US Socialist Workers Party
Will REISSNER By setting a March 1 trial for a lawsuit against the Socialist Workers Party in federal court in Los Angeles, Judge Mariana Pfaelzer has dealt a blow to the consitutional rights of every progressive organization in the United States.
At issue are fundamental questions. Can the U.S. government force Socialist Workers Party, or any other political group, to accept an avowed enemy into membership?
Can the courts decide which members may or may not be elected to leadership posts?
Does the government have the power to decide if a political group's activities conform to its stated program and historic goals?
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is a key provision of the Bill of Rights. Under this amendment, the SWP and all other political organizations are supposed to be free from governmental interference in their internal life.
After the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1789, it took two years struggles by small farmers and urban working people to force the adoption of the Bill of Rights in 1791.
Ever since, workers and small farmers had to wage constant battles to force the government to recognize these rights, while the ruling rich have persistently tried to restrict political freedoms.
Today, in Judge Pfaelzer's court, another round of this battle is being fought. By allowing this suit against the SWP to go to trial, Pfaelzer is trampling on the First Amendment.
The legal action was brought against the SWP by Alan Gelfand, an attorney employed by the Los Angeles county government, who is an outspoken opponent of the SWP's policies. He was expelled from the organization in 1979.
Gelfand is asking that the court order his membership restored. He further wants his expulsion judged a violation of the party's rules. And he wants the court to remove those responsible for his expulsion (including some of the SWP's national leaders) from the positions they were elected to by the party's membership.
Judge Pfaelzer has repeatedly refused to throw the case out of court, even though it violates the most basic political rights of the SWP.
goes to trial
On February 12, SWP attorneys filed a motion in federal court demanding that Pfaelzer disqualify herself from the case due to her "bias and prejudice" against the Socialist Workers Party. This charge stems from the recent discovery that from 1974 to 1978, while Pfaelzer was a member of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners, she was directly involved in authorizing police spying and disruption operations against the Socialist Workers Party and its members, as well as against dozens of other political and religious groups.
JUDGE WAS TOP COP
The motion that the judge disqualify herself points out that by authorizing these police attacks against the SWP's right to freedom of association, she "has already decided a central factual issue in this case: whether the SWP is protected by the First Amendment from governmental interference and inquiry."
In addition, during the trial two
Diane Jacobs/militant Los Angeles police agents - who infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party during Pfaelzer's years of overseeing police spying - are scheduled to be star witnesses against the SWP. The party's attorneys have charged that Pfaelzer cannot be unbiased about the undercover operations she personnally okayed as police commissioner.
Despite the facts, however, the SWP's motion on disqualification was turned down, and Pfaelzer will preside over the trial.
The history of this case began four years ago, while the sw was involved in a major ollensive to expose and combat government spying and disruption against political organizations. Part of that offensive involved a lawsuit, Socialist Workers Party v. Attorney General.
In the course of that case, which is now awaiting a decision by Federal Judge Thomas Griesa, the SWP was able to expose the decades-long campaign by the FBI, the CIA, and other government agencies to harass and disrupt the SWP and other political groups opposing governmental policies.
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and in handling other legal work involved the abuse of justice she has already
In late 1978 the government had been forced onto the defensive by the against the political
SWP's campaign
The U.S. attorney general had been cited for contempt of court for refusing to release FBI informer files.
contempt ruling was being appealed by the government.
Gelfand intervened in the legal proceedings capacity as a lawyer and without the claimed in his brief that in this case.
Pfaelzer have given Gelfand a blank check to question SWP leaders at great length about any subject he chooses, no matter how irrelevant to this case.
People have been asked questions such
"What are the laws of the development of matter as expressed by the preeminent philosophers of dialectical mater-
"Can you give examples of how each three laws manifest themallowed in the pretrial period.
Gelfand charges that government control of the SWP began many decades ago when, he claims, such veteran socialist leaders as Joseph Hansen - editor of this publication until his death in 1979 -and George Novack - currently a contributing editor - supposedly engineered the takeover.
