Teachers union supports SWP disclosure fight in Washington
https://themilitant.com/2020/11/21/teachers-union-supports-swp-disclosure-fight-in-washington/
BY JOHN STUDER
Vol. 84/No. 47
November 30, 2020
Members of AFT Local 1789 organized a walkout in 2016 during contract
negotiations at Seattle Central Colleges. The local’s executive board
wrote to support Socialist Workers Party’s fight to stop Washington
state officials from publicly disclosing names and addresses of SWP
electors. The union has been fighting its own battle against attempts by
a notorious anti-labor group to use state disclosure laws to gain access
to personal information on campus workers.
Members of AFT Local 1789 organized a walkout in 2016 during contract
negotiations at Seattle Central Colleges. The local’s executive board
wrote to support Socialist Workers Party’s fight to stop Washington
state officials from publicly disclosing names and addresses of SWP
electors. The union has been fighting its own battle against attempts by
a notorious anti-labor group to use state disclosure laws to gain access
to personal information on campus workers.
The Socialist Workers Party’s recent success in preventing disclosure of
the names and addresses of its presidential electors in Washington state
continues to hold. And additional support for the fight to prevent
disclosure keeps coming in.
On Nov. 9 Annette Stofer, president of American Federation of Teachers
Seattle Community Colleges Local 1789, wrote the SWP campaign extending
the union’s support.
“The Executive Board of AFT Seattle Local 1789 wishes to express our
support for your efforts to get an exemption from disclosure of personal
contact information for your 2020 candidates and campaign personnel,”
Stofer wrote. “We agree wholeheartedly that you have a right to protect
the names and addresses of your members from those who may wish to cause
harm. We also understand the necessity of upholding freedom of
association and the right to privacy in those choices.
“We wish you success in your legal case. That success is important to
all of us who might become the target of attacks on personal freedoms.
We must defend the voice of a wide variety of political opinions. It is
intolerable that some seek to shut down political participation by
threats and intimidation,” she said. “Please reach out if there is more
that we can do to support you.”
Members of this AFT local are familiar with what is at issue. They’ve
been fighting for years efforts by the notoriously anti-union Freedom
Foundation to use the state’s disclosure laws to force college
authorities to turn over names, addresses, ages and other personal
information of campus employees. They say they want the information to
try and get workers to quit the union.
Government officials in Washington state and in Seattle have a long
history of enacting and using campaign and other disclosure laws against
the Socialist Workers Party, other third parties and political groups,
as well as public unions like the AFT.
The SWP has fought to win exemption from having to disclose the names
and personal information of its campaign supporters on the city, state
and federal level. Through political and legal efforts, the party has
amassed thousands of pages of evidence of threats and attacks against
those who’ve signed petitions, made contributions, campaigned for or
otherwise aided its candidates.
During the SWP’s successful lawsuit against the FBI in the 1970s and
’80s, the spy agency was forced to admit to having used some 1,300
informers against the party, placing wiretaps and carrying out more than
200 burglaries into its offices, and organizing Cointelpro disruption
efforts against the SWP and its members.
The SWP’s Seattle office was firebombed in 1984. While petitioning and
campaigning for the party’s 2020 presidential ticket of Alyson Kennedy
and Malcolm Jarrett, SWP supporters received death threats, both in
person and on the phone. One caller said he would burn their
headquarters to the ground and kill everyone in it.
Still, authorities in Seattle and Washington state, long dominated by
liberal Democrats, have fought relentlessly against having to grant the
party exemption from disclosure, claiming it is necessary for
“transparency,” regardless of the attacks it might lead to against the
SWP or others.
Even when the Seattle Ethics and Election Commission in 2005 finally
granted the SWP an exemption from filing the names and other information
on their campaign contributors after an eight-year fight, commission
members complained that they were forced to do so by court rulings that
“set the bar so low.”
The Socialist Workers Party is the only party to ever win exemption
from the Federal Election Commission. In a defeat for political rights,
the commission voted to revoke that exemption in 2017, claiming attacks
against the party were now largely a thing of the past.
‘Gov’t has no right to disclose this’
“I find it unbelievable to think that the names and addresses of
Socialist Workers Party presidential electors would ever be disclosed!”
wrote Dan Coffman, the retired ex-president of International Longshore
and Warehouse Union Local 21, Nov. 11. Coffman was ILWU president in
Longview, Washington, during the union’s bitter struggle against a
union-busting drive by megagrain exporter EGT Development.
“The government has no right to disclose this information of these
people,” he said. “This Republic we live in gives US freedom from
tyrannical overreach. To even suggest disclosure is shameful.”
Support has also come from other political groups. The Green Party
affiliate in Oakland, California, wrote Nov. 16 to say it “wishes to
inform the Socialist Workers Party that it has our organization’s full
support in its legal battle to prevent the State of Washington from
disclosing publicly the names and addresses of its presidential electors.”
Writing to the SWP, the Green’s Dale Baum noted his organization is “in
complete agreement with its Seattle fight to win political space for the
working class to debate, organize, and campaign.”
“The fight here has been an important contribution to winning political
space for the working class,” Seattle SWP leader Mary Martin told the
Militant. “It helps expose these ‘disclosure’ laws for what they are —
an attack on political rights aimed at making it more difficult for
unions and working-class parties like the SWP to fight effectively.”
Front Page Articles
Fight for gov’t public works program to create jobs now!
Working people need our own party, a labor party
Brutal gov’t killing spurs new protests in Belarus
Gag orders by ‘social media’ bosses attack political rights
Join push to go over quotas for new readers of ‘Militant,’ books
‘Militant’ calls on Indiana officials to overturn ban at Wabash prison
Feature Articles
Ethiopia war threatens wider conflict in the Horn of Africa
Also In This Issue
Teachers union supports SWP disclosure fight in Washington
Thousands in Indonesia protest new anti-labor law
Atlanta solidarity vigil with protests in Nigeria
Pennsylvania nurses strike over patient safety, wages
Cliff Joseph, fighter for Black artists and champion of Pathfinder Mural
Fall Campaign to sell Militant subscriptions and books (week seven)
Socialist Workers Party Fund Drive (week 7)
On the Picket Line
Dominion strikers in Canada ratify pact, end 12-week strike
Unionists at GE in Louisville reject company’s contract offer
Rolls-Royce jet engine workers strike to stop job cuts
Books of the Month
Workers need fighting program for jobs, protection from inflation
25, 50 and 75 years ago
© Copyright 2020 The Militant - 306 W. 37th Street, 13th floor - New
York, NY 10018 - themilitant@xxxxxxx
Cookies
This site uses cookies to improve your experience. Learn more.
Okay, thanks
--
___
Sam Harris
“Are you really surprised by the endurance of religion? What ideology is likely
to be more durable than one that conforms, at every turn, to our powers of
wishful thinking? Hope is easy; knowledge is hard. Science is the one domain in
which we human beings make a truly heroic effort to counter our innate biases
and wishful thinking. Science is the one endeavor in which we have developed a
refined methodology for separating what a person hopes is true from what he has
good reason to believe. The methodology isn't perfect, and the history of
science is riddled with abject failures of scientific objectivity. But that is
just the point-these have been failures of science, discovered and corrected
by-what, religion? No, by good science.”
― Sam Harris
