M
Michigan Farmer
Guest
The Ordeal of Catherine Wilkerson, M.D.
http://www.counterpunch.org/
By ALEXANDER ****BURN
Welcome to the jackboot state, not to mention the jackboot campus, anno domini 2007. A
doctor gives verbal advice to protect the life of an unconscious man and she duly gets hit
with attempted felonies by vindictive campus cops, with the connivance of the University of
Michigan. Jury selection for her trial starts on Monday in a county courthouse in Ann Arbor.
This case began with an on-campus talk about Iran last November 30 by Raymond Tanter, a
former Reagan administration foreign policy advisor and nutball cofounder of the Committee
on the Present Danger. More recently he's co-founder of the Iran Policy Committee. Tanter
has said publicly on more than one occasion that nuking Iran wouldn't be a bad idea.
The audience at November 30 event was lively and contentious. On the campus that Columbia's
Lee Bollinger once ran there's an elaborate policy about free speech, but those precepts
were promptly flouted. As is now the fashion at many universities, the U of M campus guards
are gun-toting goons who decided to wade in aggressively at the behest of the event's
organizers.
Here's how Dr. Catherine Wilkerson described what happened next, on this site on March 13 of
this year. http://www.counterpunch.org/wilkerson03132007.html
I heard a commotion in the hall and stepped out of the room. In the hall I saw the same
huge cop on top of the second protester who'd come to the first victim's aid. The cop had
the man, a relatively small guy in his forties, pinned down, arms pulled behind his back,
getting handcuffed. The cop used PPCT against this person also, not once but twice. The man
writhed and cried out in pain.
The cop used his far-greater strength and body weight, along with the force of his knee
on his victim's back to press his chest against the floor. It would be impossible for a
person to inflate his lungs pressed against the floor with his hands cuffed behind his back
like that. Asphyxiation being a well-known cause of death of people in custody, when the man
started calling out that he couldn't breathe, I approached, identified myself as a doctor,
and instructed the cop to turn him over immediately. The victim went limp. The cop turned
him onto his back. I saw that the victim had a wound on his forehead and blood in his
nostrils. He was unconscious. Reiterating numerous times that I was a doctor, I tried to
move to where I could assess the victim for breathing and a pulse. The cop shoved me, until
finally, after my imploring him to allow me to render medical care to the victim, he allowed
me to determine that the victim was alive. But he refused to remove the cuffs despite my
requests. A person lying with hands cuffed beneath his body risks nerve damage to the
extremities and, moreover, cannot be resuscitated. I continually re-assessed the man, who
had now become my patient, and who remained unconscious.
Eventually an ambulance arrived, along with the fire department and a contingent of Ann
Arbor police officers. While the paramedics went about their business, the first thing being
to have the cop un-cuff the patient, I tried to fulfill my obligation to my patient. I tried
to oversee what the paramedics were doing, which, contrary to protocol and the normal
relationship between physician and paramedic, was all that I was allowed to do. I was forced
to stay away. What I witnessed in the course of their treatment appalled me. When the
patient didn't respond to a sternal rub, one of the paramedics popped an ammonia inhalant
and thrust it beneath the patient's nostrils. If you're interested in what's wrong with
that, google Dr. Bryan Bledsoe, foremost authority on paramedicine, and read his article
condemning this dangerous practice. That it's "just bad medicine" is sufficient to make the
paramedic's actions unacceptable, but what happened next made my blood curdle. He popped a
second inhalant and a third, then cupped his hands over the patient's nostrils to heighten
the noxious effect. "You don't like that, do you?" he said.
At that point I issued a direct medical order for him to stop, but he ignored me. "What
you're doing is punitive," I said, "and has no efficacy." Then as the patient retched,
rather than rolling him onto his side to avoid the chance of his choking on his own vomit, a
firefighter held his feet down and yelled, "don't spit." In thirty years of doctoring, I
have never witnessed such egregious maltreatment of a patient. Again I spoke up, "this is
punitive." I hoped to shame the paramedical into stopping his unethical behavior."
Please note that at no point did Wilkerson do anything other than offer verbal advice.
