S.F. socialist campaign will not have to disclose names
1989Joni Jacobs 1989-07Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 3 →
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Left to right: Anna Rossi, ACLU attorney; Sylvia Weinstein, S.F. Board of Education candidate; Joni Jacobs, Socialist campaign treasurer; Joseph Ryan, S.F. Board of Supervisors candidate; and Mark White, ACLU attorney.
Socialist Action won a significant victory recently regarding its 1988 campaign for elected office in San Francisco. The San Francisco District Attorney's office dropped its demand that the Socialist Action Election Campaign Committee disclose the names of financial contributors.
The District Attorney's retreat resulted from a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of Joseph Ryan, 1988 Socialist Action candidate for S.F. Board of Supervisors; Sylvia Weinstein, 1988 Socialist Action candidate for S.F. Board of Education; and Joni Jacobs, Socialist Action Election Campaign Treasurer.
Prior to the D.A.'s announced decision, Ryan, Weinstein, and Jacobs faced criminal prosecution by the D.A.'s office for their refusal to disclose the names of contributors to the 1988 election campaign.
ACLU cooperating attorneys Mark White, Anna Rossi, and ACLU staff counsel Alan Schlosser stated that the whole situation could have been avoided from the beginning.
"We are gratified," the ACLU attorneys said, "that the District Attorney has finally recognized what was clear to us all along— that the right of political association was threatened. It is just regrettable, that it required a federal lawsuit to vindicate the First Amendment rights of Socialist Action members and supporters."
"A chilling effect"
The District Attorney's Office decision came before the case was scheduled for trial. In a letter to Socialist Action's attorneys dated June 2, 1989, Assistant D.A. George Beckwith admitted that "there is a reasonable likelihood that disclosure of contributor names and addresses will have a chilling effect on potential contributors because of evidence of acts of private harassment over which we nave no control."
Beckwith further stated that "absent a change in the law ... the Socialist Action Party may continue to omit the names and addresses of its contributors under the authority of the Brown decision."
Brown y. Socialist Workers Party "74 Campaign Committee (Ohio), a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision, specifically exempted the Socialist Workers Party-and other minority parties-from disclosing the names of campaign contributors. The landmark decision was based on a documented history of governmental and private harassment of Socialist Workers Party members because of their espousal of dissident views.
Socialist Action claimed from the beginning that it was exempted from disclosing contributors' names under the Brown decision. In fact, the Registrar of Voters accepted Socialist Action's financial forms for elections held in 1984, 1985, and 1987 without requiring disclosure of contributors' names.
The D.A.'s recent decision contradicted its earlier contention that Socialist Action was not entitled to an exemption under Brown. Beckwith earlier had insisted that without proof of harassment, Socialist Action did not fall within the guidelines of the Brown decision.
A "liberal oasis?"
The D.A.'s narrow interpretation of the Brown decision reflected his contention that HERELLEY political spying and harassment does not occur in the "liberal oasis" of San Francisco.
During the course of the case, however, the ACLU presented documentary evidence that the S.F. Police Dept., as well as other state and federal agencies, had spied on political groups in San Francisco, including the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), the Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and Justice, the National Lawyers Guild, and even the ACLU itself.
These revelations were just the tip of the iceberg. As the lawsuit proceeded, Socialist Action and the ACLU planned to further unearth the vast network of spying, harassment and cover-ups in which city authorities were willing participants. In the last analysis, the threat of exposure forced the District Attorney to back off.
"The fact that the District Attorney retreated from its original position indicated two things to me," stated plaintiff Ryan. "One, it conceded that disclosing the names of our contributors could open them up to harassment and have a chilling effect on our ability to function; and two, if the case had continued, it would have exposed a network of spying and harassment by police on different groups—be they socialist, antiwar, pro-civil rights, etc."
"In that sense," Ryan added, "this exemption for Socialist Action is a victory for all those who are fighting for progress and social change.
The only unfinished, but not unimportant, business in the settlement is the collection of lawyers' fees and damages—a small price for the District Attorney to pay for an aborted fishing expedition against First Amendment rights.