Vol. 81/No. 17 May 1, 2017
SWP disclosure exemption hearing is set for April 20
The Socialist Workers Party first won the exemption in 1974. “This is an important gain in defending workers’ right to engage in political activity independent of the bosses and their parties,” John Studer, Socialist Workers Party national campaign director, said April 15, by providing protection against government harassment.
“Regardless of what the FEC decides, the SWP won’t change what we do politically, including running candidates, and doing so within the law in a way that maximizes protection for our contributors and supporters.”
A 15-year-long lawsuit the party won in 1986 brought to light that the FBI had gathered over 8 million documents on the SWP, wiretapped supporters, carried out at least 204 burglaries at party offices, and tried to get members fired from jobs and evicted from apartments.
The commission has before it several “advisory opinions.” Drafts “A” and “B” call for ending the exemption. A third opinion, draft “C,” backs extending the exemption through the end of 2020.
In an April 17 letter to the FEC, SWP attorneys Michael Krinsky and Lindsey Frank, of the prominent firm Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky and Lieberman, urge extending the exemption. They explain the extension is merited both on constitutional grounds of the right to privacy and political association and on the long documented history of attacks on the party and its campaigns by government spy outfits, local red squads, employers and rightist thugs.
One of the claims in draft “B” is that the SWP could be used by major-party interests to divert votes from other contenders and skew the elections.
“There is not a scintilla of evidence of any vote diversion, nor has there ever been in the more than 75 years of the SWP’s participation in elections,” the SWP’s attorneys replied. “In addition, such diversion is entirely contrary to the reason the SWP runs election campaigns, which is to advocate its own, entirely distinct and independent political positions.”
Draft “B” also claims that harassment against the Socialist Workers Party hasn’t been “serious” enough to merit an exemption. Krinsky and Frank say that criteria would be an unprecedented hurdle that would “further chill the exercise of important First Amendment rights.”
One example they gave is the censorship of the Militant newspaper in several state and federal prisons. “Draft B improperly dismisses as merely ‘actions by corrections officers that were reversed’ the nine separate documented incidents in which both state and federal prison officials throughout the U.S. singled out issues of The Militant, the newspaper that editorially supports the SWP, and refused to permit inmates to receive these issues,” write Krinsky and Frank.
Officials at New York’s Attica Correctional Facility have refused to answer challenges by the Militant to their confiscation of three issues in November and December, as have authorities at Illinois River Correctional Center in Illinois over the past two months.
“These instances exhibit the continued, deep-seated government hostility toward supporters of the SWP,” said the April 17 letter. These actions “violated The Militant’s and the prisoners’ First Amendment rights.”
Sharpening political polarization
The request for extending the SWP’s exemption occurs amid a sharp polarization in U.S. politics today. This includes attacks aimed at speakers with controversial views on campuses from Middlebury, Vermont, to Berkeley, California, to Seattle. Among those attacked were conservative Charles Murray, co-author of The Bell Curve, and Milo Yiannopoulos, a former editor for Breitbart News.
“Attempting through violence to silence those you disagree with from expressing their views is a method that can and will be used against the workers’ movement as well,” said Studer.
These attacks on free speech and the polarization show there “is a reasonable probability that SWP supporters would also be subject to threats, harassment and reprisals and the reasonableness of potential supporters’ fears of supporting the SWP were an exemption from disclosure not granted,” wrote Krinsky and Frank.
The lawyers submitted an affidavit to the FEC reporting on an individual who for the past four years had regularly contributed to the Socialist Workers Party but recently decided to stop doing so. “He fears attacks on democratic rights whether from the left or right — and backed by forces in the government,” the affidavit states, “may escalate in the coming period making it more dangerous for individuals to have open political affiliations.”
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