The police--by now not just campus but also city cops were on the scene -- ordered her to
leave. As she was doing so, a city cop seized her and put her under arrest. His superiors
soon determined there were no grounds for arrest and she was released without having been
handcuffed or requested to produce ID.
Wilkerson has made her career serving low-income patients. For the last 5 to 6 years she's
worked at a community medical clinic. She takes the U.S. Constitution seriously and filed a
complaint about the incident alleging police misconduct. It took seven weeks for the cops to
answer the charges, which they did by the expedient of filing a report plump with mendacity
about Wilkerson's conduct the night of the arrests. The Washtenaw County Prosecutor, Brian
Mackie, at the apparent request of the UM police, charged her with two attempted felonies
based on "attempted interference" with the police officer who had seized her.
Her attorney, civil rights lawyer Buck Davis, tells me that that county judge Elizabeth
Pollard Hines recently threw out two subsequent charges, claiming that Wilkerson had tried
to interfere with the campus police as well as the police officer.
This coming week Wilkerson faces jury trial at the 15th District Court in Ann Arbor.
Wilkerson's lawyers will bring in eyewitnesses to the events on November 30, 2006, plus
expert witnesses including Brian Bledsoe, a Texas attorney who has testified in cases across
the country on the use of ammonia. (Ammonia was involved in the death of Martin Lee Anderson
at a juvenile 'boot camp' detention facility in Florida.)
Buck Davis tells me that "ten or fifteen years ago this case would have been a slam dunk, on
First Amendment and medical privilege arguments, with no physical contact with the cops, all
in liberal Ann Arbor." Wilkerson would have been swiftly acquitted.
"But now people are scared to death. They know the social system is falling apart. They no
longer have a generous spirit. I've learned that the erosion of the economic and social
fabric means people want to believe the cops. They're frightened. So I'm not as arrogant
about 'slam dunk' cases as I once was."
The case will probably run all week, except Thursday. If you can, show up in court to
support Catherine Wilkerson.
March 13, 2007
Scenes from a Cop Riot
Don't Come to Ann Arbor
By CATHERINE WILKERSON, M.D.
If the specter of another US foray into regime change disturbs you, google the word
"Tanter." If the prospect of another country's being bombarded with US weapons outrages you,
and if inserting the adjective "nuclear" into the narrative sends a chill up your spine, go
to the "Guardian" website and search "Tanter." Or if you hanker to find out what a Robust
Nuclear Earth Penetrator can do to humankind, click onto the Union of Concerned Scientists.
But if you want to take a stand against another US/Israeli war crime, don't come to Ann
Arbor. Not unless you're prepared for the worst. Unless you're prepared to be brutalized by
the cops, thrown in jail, and subjected to improper and punitive medical treatment, you'd
better keep your mouth shut. Or so the University of Michigan, the Ann Arbor Police, and the
Zionist forces in the community would have it.
When I became a doctor I knew I would encounter a lot of human suffering, but I never
envisioned a time when my efforts to alleviate it would get me brutalized by the police,
then charged with a crime. I never envisioned a time when I would witness another health
"professional" brazenly violate the most fundamental principle of medical ethics: first do
no harm. But thirty years after graduation, at a political event on the campus of the
University of Michigan, those things happened.
The event was a presentation by Raymond Tanter, founder of the Iran Policy Committee and
former member of the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan. Michigan's chapter of
the Zionist organization, the American Movement for Israel (AMI), brought him to town on
November 30, 2006 to whip up support for regime change in Iran. The "Islamo-fascist regime"
must be overthrown, according to Tanter, before they acquire a nuclear weapon, and one
option for stopping them would be nuking them first. Some of the Robust Nuclear Earth
Penetrators the US has supplied to Israel would be OK, with Israel doing the deed.
A small group of folks showed up to protest. The room was packed, U of M cops were on hand,
and the atmosphere was tense. Tanter fired up the crowd, especially when he declared that
Israel will exist forever, triggering the longest and most boisterous of several rounds of
cheering and applause from his supporters. But interruptions of dissent were not to be
allowed, and the cops were there to make sure of it. One of the protesters, an Iranian
woman, became the first target of the political repression in store for the night. At the
behest of one of the AIM organizers, a U of M cop proceeded to remove her.
