Dr. Catherine Wilkerson, MD, is a primary care
physician in Michigan.
Doctors who wrote work excuses for protesters in Wisconsin
are being accused of violating medical ethics and committing fraud. The media
are replete with calls for punishment, from professional discipline, including
suspension of medical license, to criminal prosecution. The attack on these
doctors is another tactic in the war against workers.
The uprising in Madison, demonstrating the power of
solidarity, like the uprisings across the Arab world, threatens the existing
capitalist and imperialist order. Gov. Walker threatened to fire public
employees if they did not leave the protests and return to work. The doctors who
wrote those work excuses were taking concrete actions to prevent those
struggling for workers’ rights from getting fired.
By helping workers continue in their struggle without
deprivation of livelihood, those doctors also were taking concrete actions to
prevent workers from losing the right to bargain collectively for health
insurance. Because the law Governor Walker aims to force upon the people of
Wisconsin also slashes health services to tens of thousands of poor and working
people, the actions of those doctors could have profound repercussions for
their lives as well.
People all over the U.S. recognize the significance of the
struggle in Wisconsin. Thousands of people across the country have engaged in
solidarity actions, from joining the protesters in Madison, to marching and
rallying in their own states. They see through the cynical ploys of the ruling
class to divide the working class by pitting the unionized against the
non-unionized, the unemployed against the employed, the impoverished against the
so-called middle class. They recognize that the assault on unionized workers is
an assault on the entire working class.
The doctors who wrote those work excuses recognize the
significance of the struggle in Wisconsin too. They recognize that jobs, shelter,
food, education, heat, water, light, and health care are necessary for
well-being, even for survival. Their concrete actions to defend the struggle
for those necessities of life are the epitome of what it means to be a doctor.
