Vol. 72/No. 30      July 28, 2008

These measures are aimed above all at us, not primarily at “foreigners” or “terrorists.” Under the guise of “fighting terrorism,” the U.S. government will more and more use wiretapping and other domestic surveillance to spy on working-class fighters and use anything they can, including “secret evidence,” to victimize us in the capitalist courts.

In a similar manner the rulers use immigration raids, like the one in Postville, Iowa, in May, where 297 workers were railroaded to jail, to further erode the rights we’ve won in struggle.

The bill just signed into effect legitimizes a previously secret spy program initiated under the Bush administration. However, government spy programs are more and more the product of a bipartisan convergence on the tactics of the ruling class’s assault on our rights. The Patriot Act, which expanded government wiretapping, e-mail screening, and other communications surveillance was voted into law in 2001 with overwhelming support from both capitalist parties. Barack Obama and John McCain voted for its reauthorization in 2006.

Much of the groundwork for the course carried out by Bush was laid out under the Clinton administration. The 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act allowed immigration police to jail immigrants by using secret evidence, and broadened government powers to use wiretaps and to hold an accused person in preventive detention without bail. Many of these measures were used to jail and convict the Cuban Five, five political prisoners in U.S. jails today under frame-up conspiracy charges based on numerous raids on their homes, tapping of phone conversations, and use of secret evidence.

“Fighting terrorism” and defending “our” national security are thinly veiled excuses for the antilabor course Washington is carrying out. We should reject these ploys by the rulers to try to get workers to accept these attacks on our rights.

As these probes deepen, they will be more and more recognized for what they are—and resisted—by working people forced to defend themselves in collective action against the employers and the state that represents and defends the bosses’ class interests. This has been the case throughout the history of the U.S. class struggle, from the 1918-21 Palmer raids, to the Smith Act labor frame-ups of the 1940s, to the government’s Cointelpro domestic spying and disruption campaign against socialists, Black rights fighters, and the antiwar movement of the 1950s and ’60s.

Repeal the Patriot Act and other laws that provide for government spying! Shut down Guantánamo Bay and other U.S. “detention” centers! Free the Cuban Five and all others framed up for their political activity!
 
 
Related articles:
Bipartisan vote expands U.S. gov’t spying
 
 
 
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