Lillian Bonsignore, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pick to lead the Fire Department as its commissioner, brings more than 30 years of experience within the department’s Emergency Medical Services (EMS) to the job. She went on to serve as Chief of EMS and her work in the recovery effort after 9/11 earned her great accolades.
Though many in New York heralded her appointment, others were not so kind. Billionaire Elon Musk and Texas Senator Ted Cruz — two right-wing national figures who have no experience in firefighting and have never run a fire department — questioned her experience anyway. These self-righteous, self-appointed experts in firefighting seem to think that because Bonsignore never fought a fire, she is therefore not qualified to be the fire commissioner.
The truth is, many fire commissioners in the FDNY’s history were not former firefighters themselves. In fact, two of Bonsignore’s immediate and very successful predecessors, Laura Kavanagh and Robert Tucker, had business administrative and political backgrounds.
The fire commissioner doesn’t fight fires; they are responsible for overseeing the FDNY’s 17,000 employees, including the 11,000 firefighters and officers who directly respond to emergencies every day, and keeping the city safe.
If the broadsides from Musk and Cruz weren’t bad enough, a former Republican Congress member from upstate New York, Nan Hayworth, took a homophobic shot at Bonsignore’s sexuality in trying to compare her appointment to that of Kristin Crowley, a former Los Angeles fire chief who, like Bonsignore, happens to be lesbian.
“Worked out great for LA in January so why not,” Hayworth wrote, making a sarcastic reference to the deadly wildfires that struck there a year ago. The remark was as deplorable as it gets.
In the end, Mamdani’s choice in Bonsignore was his to make. Time will tell whether Bonsignore will be up to the task, but her background with EMS — which, the new mayor noted, responds to more than 70% of all calls to the FDNY — suggests that she knows what it takes to fulfill the department’s most basic mission: Saving New Yorkers’ lives.
As for the remarks from Musk, Cruz and Hayworth, they are just more examples of the vile, counterproductive rhetoric that has consumed social media and politics in general. It’s one thing to voice genuine concern about something rooted in actual fact; it is another to ridicule someone based on their appearance or background.
Such ridicule should be rejected and shunned. New York doesn’t need the advice and consent of unserious people.
In the new year ahead, let us all resolve to follow two golden rules that our parents and guardians taught us:
1.) Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
2.) If you’ve got nothing nice to say about someone, don’t say it at all.
Let’s follow those rules and help restore some honor and dignity not just to social media and politics, but to our society as a whole.