### ANYTHING GOES
Pfaelzer ruled against an SWP motion he could not be adequately represented
"How does it apply to that glass of that Gelfand be obliged to establish the the SWP's attorneys, the case by to, those of from, and indeed adverse the SWP learned of Gelfand's action,
In addition, SWP leaders have been questioned at length about their personal lives and family backgrounds, including their social life while still in high school, activities in the Boy Scouts, and the political and religious beliefs relevance of any evidence before his submits it to the court. "They can put want," Pfaelzer ruled
She noted that Gelfand's attorneys admit they have no direct evidence of any 40-year-old government takeover of the SWP. But she ruled they can present any circumstantial evidence they want to, no matter how far back it goes or how irproceedings against him. of their parents. In January 1979 he was expelled from the SWP for "undisciplined and disloyal behavior in violation of the organizational principles of the Socialist Workers
In July Gelfand filed his current suit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles against the SWP and individual party
He charges that the SWP deserves no protection under the First Amendment's guarantees against hostile governmental interference because the party is actually controlled by the gov-
Gelfand claims that the SWP was taken over by government agents decades ago, and that these agents expelled him because he sought to expose them. By his twisted logic, it was Gelfand's First Amendment rights that were by the government, whose agents expelled him from his organization.
'NOT A SHRED OF EVIDENCE'
Judge Pfaelzer has repeatedly fused to throw Gelfand's case out of court, despite her own admission in court that in the nearly four years since Gelfand filed his suit, he has been unable to provide any evidence for his claim of a government takeover of the SWP.
one point in the case, Pfaelzer acknowledged: isn't one shred of evidence whatsoever that the persons who engineered, as you say, all of this were government There isn't any evidence."
Nonetheless, Pfaelzer has allowed the legal attack on the SWP to continue for nearly four years. To defend' itself, the party has had to divert huge amounts of money and time from the political objectives the SWP is organized to ad-
Already, members of the SWP's leadership have been forced by court orders to submit to 160 hours of questioning by Gelfand and his high-priced lawyers. Thousands of additional hours have been spent in preparation for this questioning
Questioning has even extended to the sex lives and other personal relationships of the SWP members.
To date the SWP has already been forced to spend more than 30,000 dollars on travel expenses and transcript costs alone, not to mention the legal fees in-
And the case has not even gone to trial
Using the powers of the court, Pfaelzer has accomplished the same kind of harassment and disruption of the SWP's activities that the FBI, CIA, and other police agencies have been carrying out for decades under cover.
HEALYITE CULT FUNDS CASE
Yet the only significant fact established in all the hundreds of hours of questioning is Gelfand's own that the funds to pay for his enormously expensive battle against the SWP are being raised by the national secretary of the Workers League (WL), a minuscule organization that carries out virtually no activity in the U.S. workers movement. It is linked to the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) of
Gelfand has admitted that both before and after his expulsion from the SWP, he acted in consultation with these two organizations. He also made at least two trips to London to meet with WRP officials about his suit. And since at least 1980, two representatives of the WL-WRP have been working as "investigators" for the law firm handling Gelfand's litigation.
The Workers League and the Workers Revolutionary Party broke from the Trotskyist movement in the early 1960s. They refused to support the Cuban revolution, denounced the rise of Black naand abandoned Marxism for a cult existence around their guru, Gerry
At a January 31 hearing, Pfaelzer made clear that at the March 1 trial she will give Gelfand a green light to continue relevant it is.
The judge also assured Gelfand's lawyers that even if their claim of a longstanding government takeover of the SWP falls apart, she will decide whether the SWP followed proper procedures in
Pfaelzer has decided that the U.S courts, not the SWP membership, have the final say over the party's organizational rules and practices. this decision opens the door to permanent court supervision of the SWP's internal functioning.
The SWP's attorneys point out that "an injunction requiring readmission of an admittedly hostile individual into the ranks of the SWP would have to be folup with regular supervision of his treatment by the party."
In that case, "the district court, and not the membership of the party, will then be the final arbiter of who can belong to the SWP, and what internal procedures may be used to expel a disloyal member from the party's ranks."
But even if the district court rules in the SWP's favor, tremendous damage has already been done to the SWP's First Amendment rights. has conducted a far-reaching inquisition into the SWP's ideology and methods of operation.
It has accepted the principle that the courts can intervene in the party's inter-
It has forced the party to tremendous amounts of money and time to defend itself from this attack.
As SWP National Chairperson MaryAlice Waters points out in the February 18 Militant, The scope of the issues posed in this lawsuit against the Socialist Workers Party is clear. actions constitute a threat not to the political liberties of every single opponent of government policies in the United States but to every defender of the Bill of Rights as well." From Intercontinental Press, New York, February 28, 1983.)
The 100 years to transform the world and to do so with If we compare the world of 1843 with
It was necessary, that of 1983, and if we ask ourselves through revolutionary action, to elimin whether the transformations that have ate all social conditions in which humar occured are those that Marx predicted, capitalism had at last exorcized cuttiten,
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Jus tutorita.