Vol. 73/No. 34      September 7, 2009

The PDC Web site normally reports the names of all donors to public campaigns and candidates, as well as their hometowns, places of employment, and the amounts they contributed.

The August 16 Seattle Times ran an editorial opposing exemption of Protect Marriage Washington from disclosure. The paper said, “An exception should require a pattern of acts that are real, ongoing and serious.”

“There has been one example,” it continued. “In the 1990s, the Socialist Workers Party offered evidence of actual harassment and property damage done to its donors. Its argument had already been accepted by the Federal Election Commission and several times the state PDC granted the request. The city of Seattle denied it, was sued, and lost in federal court.”

However, the editorial continued, “the Socialist Workers are a special case. They could show actual damage … . They are a communist party, a fringe party. They’re tiny, and their candidates have no chance of winning.

“Referendum 71 is not at the fringe… . If it gets on the ballot there will be campaigns on both sides… . People will want to know who is paying to influence them.”

Below we reprint the letter sent to the editor of the Times August 20 by Mary Martin, SWP candidate for mayor of Seattle, and Edwin Fruit, the party’s candidate for city council position 6. The socialist candidates explain that “disclosure clauses,” no matter who they are used against, are aimed at working people and all those “who speak and act against the capitalist government and its policies.”
 

Letter to Seattle Times Editor

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) candidates for Seattle mayor and city council disagree with your August 16 editorial insisting that Protect Marriage Washington publicly disclose names of financial donors. While we oppose the group’s goal of refusing legal and civil equality to all, denial of an exemption will be used as a precedent by those on the Seattle Ethics and Election Commission and other local, state, and federal bodies who seek to reimpose disclosure on the SWP and others who speak and act against the capitalist government and its policies.

Disclosure laws are an obstacle to steps by the working class toward political organization and action independent of the Democratic, Republican, or other capitalist parties. The Socialist Workers Party has successfully fought such restrictions since they were imposed in the 1970s, winning an extension of our federal exemption in March. (The federal lawsuit lost by Seattle officials in 2004 was filed by the Freedom Socialist Party, not the SWP as the editorial says. After that victory, the SWP fought for and won exemption from local and state election boards in the 2005 mayoral race.)

Far from being a “fringe” party, as your editors put it, the SWP is the only party explaining that capitalism has entered into the deepest world economic and social crisis in living memory. We call for immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq and from Washington’s escalating wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The working class must organize a revolutionary struggle to take state power out of the hands of the capitalist rulers and reorganize economic and social relations in the interests of workers and farmers.

We urge those who want to support a revolutionary working-class alternative to write in the names of the Socialist Workers candidates.

Sincerely,
Mary Martin
Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of Seattle
Edwin Fruit
Socialist Workers Party candidate for city council pos. #6

 
 
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N.Y. socialist calls for legalization of immigrants
Iowa socialists file petitions for ballot status
Iowa socialist campaign joins in Nebraska clinic defense  
 
 
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