SWP legal victory advances Mark Curtis defense effort

Scan page 9

SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 1989 9 Brooklyn, N.Y.

11240-4830 He, like other IAM members, knew that over the last five years Boeing raked in record profits. From 1986 through 1989—due to a boom cycle in commercial jetliner orders— the aircraft manufacturer made over $2.1 billion in profits, based on $56.4 billion in sales. In 1988 alone, Boeing made $614 million in profits. • A large portion of these profits come from wage and benefit concessions the IAM made in contract negotiations with Boeing in 1983 and 1986. In 1983, a two-tier wage scale was introduced, which paid newly hired workers substantially less money. The wage differentials go from $8 to $18 per hour.

In 1986 contract negotiations, the company demanded and received a wage freeze for all workers, substituting instead a lump-sum bonus payment at the end of the year. In addition, the company gutted the previously negotiated 100 percent medical coverage by forcing workers to pay a $75 deductible per family member.

Hoping to catch up If anybody has been generous over the last five years, it's been the Boeing machinists. They justifiably expected to "catch up" economically in the 1989 contract after making sacrifices based on Boeing's past pleas to help IMPACT Affordable photos, cartoons, and illustrations for the movement and the progressive press, On Aug. 11, the Socialist Workers Party scored a legal victory in a Los Angeles federal court that represents an important victory for all supporters of democratic rights. We are reprinting below excerpts from the statement of Kate Kaku, a steering committee member of the Mark Curtis Defense Committee, containing the facts of this decision and its meaning for the international effort on Curtis's behalf.

A significant advance for all supporters of democratic rights, and of the fight to defend Mark Curtis in particular, was won last month in a legal victory scored by the Socialist Workers Party, of which Mark is a member.

For more than 10 years, this party has been the target of a harassment and disruption lawsuit prepared, organized, and financed by an anti-labor group known as the Workers League.

The suit filed by Alan Gelfand—a lawyer who is employed by Los Angeles County and is associated with the Workers Leaguecharges that the SWP is run by FBI agents. It demands that the courts overturn his expulsion from the party and remove the party's elected leadership. Gelfand's claim is that his constitutional rights were violated because "FBI agents" in the party's leadership engineered his expulsion.

On Aug. 11, Los Angeles Federal Court Judge Mariana Pfaelzer categorically ruled that "there is no evidence" to back up Gelfand's accusations, and that his motivation in bringing the suit was to "disrupt the SWP.

"Plaintiff's initiation of this litigation was not in good faith," the judge adds. Gelfand did not "have any substantial basis in fact for any of his allegations, nor did he have a good faith belief that the allegations were true."

The judge concludes that the years of "pretrial discovery" — including the taking of hundreds of hours of sworn depositions from SWP members and supporters by lawyers whose large fees were paid by the Workers League-were "abusive, harassing, and in large part directed to matters which could have no probative value in this litigation. The discovery was not conducted for the purpose of discovering evidence in support of plaintiff's claims, one of its main purposes was to generate material for political attacks on the SWP by the Workers League..."

Immediate beneficiaries

Supporters for justice for Mark Curtis are the most immediate beneficiaries of this victory. The Workers League's main activity today is to smear and disrupt the international defense effort for Mark.

Mark is a unionist and political activist serving 25 years in Anamosa State Prison on frame-up rape and burglary charges. The Mark Curtis Defense Committee was formed after Mark's arrest to launch a worldwide campaign of protest.

The Workers League has carried out a systematic countercampaign, aimed particularly publicly opposed the frame-up of Mark. Claiming to be socialist, they have peddled the cops' frame-up case and smeared the defense effort around the world, labeling it a "political provocation of the Socialist Workers Party ... with the aim of discrediting socialism and the workers' movement."

The federal court ruling in Los Angeles is a powerful blow exposing the true character of this international promoter of the cops' frame-up of Curtis.

(continued from page President Reagan in 1985. The embargo, coupled with the nine-year contra war, has devastated Nicaragua's economy.

Bush also escalated his attacks on the preparations for elections currently underway in Nicaragua, falsely claiming that the opposition parties are being intimidated and harassed by the government. (The U.S. government is currently funneling close to $9 million to the pro-contra opposition coalition UNO.)

Everything indicates that if the UNO coalition does not win the Feb. 25 presidential elections-which is a near certainty because these pro-contra supporters have little support among the Nicaraguan people-Bush and the Congress will claim election fraud and renew military aid to the contras.

The U.S. government has no right to intervene in the internal affairs of Nicaragua. End U.S. aid to the contras! U.S. Hands off Nicaragua! -the editors