The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.8           February 24, 1997 
 
 
SWP Fights For Campaign Rights  

BY GREG McCARTAN
NEW YORK - For the past 25 years the Socialist Workers Party has waged a fight to function in politics free from harassment by government and right-wing organizations and individuals. As part of this battle, the SWP has established its right to not disclose to the government the names of contributors to the party's election campaign committees.

A Federal Elections Commission ruling exempting the party from reporting the names of contributors, as well as recipients of payments, expired at the end of 1996. Constitutional law attorney Michael Krinsky has filed a request to the FEC to extend the ruling for another eight years.

Krinsky is a senior partner in the firm Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinksy, and Lieberman. Attorney Michael Ludwig assisted in preparing the submission.

The request contains extensive legal, constitutional, and factual evidence as to why contributors to SWP election campaigns need to be protected against disclosure of names to the government.

The SWP has been running candidates for public office since 1938 and has fielded a candidate for U.S. president in every election since 1948. The party fields candidates in local, state, and federal elections across the country. In 1996 SWP candidates were on the ballot in 11 states and ran as write-in candidates in 10 more.

At the heart of the SWP's submission is documentation of 72 incidents since 1990 of harassment and intimidation against party candidates, socialist campaign supporters, and offices of the party's election campaign. These include 17 incidents of threats, arrests, and violence by the police; 3 interrogations or attempts to victimize party supporters by government agencies; 24 physical attacks and threats by right-wing individuals against campaign supporters; 12 attacks on party offices and campaign headquarters; and 10 incidents of threats, denial of employment, or discrimination against socialists by company personnel.

A request to extend the exemption was filed with the FEC at the end of October. A week later, lawyers for the commission asked for further documentation backing the party's claim that the exemption was still needed. Additional material was submitted in early January. This includes another 49 incidents, plus extensive documentation on the threat to civil liberties posed in southern Florida by right-wing organizations to known defenders of the Cuban revolution. The FEC has until the end of February to respond to the SWP's filing.

Documentation of the 72 incidents has been compiled by socialists and campaign supporters as they happened over the past six years. The material includes articles from local newspapers, declarations of individuals who witnessed the events, copies of police charges or arrest reports, insurance claims, and copies of threatening letters, leaflets, or other material.

Every incident reported was a result of the party and its supporters carrying out constitutionally protected activity among working people and youth, such as distributing the Militant newspaper, explaining the party's political perspectives to fellow unionists on the job, handing out campaign flyers on the street or at strikes and protests actions, collecting signatures to place candidates on the ballot, or operating public offices of the party and election campaigns. In a brief filed along with the documentary evidence, attorney Michael Krinsky argues that the "foregoing, under the Commission's own prior rulings and binding Supreme Court precedent, is more than sufficient to compel the requested exemptions.

"We also demonstrate through declarations submitted herewith the continuing impact of the long history of federal animus to the SWP and its supporters" - a reference to the more than four-decades of spying, harassment, and disruption campaign carried out by the federal government against the SWP and other opponents of government policy.

Krinsky also points to rulings since 1990 by the Iowa and Washington State election boards upholding privacy of names of contributors. This is evidence, the submission to the FEC explains, that other government bodies in recent years have recognized the potential for disclosure to lead to violations of the right to privacy and freedom of association.

Response to 1971 disclosure act
The federal government adopted the Federal Election Campaign Act in 1971. It requires candidates and campaign committees to file frequent and detailed reports identifying contributors of more than $200, as well as and those who were paid for printing, rent, and other services. Reports are required to list the name, address, and occupation of the contributor, as well as the amount contributed. These reports are open to the public, making them a convenient "enemies list" for right-wing groups, private spy agencies, employers, and local, state, and federal government agencies.

From the outset, the SWP refused to turn over names on grounds that doing so would lead to the victimization of campaign supporters by government and private sources. Such disclosure of names is a violation of the constitutionally protected right to freedom of association and privacy, the party explained. A suit filed on behalf of the Socialist Workers 1974 National Campaign Committee challenged the constitutionality of the act and cited surveillance and harassment of those associated with the SWP by the FBI and other government agencies.

In a 1976 ruling in Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court recognized that the requirements of the Federal Election Campaign Act as applied to minor parties and independent candidates may be unconstitutional because of the danger of significant infringement on First Amendment rights. The court recognized that for particular parties "the threat to the exercise of First Amendment rights is so serious and the state interest so insubstantial that the Act's requirements cannot be constitutionally applied."

After a five-year public campaign, the SWP won a federal court ruling supporting this claim in 1979. The ruling stated that the socialists had demonstrated a "reasonable probability that the compelled disclosure of names of their members, contributors, and recipients of expenditures will subject them to threats, harassment, or reprisals from either government officials or private parties."

The FEC signed a consent decree that required the Socialist Workers campaign committees to keep records of contributors and file reports with the elections commission, but without identifying contributors.

This decision paved the way for winning parallel exemptions from state disclosure laws and made it possible for other socialist and working-class parties to win similar exemptions. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that the Communist Party neither had to disclose names or keep lists of names of their contributors.

