The U.S. rulers are bumping into resistance across the country to their attempts to erode workers’ rights and constitutional liberties. The legal battles unfolding in several federal courts reflect opposition from working people to the Bush administration’s steps in jailing citizens without charges and denying them the right to legal counsel. And the Justice Department is running into problems in getting the courts to rubber-stamp its secret arrests and detentions of 1,200 people, hundreds of whom possibly remain incarcerated.

The arguments presented by the Justice Department in court hearings--that the actions of the executive branch of government concerning wartime actions are not subject to judicial review--build on the moves by the Clinton administration.

It was the great liberal who paved the way for the use of secret courts to jail noncitizens based on "secret evidence" under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act that he signed into law in 1996. During the final years of his administration, under the Star Chamber provisions of this legislation, the U.S. government subjected some two dozen people--mostly immigrants from Arab or other majority Muslim countries--to "preventive detention" without bail.

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, signed by Clinton in 1996, permitted the Immigration and Naturalization Service to round up and deport those charged with being "illegal" immigrants without the right to judicial review or appeal. And the administration exploited its outrageous six-month refusal to return the Cuban child Elián González to his country to set up its armed raid in Miami and establish legal precedents for reinforcing the INS’s powers that are exempt from review by the courts.

While the Justice Department’s refusal to turn over papers to U.S. District Court judge Robert Doumar concerning its designation of Yaser Esam Hamdi as an "enemy combatant" is described in the big business press as "unprecedented," it is in fact not new.

In 1937 growing public protests against government violations of constitutional rights forced the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that a federal law barring wiretaps applied to the FBI. Three years later, however, President Franklin Roosevelt secretly instructed the Justice Department to ignore the court ruling and "to authorize the necessary investigating agents that they are at liberty to secure information by listening devices directed to the conversation or other communications of persons suspected of subversive activities against the government of the United States, including spies."

This action was part of Washington’s preparation for entry into the inter-imperialist slaughter of World War II. FBI field offices were instructed to recruit or place informers in every plant in war production, which involved most of the large factories in the country. It provided the basis for decades of spying and disruption carried out against the Socialist Workers Party and other opponents of U.S. government policy. In the SWP’s historic lawsuit against the government’s Cointelpro operation, Attorney General Griffin Bell refused a federal court judge’s order to turn over files on 18 FBI informers. Bell was held in contempt of court for his action.

"National security" directives by the executive branch in violation of constitutional rights, such as that issued by Roosevelt, take aim at working people and their struggles at home. Such actions are part and parcel of how U.S. imperialism functions.

As in the 1930s, the assault on workers’ rights at home runs parallel to the imperialist war drive abroad. Both aspects of this drive have full bipartisan support. Hardly a peep of opposition has been heard from the Democrats in Congress who not so long ago railed against Attorney General John Ashcroft’s nomination, and who tried to portray themselves as defenders of working people in the process. No drive has been mounted in Congress to challenge the nearly four months of detention without charges or access to a lawyer--in violation of every sentence of the Fourth Amendment--of Abdullah al-Muhajir, accused by Ashcroft of "plotting" to detonate a radiological bomb. Even the pretense of a case against Muhajir is being given up by government officials, who now assert they will simply interrogate him until he "talks."

At home, working people who stand up to the employers’ assault on their working conditions and standard of living are also considered the enemy of the wealthy class--from dockworkers on the West Coast resisting the shipping bosses’ concession demands to garment workers in Florida demanding union rights.

The labor movement needs to throw its weight behind the protests and lawsuits against government attempts to gut the Bill of Rights. Standing together and using collective power to defend workers’ rights, while fighting the bosses’ attempts to drive down living standards and working conditions, is the road forward to strengthening workers and farmers against their common enemy--the superwealthy rulers of the world’s final empire.
 
 
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Government: Jailed citizen has no right to lawyer  
 
 
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