The cop, maybe 6'6 or bigger, grabbed her arm, dragging her to the floor, where he applied
pressure point control tactics (PPCT) as she screamed. PPCT is what's called a pain
compliance technique, using the infliction of pain to force someone to do what you order.
It's used against someone who poses a serious threat of physical harm; someone, say, who's
in the cop's grip, clutching a knife and on the verge of stabbing a person. In this case,
the cop inflicted pain to force compliance with his order to stand up, while he pinned her
to the floor with his knee. She kept screaming.
"Don't hurt her," called out the woman who'd been sitting in the next seat over, also an
Iranian woman, a U of M Professor of Iranian History, in fact, and another dissenting voice
at the event. One of the other protesters came to the first victim's aid and was hauled
away, cuffed and arrested. A second protester came to the victim's aid and followed as she
was hauled away. The AMI organizers were calling the shots.
I heard a commotion in the hall and stepped out of the room. In the hall I saw the same huge
cop on top of the second protester who'd come to the first victim's aid. The cop had the
man, a relatively small guy in his forties, pinned down, arms pulled behind his back,
getting handcuffed. The cop used PPCT against this person also, not once but twice. The man
writhed and cried out in pain.
The cop used his far-greater strength and body weight, along with the force of his knee on
his victim's back to press his chest against the floor. It would be impossible for a person
to inflate his lungs pressed against the floor with his hands cuffed behind his back like
that. Asphyxiation being a well-known cause of death of people in custody, when the man
started calling out that he couldn't breathe, I approached, identified myself as a doctor,
and instructed the cop to turn him over immediately. The victim went limp. The cop turned
him onto his back. I saw that the victim had a wound on his forehead and blood in his
nostrils. He was unconscious.
Reiterating numerous times that I was a doctor, I tried to move to where I could assess the
victim for breathing and a pulse. The cop shoved me, until finally, after my imploring him
to allow me to render medical care to the victim, he allowed me to determine that the victim
was alive. But he refused to remove the cuffs despite my requests. A person lying with hands
cuffed beneath his body risks nerve damage to the extremities and, moreover, cannot be
resuscitated. I continually re-assessed the man, who had now become my patient, and who
remained unconscious.
Eventually an ambulance arrived, along with the fire department and a contingent of Ann
Arbor police officers. While the paramedics went about their business, the first thing being
to have the cop un-cuff the patient, I tried to fulfill my obligation to my patient. I tried
to oversee what the paramedics were doing, which, contrary to protocol and the normal
relationship between physician and paramedic, was all that I was allowed to do. I was forced
to stay away. What I witnessed in the course of their treatment appalled me.
When the patient didn't respond to a sternal rub, one of the paramedics popped an ammonia
inhalant and thrust it beneath the patient's nostrils. If you're interested in what's wrong
with that, google Dr. Bryan Bledsoe, foremost authority on paramedicine, and read his
article condemning this dangerous practice. That it's "just bad medicine" is sufficient to
make the paramedic's actions unacceptable, but what happened next made my blood curdle. He
popped a second inhalant and a third, then cupped his hands over the patient's nostrils to
heighten the noxious effect. "You don't like that, do you?" he said.
At that point I issued a direct medical order for him to stop, but he ignored me. "What
you're doing is punitive," I said, "and has no efficacy." Then as the patient retched,
rather than rolling him onto his side to avoid the chance of his choking on his own vomit, a
firefighter held his feet down and yelled, "don't spit." In thirty years of doctoring, I
have never witnessed such egregious maltreatment of a patient. Again I spoke up, "this is
punitive." I hoped to shame the paramedical into stopping his unethical behavior.
Suddenly an Ann Arbor cop ordered me to move away. As I headed for my purse and coat, the
cop attacked me from behind, twisted my arms with extreme force behind my back, and shoved
me against the wall. I begged him to release my left arm, explaining that I had a serious
condition affecting my shoulder, and pleading with him because of the excruciating pain he
was inflicting on me. I told him that I would do whatever he demanded. I told him that I had
been in the process of complying with his order to move out of the way and that I was
heading toward where my purse and coat were. He told me to relax and wrenched my arms
harder. I was in agony. I told him that I would sit down, anything, that he was really
hurting me and begged him to release my arm. Eventually he let my arms down.
