October 1, 2010

THE RECENT FBI raids targeting antiwar and international solidarity
activists and socialists continue a long and despicable tradition of
government political repression of the left in the U.S. We stand in
solidarity with those targeted in the raids and with the movement to defend
their political and civil rights.

What is perhaps most ominous about the FBI raids and grand jury
investigations in Minnesota, Illinois and North Carolina is that they
apparently rely on a law that bars solidarity activists from providing
“material support” to organizations deemed as “terrorist” by the U.S.
government. In a June 2010 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a
lower federal court’s ruling and upheld the law. According to civil
liberties attorney David Cole, "In the name of fighting terrorism, the Court
has said that the First Amendment permits Congress to make human rights
advocacy and peacemaking a crime. That is wrong."

This blatant attack on political free speech protected under the First
Amendment should be of grave concern to all who value freedom of expression
and political organization, and the right to dissent.

No one should be taken in by the FBI’s attempt to justify this crackdown
with a list of “terrorist organizations” in Colombia and Palestine that the
targets of the raid supposedly supported. It should be recalled that the
U.S. government once listed South Africa’s African National Congress as a
“terrorist” group when the left in the U.S. and internationally correctly
saw that organization as a leading force in the liberation struggle against
apartheid.

Indeed, the U.S. “terrorism list” is tailored to U.S. political
considerations at any given time. Thus, the Islamist forces that the U.S. is
fighting in Afghanistan today were, in the 1980s, the recipients of U.S.
guns and money to further the American interests in the Cold War.

It is in this context that we must view the political agenda behind the FBI
raids. U.S. trade unionists are being targeted for their efforts to aid
their counterparts in Colombia, where murders of union activists are
commonplace, with the connivance of a regime that is one of the top
recipients of U.S. military aid.

Others were targeted in the raid for their efforts to build solidarity with
the Palestinian people. At a time when the 1.5 million people of Gaza have
been reduced to semi-starvation by Israel’s U.S.-backed blockade, such
solidarity efforts are more urgent than ever. By making aid to Palestine a
central issue in the raids, the U.S. government is trying to intimidate
activists in this country from joining the growing international movement
against the blockade. The FBI raids are, in effect, an effort by the U.S.
government to criminalize international humanitarian solidarity efforts.

MANY MAY find it shocking that such repression is emanating from the
Democratic Party administration of Barack Obama, who made opposition to
George W. Bush’s encroachment on civil liberties an important part of his
presidential campaign. In fact, the raids are perfectly in keeping with
Obama policies. The administration has not only continued the Bush
administration’s violations of civil liberties, but has sought to expand
them. In the wake of the FBI raids, the Obama administration announced that
it will seek legal authority to “wiretap” the Internet and virtually all
electronic communications.

These attacks on civil liberties are only the latest efforts by the U.S.
government to intimidate and silence dissidents in complete disregard for
rights supposedly protected by the U.S. Constitution.

The history of such repression includes the struggle for the eight-hour day
in 1886, which resulted in the executions of four of the Haymarket martyrs;
the imprisonment of Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs and members of the
Industrial Workers of the World for their opposition to the First World War;
the anti-socialist and anti-immigrant Palmer Raids of 1919-20, which
resulted in the imprisonment and deportation of thousands of radicals; the
Smith Act trial of socialists during the Second World War; the McCarthyite
witch hunt of communists and socialists in the 1950s; the FBI surveillance
of civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as the
Socialist Workers Party in the 1960s; the lethal repression of activists in
the Black Power, American Indian and Puerto Rican nationalist movements in
the 1960s and 1970s; and FBI harassment of Central America solidarity
activists in the 1980s.

In almost every case, the influence of socialists, communists and
anarchists—or, in the anticommunist shorthand, “reds”—was used by the
federal government to justify attacks on free speech. So it should come as
no surprise that members of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization are the
most prominent target of the latest raids. If history is any guide, the FBI
and federal prosecutors believe they can drive a wedge between socialists
and the wider left, including liberals, and establish a precedent for
further violations of civil liberties and political repression.

This cannot be allowed to happen. Whatever political differences may exist
between those targeted in raids and the rest of the left, they are
irrelevant when it comes to defending our rights to express our political
views and to organize. This is an attack on the entire left, and the left
must respond with unity and resolve.

The outpouring of statements denouncing the raid from left-wing and antiwar
groups is a heartening first step in building the defense campaign that is
needed now. The task must be to turn that sentiment into a vigorous
solidarity effort. The International Socialist Organization is fully
committed to that project, and urges all concerned organizations and
individuals to act likewise.