Vol. 81/No. 18      May 8, 2017

 
(Socialist Workers Party statement)

SWP: ‘The FEC decision won’t change what the
SWP does’

 
The following statement by Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party 2016 candidate for U.S. president, was released April 20 at the conclusion of the Federal Election Commission hearing.

The Federal Election Commission decision today to deny the Socialist Workers Party’s exemption from reporting names of campaign contributors is a blow to working people and constitutional rights.

As our request for an extension states, the FEC ruling is based on “an unprecedented, dangerous standard” that gives a green light to government harassment and disruption of groups and individuals exercising our right to speak and act in opposition to the employing class and its political representatives in the Democratic, Republican, and other parties. The decision throws obstacles in the way of working people organizing political activity independent of the rulers and the increasingly unstable capitalist two-party system.

But the FEC decision won’t change what the Socialist Workers Party does.

The SWP will continue to actively engage in politics, including running candidates within the law and in ways that maximize protections for contributors and supporters. We’re running mayoral candidates in New York City, Albany, Seattle, and elsewhere this year. We’re taking our program, the Militant newsweekly, and books and pamphlets to workers and youth open to a working-class alternative to capitalist rule.

Today working people bear the brunt of capitalism’s crisis of production and trade, as well as Washington’s nonstop wars and military threats from Syria to Afghanistan to Korea. The U.S. government keeps up its economic war against Cuba’s socialist revolution, its occupation of Guantánamo against the will of the Cuban people, and its assaults on the sovereignty of Venezuela and other nations whose governments are not obedient to its dictates. The profit-driven carnage for workers is spreading, as more and more of us can’t find jobs, real wages decline, social rights such as Medicaid come under fire, and the bosses use their cops, courts, spies, and prisons to try to keep us in line.

Capitalist politics today is wracked by growing polarization. Washington seeks to set religious and political tests for the right to asylum. Muslims, Jews, and their places of worship face stepped-up attacks. Public opposition is mounting to expanded spy operations, from the FBI and National Security Agency to police red-squad use of informers. Freedom of speech and debate is under assault, including on campuses from Berkeley to Middlebury. All this increases concerns among some that association with the SWP will lead to harassment and victimization.

At the same time, there is growing interest in the Socialist Workers Party among working people. Since the origins of the communist movement in the U.S. soon after the Bolshevik Revolution 100 years ago, the SWP and our forebears have been a target of the bosses, their political and immigration cops, and their anti-union, racist, and rightist thugs. That’s because our party is blood and bone of the class struggle. And that’s also why it has been the SWP that has won important milestones in the fight against government spying and disruption.

I want to thank Michael Krinsky and Lindsey Frank of the internationally known constitutional liberties firm, Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky & Lieberman, who have provided invaluable legal help in defending our political rights for well more than half a century.

And we thank all those who sent us reports of threats, harassment, and attacks on SWP candidates and their supporters. These reports — along with the extensive evidence of government and right-wing spying, harassment and disruption we have forced into public view — are the bedrock of our ongoing fight.
 
 
Related articles:
SWP will keep right on campaigning across US
 
 
 
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