But his brutality did not stop there. He then forced me to stand in the stairwell in a
corner for a protracted period of time. I asked him if I could please go home, as I was in
pain, and I was deeply traumatized. In yet another raw display of abuse of power, he forced
me to stand there, causing me ongoing suffering and humiliation, before finally allowing me
to leave.
The U of M proceeded with prosecution of the other three people, but I heard nothing further
from them until I filed a complaint of police brutality. Now I'm facing criminal
prosecution, too, along with the Professor of Iranian History, who, like me, was charged
after she filed a complaint. We five are being prosecuted for
"assaulting/resisting/obstructing" police officers, and in my case, for
"assaulting/resisting/obstructing" paramedics as well.
So, if you want to take a stand against another war, don't come to Ann Arbor. Don't come
unless you believe in the slogan the Wobblies chanted back at the time of the First World
War, when the government was rounding up opponents of that atrocity and throwing them in
jail. Don't come to Ann Arbor unless you too believe: AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL.
Catherine Wilkerson is a physician who practices primary care at a clinic in Ann Arbor that
provides care to underserved members of the community. She can be reached at
catwilk@sbcglobal.net
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's a new page describing the social aspects of American Fascism at
http://politicsusaweb.com/RootsOfFascism.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Still the most concise explanation of how we are who we are:
"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress
of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her August claims, have been
born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing,
and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it
does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor
freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the
ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the
awful roar of its many waters."
"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be
both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly
submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will
be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words
or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those
whom they oppress."
---Frederick Douglass
Source: Douglass, Frederick. [1857] (1985). "The Significance of
Emancipation in the West Indies." Speech, Canandaigua, New York, August 3,
1857; collected in pamphlet by author.
http://www.buildingequality.us/Quotes/Frederick_Douglass.htm
__________________________________________________________________
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specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in
my efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights,
economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. I believe this
constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section
107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the
material in this post is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a
prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational
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If you wish to use copyrighted material from this post for purposes of your own that
go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
http://www.counterpunch.org/
By ALEXANDER ****BURN
Welcome to the jackboot state, not to mention the jackboot campus, anno domini 2007. A
doctor gives verbal advice to protect the life of an unconscious man and she duly gets hit
with attempted felonies by vindictive campus cops, with the connivance of the University of
Michigan. Jury selection for her trial starts on Monday in a county courthouse in Ann Arbor.
This case began with an on-campus talk about Iran last November 30 by Raymond Tanter, a
former Reagan administration foreign policy advisor and nutball cofounder of the Committee
on the Present Danger. More recently he's co-founder of the Iran Policy Committee. Tanter
has said publicly on more than one occasion that nuking Iran wouldn't be a bad idea.
The audience at November 30 event was lively and contentious. On the campus that Columbia's
Lee Bollinger once ran there's an elaborate policy about free speech, but those precepts
were promptly flouted. As is now the fashion at many universities, the U of M campus guards
are gun-toting goons who decided to wade in aggressively at the behest of the event's
organizers.
Here's how Dr. Catherine Wilkerson described what happened next, on this site on March 13 of
this year. http://www.counterpunch.org/wilkerson03132007.html
I heard a commotion in the hall and stepped out of the room. In the hall I saw the same
huge cop on top of the second protester who'd come to the first victim's aid. The cop had
the man, a relatively small guy in his forties, pinned down, arms pulled behind his back,
getting handcuffed. The cop used PPCT against this person also, not once but twice. The man
writhed and cried out in pain.
