01/26/2012

Well that's the government for you. Regardless of blue or red, the populace are just another cog wheel to advance their (politician's) own interest. Soldiers, "heroes" be damned.

[ennui the third]

10:12 PM on 01/25/2012

He was ignored because it would bring up the nasty fact of the repulsive way the government tried to hide the fact of the cancer they were exposed to...remember Christy Todd Whitman, the bush jr. factotum, the then environmental chief who said it was safe to work there?.....repugnant.

[PoliSci2008]

06:45 PM on 01/25/2012

9/11 encompasses a lot more than the First Responders, and should not be only for the First Responders, who have been recognized and thanked many times over. It should be inclusive of ordinary citizens notified the airlines of terrorism, those workers who helped fellow workers, those who fought the terrorist and the First Responders i.e., An American Memorial.

[Sandie123]

05:14 PM on 01/25/2012

New York.......you certainly forgot the first responders rather quickly!!!

[Mickey Ellis]

05:52 PM on 01/25/2012

The citizens of New York will never forget the first responders. Never. Politicians are the ones who forget.

[Crimmies810]

10:38 PM on 01/25/2012

Don't blame us, blame the i d i o ts in office!