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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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