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Vol. 81/No. 17 May 1, 2017
SWP disclosure exemption hearing is set for April 20
BY BRIAN WILLIAMS
After two postponements, the Federal Election Commission will meet April
20 to debate and vote on the Socialist Workers Party’s request to renew
its exemption from disclosing the names of contributors to its election
campaigns.
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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