The cop used his far-greater strength and body weight, along with the force of his knee
on his victim's back to press his chest against the floor. It would be impossible for a
person to inflate his lungs pressed against the floor with his hands cuffed behind his back
like that. Asphyxiation being a well-known cause of death of people in custody, when the man
started calling out that he couldn't breathe, I approached, identified myself as a doctor,
and instructed the cop to turn him over immediately. The victim went limp. The cop turned
him onto his back. I saw that the victim had a wound on his forehead and blood in his
nostrils. He was unconscious. Reiterating numerous times that I was a doctor, I tried to
move to where I could assess the victim for breathing and a pulse. The cop shoved me, until
finally, after my imploring him to allow me to render medical care to the victim, he allowed
me to determine that the victim was alive. But he refused to remove the cuffs despite my
requests. A person lying with hands cuffed beneath his body risks nerve damage to the
extremities and, moreover, cannot be resuscitated. I continually re-assessed the man, who
had now become my patient, and who remained unconscious.
Eventually an ambulance arrived, along with the fire department and a contingent of Ann
Arbor police officers. While the paramedics went about their business, the first thing being
to have the cop un-cuff the patient, I tried to fulfill my obligation to my patient. I tried
to oversee what the paramedics were doing, which, contrary to protocol and the normal
relationship between physician and paramedic, was all that I was allowed to do. I was forced
to stay away. What I witnessed in the course of their treatment appalled me. When the
patient didn't respond to a sternal rub, one of the paramedics popped an ammonia inhalant
and thrust it beneath the patient's nostrils. If you're interested in what's wrong with
that, google Dr. Bryan Bledsoe, foremost authority on paramedicine, and read his article
condemning this dangerous practice. That it's "just bad medicine" is sufficient to make the
paramedic's actions unacceptable, but what happened next made my blood curdle. He popped a
second inhalant and a third, then cupped his hands over the patient's nostrils to heighten
the noxious effect. "You don't like that, do you?" he said.
At that point I issued a direct medical order for him to stop, but he ignored me. "What
you're doing is punitive," I said, "and has no efficacy." Then as the patient retched,
rather than rolling him onto his side to avoid the chance of his choking on his own vomit, a
firefighter held his feet down and yelled, "don't spit." In thirty years of doctoring, I
have never witnessed such egregious maltreatment of a patient. Again I spoke up, "this is
punitive." I hoped to shame the paramedical into stopping his unethical behavior."
Please note that at no point did Wilkerson do anything other than offer verbal advice.
The police--by now not just campus but also city cops were on the scene -- ordered her to
leave. As she was doing so, a city cop seized her and put her under arrest. His superiors
soon determined there were no grounds for arrest and she was released without having been
handcuffed or requested to produce ID.
Wilkerson has made her career serving low-income patients. For the last 5 to 6 years she's
worked at a community medical clinic. She takes the U.S. Constitution seriously and filed a
complaint about the incident alleging police misconduct. It took seven weeks for the cops to
answer the charges, which they did by the expedient of filing a report plump with mendacity
about Wilkerson's conduct the night of the arrests. The Washtenaw County Prosecutor, Brian
Mackie, at the apparent request of the UM police, charged her with two attempted felonies
based on "attempted interference" with the police officer who had seized her.
Her attorney, civil rights lawyer Buck Davis, tells me that that county judge Elizabeth
Pollard Hines recently threw out two subsequent charges, claiming that Wilkerson had tried
to interfere with the campus police as well as the police officer.
This coming week Wilkerson faces jury trial at the 15th District Court in Ann Arbor.
Wilkerson's lawyers will bring in eyewitnesses to the events on November 30, 2006, plus
expert witnesses including Brian Bledsoe, a Texas attorney who has testified in cases across
the country on the use of ammonia. (Ammonia was involved in the death of Martin Lee Anderson
at a juvenile 'boot camp' detention facility in Florida.)
Buck Davis tells me that "ten or fifteen years ago this case would have been a slam dunk, on
First Amendment and medical privilege arguments, with no physical contact with the cops, all
in liberal Ann Arbor." Wilkerson would have been swiftly acquitted.
"But now people are scared to death. They know the social system is falling apart. They no
longer have a generous spirit. I've learned that the erosion of the economic and social
fabric means people want to believe the cops. They're frightened. So I'm not as arrogant
about 'slam dunk' cases as I once was."
The case will probably run all week, except Thursday. If you can, show up in court to
support Catherine Wilkerson.
March 13, 2007
Scenes from a Cop Riot
Don't Come to Ann Arbor
By CATHERINE WILKERSON, M.D.
