Vol. 75/No. 6      February 14, 2011

The Mid-South Peace and Justice Center (MSPJC) in Memphis had called on people to come to its office January 25 to fill out Freedom of Information Act forms requesting their FBI files. More than a dozen showed up. MSPJC states its goal is to “realize social justice through nonviolent action.”

Three men identifying themselves as from the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force also showed up. Brad Watkins, MSPJC organizing coordinator, said, “They claimed that they were there to alert us to antiwar activists planning a protest outside our building. I informed them that we were a pro-peace organization.” The agents left.

Next, eight police vehicles, including SWAT SUVs, arrived. The cops said they were there to “keep the peace at a demonstration they had been alerted to,” reported Watkins. When the activists responded that their presence seemed aimed at intimidation, the cops claimed they had received a call from “a concerned citizen.”

Interviewed by the Memphis daily the Commercial Appeal, both the FBI and police officials said they had received no threats against the MSPJC, but such visits were routine law enforcement. FBI spokesman Joel Siskovic told the paper there was a concern about violence “against people expressing their opinions.”

According to the Appeal, it was only in December of last year that the Memphis Police Department officially banned political surveillance after a court order 32 years earlier to do so. The 1978 consent decree prohibited electronic and covert surveillance, maintaining of files on someone’s political views, and “any law enforcement activities which interfere with any person’s rights protected by the First Amendment.”

On Dec. 20, 2010, the police finally distributed a memo to this effect to all employees, a day after the Commercial Appeal ran a story questioning whether the department was obeying the order.

In a series of recent articles, the Appeal has described the long history of FBI and police spying in Memphis against trade unions, socialists, Black rights fighters, and opponents of U.S. wars.

The Memphis FBI received national attention in 1954 when its agents arrested Junius Scales, a Communist Party (CP) leader, on charges of violating the Smith Act. Scales was jailed for being a member of the CP. The Smith Act made that a felony, on the claim that the party advocated the “violent overthrow” of the government.

Government spying stepped up during the civil rights movement, the movement against the Vietnam War, and a militant strike by Memphis sanitation workers in 1968. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis that year on April 4 while participating in solidarity actions in support of the strike.
 
 
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