Without any fanfare and little media coverage in the big-business press, the Department of Justice issued a press release Sept. 16, “Liability for Unregistered Foreign Agents,” that contains a frontal assault on basic constitutional freedoms, including the rights to free speech, assembly and political association.
“Both citizens and noncitizens are reminded that anyone who violates FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act] or [18 U.S. Code] 951 may face federal civil or criminal liability,” it says. “If a person acts as an agent of any foreign power to carry out any public activity, including (but not limited to) public demonstrations designed to further the propaganda or other goals of the foreign power, he or she must register with or notify the appropriate federal authorities. Failure to do so may result in significant civil or criminal sanctions, up to and including a maximum of five years in prison.”
The threat to “public activity” and “public demonstrations” comes at a time when there has been an increase in protests opposed to Washington’s criminal oil blockade against the people of Cuba.
This spring, Fox News Digital reported the federal government has compiled a hit list of 145 organizations the news agency called a “pro-communist Cuba ecosystem,” consisting of political groups, including the Socialist Workers Party, a number of national and local trade unions and others.
This political assault on supporters of Cuba’s sovereignty was highlighted in President Donald Trump’s presentation to the U.N. General Assembly Sept. 22. “The Cuban regime has also spent decades coordinating with the left-wing radicals and communist networks here in the United States,” he told delegates.
“As our State Department has detailed, they’ve cultivated ties to subversive and radical groups such as the Communist Party USA, Antifa, and the Democratic Socialists of America. Communism will never be coming to America, but freedom will be coming to Cuba,” he threatened.
In an Aug. 13 letter to the International Association of Machinists, a union with 600,000 members, Sen. Bill Cassidy, chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, demanded it provide the committee detailed information on its alleged links with the Cuban government.
The IAM’s crime? Opposing the U.S. blockade of Cuba and making a union hall in Los Angeles available for a public meeting opposing U.S. attacks on Cuba, which included via live video link, remarks by David Ramírez Álvarez, second secretary at the Cuban Embassy, along with questions and answers.
Another recent target of the FARA law is the African People’s Socialist Party and its affiliated UHURU Solidarity Movement, whose leaders were arrested and put on trial over government claims they were agents of Russia. They were acquitted of this charge at trial, but somehow convicted of the lesser charge of conspiring to act as agents of Russia.
Their appeal of the conviction was rejected Aug. 5 by a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. They have filed a motion for a new hearing by the full appeals court. Their attorney, Leonard Goodman, said the court’s finding that “lawful political speech loses its First Amendment protections when the speaker is alleged to be a Russian agent” must be reversed.
In 1998, acting as “unregistered foreign agents” was one of the charges in the government’s frame-up case against five Cuban revolutionaries who had come to the U.S. to gather information about counterrevolutionary groups planning violent assaults on the island. The “Cuban Five” were targeted by the FBI, tried and imprisoned for up to 16 years.
A long history of attacks
“Foreign agent laws” are an important part of the U.S. government’s “national security” arsenal — a direct attack on First Amendment protections.
The Foreign Agents Registration Act was adopted in 1938 by the Democratic Party administration of Franklin Roosevelt, part of a package of laws passed to attack political rights in preparation for crushing opposition to Washington’s entry into the second imperialist world war.
After FBI raids on the Socialist Workers Party and Minneapolis Teamsters union, the government framed and convicted 18 SWP and Teamsters union leaders under the Smith “Gag” Act in 1941, another law aimed at making revolutionary political speech illegal.
In the decades following, Democratic and Republican administrations have used “foreign agent” and other anti-free-speech laws to try and disrupt the activities of many organizations, including the Communist Party, as well as those leading the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement.
Reactionary laws like the Foreign Agents Registration Act and similar measures will increasingly be used by the government to attack crucial constitutional freedoms workers sorely need today.