If the specter of another US foray into regime change disturbs you, google the word
"Tanter." If the prospect of another country's being bombarded with US weapons outrages you,
and if inserting the adjective "nuclear" into the narrative sends a chill up your spine, go
to the "Guardian" website and search "Tanter." Or if you hanker to find out what a Robust
Nuclear Earth Penetrator can do to humankind, click onto the Union of Concerned Scientists.
But if you want to take a stand against another US/Israeli war crime, don't come to Ann
Arbor. Not unless you're prepared for the worst. Unless you're prepared to be brutalized by
the cops, thrown in jail, and subjected to improper and punitive medical treatment, you'd
better keep your mouth shut. Or so the University of Michigan, the Ann Arbor Police, and the
Zionist forces in the community would have it.
When I became a doctor I knew I would encounter a lot of human suffering, but I never
envisioned a time when my efforts to alleviate it would get me brutalized by the police,
then charged with a crime. I never envisioned a time when I would witness another health
"professional" brazenly violate the most fundamental principle of medical ethics: first do
no harm. But thirty years after graduation, at a political event on the campus of the
University of Michigan, those things happened.
The event was a presentation by Raymond Tanter, founder of the Iran Policy Committee and
former member of the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan. Michigan's chapter of
the Zionist organization, the American Movement for Israel (AMI), brought him to town on
November 30, 2006 to whip up support for regime change in Iran. The "Islamo-fascist regime"
must be overthrown, according to Tanter, before they acquire a nuclear weapon, and one
option for stopping them would be nuking them first. Some of the Robust Nuclear Earth
Penetrators the US has supplied to Israel would be OK, with Israel doing the deed.
A small group of folks showed up to protest. The room was packed, U of M cops were on hand,
and the atmosphere was tense. Tanter fired up the crowd, especially when he declared that
Israel will exist forever, triggering the longest and most boisterous of several rounds of
cheering and applause from his supporters. But interruptions of dissent were not to be
allowed, and the cops were there to make sure of it. One of the protesters, an Iranian
woman, became the first target of the political repression in store for the night. At the
behest of one of the AIM organizers, a U of M cop proceeded to remove her.
The cop, maybe 6'6 or bigger, grabbed her arm, dragging her to the floor, where he applied
pressure point control tactics (PPCT) as she screamed. PPCT is what's called a pain
compliance technique, using the infliction of pain to force someone to do what you order.
It's used against someone who poses a serious threat of physical harm; someone, say, who's
in the cop's grip, clutching a knife and on the verge of stabbing a person. In this case,
the cop inflicted pain to force compliance with his order to stand up, while he pinned her
to the floor with his knee. She kept screaming.
"Don't hurt her," called out the woman who'd been sitting in the next seat over, also an
Iranian woman, a U of M Professor of Iranian History, in fact, and another dissenting voice
at the event. One of the other protesters came to the first victim's aid and was hauled
away, cuffed and arrested. A second protester came to the victim's aid and followed as she
was hauled away. The AMI organizers were calling the shots.
I heard a commotion in the hall and stepped out of the room. In the hall I saw the same huge
cop on top of the second protester who'd come to the first victim's aid. The cop had the
man, a relatively small guy in his forties, pinned down, arms pulled behind his back,
getting handcuffed. The cop used PPCT against this person also, not once but twice. The man
writhed and cried out in pain.
The cop used his far-greater strength and body weight, along with the force of his knee on
his victim's back to press his chest against the floor. It would be impossible for a person
to inflate his lungs pressed against the floor with his hands cuffed behind his back like
that. Asphyxiation being a well-known cause of death of people in custody, when the man
started calling out that he couldn't breathe, I approached, identified myself as a doctor,
and instructed the cop to turn him over immediately. The victim went limp. The cop turned
him onto his back. I saw that the victim had a wound on his forehead and blood in his
nostrils. He was unconscious.
