Greetings! Here's a story by Alex Cockburn on some recent horrible events at University of Michigan, my alma mater. I should say, this issue is somewhat personal for me as I was one of about 15 students who occupied the administration building in opposition to the president's plan to deputize campus security goons as cops, and allow them to carry guns. Message? "No Guns No Cops!" It was not a complicated issue at all; it united hippies, libertarians, peaceniks like yours truly, and just about all the black students. thousands of students rallied in agreement...but we failed to stop the plan. It's disturbing to see what's happening now. I doubt AC is right that UM is now a "jackboot campus," but still and all this is very f***ed up.
xx Liza
Begin forwarded message:
>
>
> Welcome to the Jackboot State, Ann Arbor Division
> The Ordeal of Catherine Wilkerson, M.D.
> By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
> CounterPunch
> November 24 / 25, 2007
>
> 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 MI 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.
>
> 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 (NOTE: the MOST
> COMMON arrest-related injury is this nerve damage.LH) and, moreover,
> CANNOT BE RESUSCITATEDannot . I continually re-assessed the man,
> who had
> now become my patient, and wWHO REMAINED UNCOSNCIOUS.
>
> 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. (note:A PARAMEDICIC IS ACTING IN AID OF THE
> POLICE--AND ADDING TO THE BRUTALITY BY ABUSING A PATIENT.LH)
>
> 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." (NOTE: MORE ABUSE--which
> could have RESULT ED IN DEATH BY CHOKING ON OWN VOMIT. Since when did
> paramedics and firefighters become POLICE???? LH)
>
> 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 SOA, 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." (NOTE:Then, when the cops HURT
> THEM
> their tune will change....this intensification of police
> violence---remember the U fo FL student TASERED for asknig John Kerry
> questions--it;s now time for white,middle-class progressives
> to--finally--0TAKE POLICE BRUTALITY SERIOUSLY. All the torture
> practiced
> by the US government is not JUST happening in Giuanatanamo. MOST of it
> takes place on the streets, in the jains & prisons, of America--by
> "law
> enforcement" and guards.LH)
>
> The case will probably run all week, except Thursday. If you can, show
> up in court to support Catherine Wilkerson.
>
> Learn more at defendwilkerson.org or sign the petition at
> www.ipetitions.com/petition/defendwilkerson
>
>
>
>