The whole thing began in November 2006 at a speech by former Reagan and Bush security adviser Ray Tanter at the University of Michigan. Dr. Catherine Wilkerson was there as part of a group protesting Tanter’s speech, but when police arrested another protester, Blaine Coleman, in a manner that put his life in danger, she was acting as a doctor trying to save a life when she tried to get the police to let her administer aid to the man. For doing so, she was charged with obstructing justice — and that was just the beginning of her problems.

Wilkerson watched as one large police officer handcuffed Coleman with his arms behind his back. Then, with his knee in the middle of Coleman’s back, the officer pushed his weight down on Coleman against the floor. Coleman was gasping for air and saying that he couldn’t breathe, and Wilkerson, knowing that it would be impossible for the man’s lungs to inflate in that position, identified herself as a physician and implored the officer to let the man up and let her examine him to make sure he was OK. For that, she was shoved aside and told to stop interfering with police business.

When Coleman’s body went limp and he lost consciousness, the officer turned him over to find that the man was bleeding from his nostrils and had a wound on his forehead. After more imploring, the officer finally let her check that the man was alive, but he refused to remove the handcuffs so that she could administer aid to the man (with his arms trapped beneath him in that manner, Wilkerson says, he could not be revived). When the paramedics arrived, the police finally removed the handcuffs. When paramedics tried to revive the victim with ammonia capsules, Wilkerson again tried to intervene, knowing that this treatment is dangerous and ineffective. Another officer then grabbed her and applied a pain control technique to drag her away from the scene.

Continued – 

Wilkerson filed a brutality complaint against the Ann Arbor and U of M police, after which the Washtenaw County prosecutors suddenly decided to charge her with obstructing justice. On Dec. 3, 2007, a jury acquitted Wilkerson of those charges. Unfortunately, that did not end her long ordeal. Shortly thereafter, Packard Community Clinic, where she worked for years, prepared a new contract for her to sign that included new language not in previous contracts that seriously restricted her right to speak her mind outside of work. The contract said:

“Employee agrees to refrain from conduct, both at work and outside of work, which tends to reflect negatively on the reputation and public image of the Employer, which may negatively affect the ability of Employer to retain current patients, attract new patients, or attract donations or which may otherwise in the judgment of Employer’s Medical Director reflect poorly upon the public image of Employee or Employer.”

When she refused to sign that contract, she was fired. A group that organized on her behalf, the Committee to Defend Catherine Wilkerson, started a petition drive to protest her firing, and representatives of the group say that at least 19 donors to the Packard Community Clinic and more than 50 patients from the clinic have signed it.

More recently, the ACLU of Michigan sent a letter to the clinic administration urging them to change the wording of the contract. That letter notes that as worded the contract language is “extremely broad and poses serious civil liberties implications for the free expression rights of employees.” The letter further argues that “there is no question that if all employers forbade employees from expressing controversial political ideas outside of work, the values of free speech and democracy in this country would be severely undermined.” They are urging the clinic to change the language so that it allows free speech outside of work but requires the employee to make it clear that they speak only for themselves and their views do not reflect those of the clinic:

If employee public expresses personal views outside of work on political or controversial matters, employee must exercise care to ensure that those views are not perceived as the views of the employer.

That letter was sent on April 17, 2008, and was apparently sent at the behest of both the Committee to Defend Catherine Wilkerson and the executive director of the Packard clinic, Kim Kratz. But despite requesting the ACLU’s view on the matter, the clinic appears to have no interest in addressing the controversy over the firing of Dr. Wilkerson. Kratz told the Ann Arbor News recently that the clinic’s board of directors would take the ACLU’s letter into account when they revise the contract, but that won’t be until next year. But she indicated that the clinic is only trying to do what the ACLU requests that they do:

“Clearly, it’s not our intention to limit what folks can say outside of work or do outside of work. … We want people to do what they do in their private lives and distance it from the clinic, is what we’re trying to do.”

But if that is true, why won’t they rewrite the contract for Wilkerson as the ACLU suggests and require only that she take steps to distance her views from the clinic? The Messenger asked that question of Kratz and received this reply:

Packard Community Clinic is grateful to the ACLU for their comments on our contract and is generally positive about the suggested language. As you know from the Ann Arbor News story, the Clinic solicited the ACLUs guidance. The Board of Trustees will certainly consider their recommendations carefully when we revisit the contract next December. At Packard Community Clinic, our first focus is on making health care universally accessible in our community. Although we are interested in civil liberties, we do expect that our physicians act professionally in public and take care to ensure that their personal political views are not associated with the Clinic itself.

A follow up e-mail reiterating the question in regard to Wilkerson went unanswered.