Reiterating numerous times that I was a doctor, I tried to move to where I could assess the
victim for breathing and a pulse. The cop shoved me, until finally, after my imploring him
to allow me to render medical care to the victim, he allowed me to determine that the victim
was alive. But he refused to remove the cuffs despite my requests. A person lying with hands
cuffed beneath his body risks nerve damage to the extremities and, moreover, cannot be
resuscitated. I continually re-assessed the man, who had now become my patient, and who
remained unconscious.
Eventually an ambulance arrived, along with the fire department and a contingent of Ann
Arbor police officers. While the paramedics went about their business, the first thing being
to have the cop un-cuff the patient, I tried to fulfill my obligation to my patient. I tried
to oversee what the paramedics were doing, which, contrary to protocol and the normal
relationship between physician and paramedic, was all that I was allowed to do. I was forced
to stay away. What I witnessed in the course of their treatment appalled me.
When the patient didn't respond to a sternal rub, one of the paramedics popped an ammonia
inhalant and thrust it beneath the patient's nostrils. If you're interested in what's wrong
with that, google Dr. Bryan Bledsoe, foremost authority on paramedicine, and read his
article condemning this dangerous practice. That it's "just bad medicine" is sufficient to
make the paramedic's actions unacceptable, but what happened next made my blood curdle. He
popped a second inhalant and a third, then cupped his hands over the patient's nostrils to
heighten the noxious effect. "You don't like that, do you?" he said.
At that point I issued a direct medical order for him to stop, but he ignored me. "What
you're doing is punitive," I said, "and has no efficacy." Then as the patient retched,
rather than rolling him onto his side to avoid the chance of his choking on his own vomit, a
firefighter held his feet down and yelled, "don't spit." In thirty years of doctoring, I
have never witnessed such egregious maltreatment of a patient. Again I spoke up, "this is
punitive." I hoped to shame the paramedical into stopping his unethical behavior.
Suddenly an Ann Arbor cop ordered me to move away. As I headed for my purse and coat, the
cop attacked me from behind, twisted my arms with extreme force behind my back, and shoved
me against the wall. I begged him to release my left arm, explaining that I had a serious
condition affecting my shoulder, and pleading with him because of the excruciating pain he
was inflicting on me. I told him that I would do whatever he demanded. I told him that I had
been in the process of complying with his order to move out of the way and that I was
heading toward where my purse and coat were. He told me to relax and wrenched my arms
harder. I was in agony. I told him that I would sit down, anything, that he was really
hurting me and begged him to release my arm. Eventually he let my arms down.
But his brutality did not stop there. He then forced me to stand in the stairwell in a
corner for a protracted period of time. I asked him if I could please go home, as I was in
pain, and I was deeply traumatized. In yet another raw display of abuse of power, he forced
me to stand there, causing me ongoing suffering and humiliation, before finally allowing me
to leave.
The U of M proceeded with prosecution of the other three people, but I heard nothing further
from them until I filed a complaint of police brutality. Now I'm facing criminal
prosecution, too, along with the Professor of Iranian History, who, like me, was charged
after she filed a complaint. We five are being prosecuted for
"assaulting/resisting/obstructing" police officers, and in my case, for
"assaulting/resisting/obstructing" paramedics as well.
So, if you want to take a stand against another war, don't come to Ann Arbor. Don't come
unless you believe in the slogan the Wobblies chanted back at the time of the First World
War, when the government was rounding up opponents of that atrocity and throwing them in
jail. Don't come to Ann Arbor unless you too believe: AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL.
Catherine Wilkerson is a physician who practices primary care at a clinic in Ann Arbor that
provides care to underserved members of the community. She can be reached at
catwilk@sbcglobal.net
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There's a new page describing the social aspects of American Fascism at
http://politicsusaweb.com/RootsOfFascism.html
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Still the most concise explanation of how we are who we are:
"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress
of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her August claims, have been
born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing,
and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it
does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor
freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the
ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the
awful roar of its many waters."
"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be
both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly
submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will
be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words
or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those
whom they oppress."
---Frederick Douglass
Source: Douglass, Frederick. [1857] (1985). "The Significance of
Emancipation in the West Indies." Speech, Canandaigua, New York, August 3,
1857; collected in pamphlet by author.
http://www.buildingequality.us/Quotes/Frederick_Douglass.htm
__________________________________________________________________
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