This statement was released by Laura Anderson, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate from Florida, Sept. 3.
The U.S. government’s frame-up trial against Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party, and Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel, leaders of the party’s UHURU support group, began in Tampa Sept. 3. They face up to 10 years in prison, accused of being covert agents of the Russian government seeking to disrupt elections in the U.S.
The charges are based on the notorious Foreign Agent Registration Act, which the capitalist rulers have used before to target constitutionally protected free speech and political activity. If your views are similar to those of a foreign government’s, the government can sic the FBI to spy on you, disrupt your political activity and prosecute you.
A fourth defendant, Augustus Romain Jr., a former APSP member, also is on trial.
Offices of the African People’s Socialist Party were broken into and raided by armed FBI agents in St. Petersburg, Florida, and St. Louis, July 29, 2022. This was within weeks of the infamous FBI raid on Donald Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago. Both raids were organized by President Joseph Biden’s Justice Department.
The pretext of serving a foreign power has been used by the government for decades to go after militant workers, Black rights fighters, the Socialist Workers Party, opponents of Washington’s wars and others.
The stakes in this trial have nothing to do with agreement or disagreement with the political views of those on trial. They have everything to do with constitutional freedoms crucial to the struggles of working people today and going forward amid the deepening crisis of capitalism.
Free speech, the right to join together in political activity, the right to worship freely, to bear arms and more are all conquests of bloody battles by working people over decades. And codified in the Constitution.
As the SWP explained in its 2022 political resolution, “Defending and extending the freedoms protected by the US Constitution is at the center of the class struggle today.”
The Socialist Workers Party says: Drop the charges!