A 1982 ruling in Brown v. Socialist Workers '74 Campaign Committee granted the SWP an exemption from state disclosure requirements in Ohio. The record of the government disruption operation against the party, it stated, indicates that "hostility to the SWP is ingrained and likely to continue." The court decided that the view that the exemption pertained solely to the names of contributors was "unduly narrow" and extended the exemption to the names of recipients of payments from campaign committees as well. When the FEC reporting exemption was renewed in 1985 for a four-year period, this aspect of the Brown ruling was extended to the national level.

Victory against FBI disruption
A year after the 1985 extension the SWP scored a historic victory against government spying. In 1986 Judge Thomas Griesa ruled in favor of the SWP in a lawsuit finding that the FBI had engaged in a decades-long pattern of activity that violated the constitutional rights of the SWP and Young Socialist Alliance, their members, and supporters.

The victories of the battles for civil rights, against the U.S. war in Vietnam, and for women's rights in the 1950s, '60s, and early '70s made it possible for the socialists to wage a political battle and legal fight against the long-standing government Counterintelligence program, known as Cointelpro.

Throughout the course of the suit, government lawyers argued that FBI operations were legally justified because of the SWP's Marxist views and communist activities. This was rejected by the court. The decision states that without the right to conduct their affairs in private, the freedom of association of those whose views are opposed by the government is violated.

Writing about the case, noted constitutional lawyer Leonard Boudin, who represented the SWP and YSA, said that "for the first time, a court has thoroughly examined the FBI's intrusions into the political system of our nation and, in unmistakable language, has condemned the FBI activity as 'patently unconstitutional' and without 'statutory or regulatory authority.' The decision," wrote Boudin, "stands as a vindication of the First and Fourth Amendment rights," not only of the SWP and the YSA, but of "all political organizations and activists in this country to be free of government spying and harassment."

In 1990 the SWP filed a request with the Federal Elections Commission for a ruling extending the 1985 court decision exempting it from reporting requirements. It placed the findings of the 1986 federal court decision at the center of the request and included numerous incidents of harassment and intimidation against the socialists since 1985.

The FEC issued a favorable ruling that did not dispute any of the party's claims or reasons for not disclosing names. The FEC wrote that given the "recent events cited, along with the history of governmental harassment, indicate that there is reasonable probability that compelled disclosure.... will subject [the socialists] to threats, harassment, or reprisals from governmental or private sources."

'Federal animus remains relevant'
In the filing the request to renew the exemption in October, Krinsky resubmitted to the FEC the court record of a decade-long political fight, writing that "the past history of the federal activities against the SWP remains relevant.... given its long duration, extraordinary intensity, and gross illegality."

Documentation supporting this fact includes reports by campaign supporters of numerous cases where individuals declined to sign socialist election petitions, subscribe to the socialist newsweekly the Militant, or have their name on a mailing list because of fear of government reprisal.

"It is hardly surprising," Krinsky writes, "that the history of FBI disruption, warrantless burglaries, warrantless wiretaps, informant penetration, and the like still intimidates and still hampers the ability of the SWP to solicit contributions and to engage in educational and political activities."

The harassment incidents cited in the submission gives a view of the extent of the work party members, candidates, and supporters carry out across the country, from union strikes and picket lines, actions in defense of abortion rights, speaking out against the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 1990-91, and distributing socialist literature as broadly as possible.

Included are cases of police arresting or harassing candidates and campaign supporters who were distributing flyers or collecting signatures to place candidates on the ballot in New York, New Jersey, Texas, Illinois, and Florida. Charges in all these cases against the socialists were dropped after vigorous protest campaigns defending democratic rights.

Right-wing threats from the Ku Klux Klan were sent to party offices in North Carolina and Pennsylvania during this time, and the Birmingham office of the socialist campaign was spray painted with a swastika and the slogan "White Power." When socialists in Des Moines, Iowa, organized a public forum on abortion rights, a leader of Operation Rescue organized a picket line, took photographs of participants in the forum, and took down license plate numbers of cars parked around the bookstore.

Socialists active in defense of the Cuban revolution have been targeted by rightists as well. An SWP campaign table in New Jersey was attacked by right-wing Cubans, and threats, attacks, and attempts to intimidate the socialists in Miami are documented in the submission.

For one and a half years, Milton Chee, an aircraft sheet metal worker at Alameda Naval Air Station Depot and a candidate for public office endorsed by the SWP, was subjected to a Hatch Act investigation for allegedly violating provisions concerning federal employees seeking elective office in a partisan election. Chee mounted a defense effort and the government eventually decided not to seek disciplinary action.

Another incident was that of Priscilla Schenk, a member of the United Auto Workers union and a worker at Emco Industries in Des Moines. Schenk regularly sold the Militant and had distributed statements to her co-workers opposing the U.S. assault on Iraq. She was subsequently interrogated at work, as was another union member, by two men, one an agent of the Iowa Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the other a Secret Service agent. She was questioned about her political views and activities.

The FEC is required to respond soon to the SWP's request. Messages encouraging the FEC to extend the exemption should be sent to the Federal Election Commission in Washington, D.C. Contributions earmarked for this fight can be sent to Socialist Workers National Campaign Committee, P.O. Box 2652, New York, N.Y. 10009.

Greg McCartan is the SWP National Campaign Director.  
 
 
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