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DOCUMENTS Declaration: SACP will work to strengthen its independent voice

Alex Mohubetswana Mashilo |

18 July 2022

Solly Mapaila the Party's new General Secretary, Blade Nzimande now national chairperson

Together, let us build a powerful, socialist movement of the workers and poor

18 July 2022

South African Communist Party

15thNational Congress

Boksburg, 13 to 16 July 2022

Declaration, adopted on 16 July 2022

We, the 400 voting delegates representing approximately 340,000 members of the SACP, as well as members of the Young Communist League of South Africa across the country, met from 13 to 16 July 2022 in Boksburg, constituting the historic 15thNational Congress of our Party.

In attendance were our Alliance partners, the ANC and COSATU, and formations of the mass democratic movement, as well as other fraternal organisations and distinguished guests from our country.

Also in attendance were representatives of communist and other anti-imperialist fraternal organisations from other countries in Africa, South America, North America, Europe, and Asia.

We met in the centenary year of the Young Communist League of South Africa and as we complete the Communist Partys hundred years of unbroken struggle to advance, deepen and defend the national democratic revolution and an advance towards socialism.

This has been a centenary of communist struggles to educate, organise and mobilise the working-class and its allies against a system that puts profits before people, a system that puts private accumulation before the environment, the crisis-ridden system of capitalism. It is this exploitative system that breeds the crisis-levels of racialised and gendered mass poverty, unemployment and inequality, as well as the associated crises of social reproduction and rising cost of living.

We met against the background of nearly 30 years since our April 1994 democratic breakthrough, which marked the end of decades of white minority rule and three hundred years of colonialism in our country. The April 1994 democratic breakthrough opened the prospects for a new, radical phase of the national democratic revolution, our strategy for democratic transformation and development towards socialism.

Many political and social gains have been made by the working-class majority over the last 30 years, but so have many opportunities been lost in deepening a radical structural economic transformation in favour of the workers and poor.

The countrys economy remains dominated by monopoly capital, with the continuing colonial and apartheid legacy deepening its multiple systemic crises, including inequality, unemployment, poverty, and the associated rise in cost-of-living. This situation has now been worsened by the crises of health pandemics, such as the deadly COVID-19 virus, and climate change.

Major aspects of working-class lives are in a crisis, mostly hitting women and youth the hardest, as the income of workers and poor sharply decline because of the crisis of rising cost-of-living.

In the circumstances, the main question that Congress focused on is what is to be done?

Roll back the neoliberal macroeconomic framework

Our national democratic revolution is threatened by the very things it seeks to overcomethe monopoly capitalist domination of the economy, its colonial and apartheid legacy, including the reproduction of crisis-high levels of inequality, unemployment, and poverty. Related to this, the financialisation of our economy undermines our ability to advance the programmes that the workers and poor need, such as industrialisation, a major infrastructure development programme, a universal basic income grant, and a National Health Insurance.

The working-class or proletarian communitiesmainly in urban townships and informal settlements, as well as in former bantustansare torn apart by the daily struggles for survival. The increasingly exploited and unemployed workers and poor are more and more becoming disillusioned with electoral politics because of the impact of policy failures, the impact of neoliberalism and the consequences of corruption.

Therefore, the SACP rejects the call for a social compact that is aimed at co-opting the working-class to advance neoliberal policy reforms originating from the IMF, the World Bank, the OECD, imperialist credit rating agencies and other supranational bodies controlled and wielded by the US-led imperialist forces. Such a social compact excludes the crucial imperative to change the macroeconomic framework under which South Africa failed to reduce unemployment, eradicate poverty, and bring down the astronomical levels of inequality.

For the past 26 years, since the government imposed the neoliberal economic policy called Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR), the SACP and other militant working-class formations have been calling for a change in the macroeconomic framework. Without a fundamental shift in the macroeconomic framework, South Africa will continue to experience the problems of the crisis-high levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality that it has failed to address since 1996 after the government-imposed GEAR. The persistence of these problems directly results from GEAR and its lasting legacy, including its shock therapy, besides the persisting legacy of colonialism and apartheid, and the impact of global capitalist crises.

Emerging from the 15thNational Congress of our Party, we will intensify this struggle for a change in policy content and direction, most especially challenging neoliberalism.

The SACP rejects the dogmatic and widely discredited neoliberal macroeconomic framework and other policy measures which undermine our efforts to drive democratic transformation and developmental programmes of benefit to the workers and poor.

We reject the agenda of neoliberal austerity pushed by the National Treasury, which has meant massive budget cuts spending on public services and goods, resulting in a social crisis in working-class communities and affecting working-class women and youth, mostly black.

The SACP says no to the hyper-financialisation of our countrys economy. Financialisation has shifted financial resources away from the productive economy and social investments to speculative investments in the casino economy, the financial markets. These resources include retirement funds and other financial assets held by the banks and financial institutions, and many are controlled by financial services providers.

Workers need to assert their control over investments by their pension funds. Investing in the productive sector to drive major industrialisation and infrastructure development programmes towards expanding access to work for all should be an apex priority. This is one reason the government, with mobilised working-class support, needs to enforce prescribed assets on financial sector investments through legislation. This should include investments in areas of critical public developmental importance, such as a just, green transition.

It is critical to strengthen public financial institutionsthe DBSA, the IDC, the Land Bank, the PIC, the Postbank, and provincial financial entitiesto play a developmental role. This should be guided by a clearer mandating of the South African Reserve Bank to support the public development finance institutions.

In intensifying our campaign for a fundamental change in economic policy, including macroeconomic policy, we will push to dislodge neoliberalism in our national economic and social policy space. Without such a change, the masses of young people and women, who are black in their majority, will continue to be devastated by the high levels of unemployment, poverty, inequality and the crisis of social reproduction, and South Africa will not turn the tide against de-industrialisation.

To advance our policy objectives, we will build a powerful, socialist movement of the workers and poor, guided by the 2022 iteration of the SACP programme titledThe South African Struggle for Socialism, inclusive of our Strategic Perspectives and Tasks. Immediate key priorities of our programme in the face of the catastrophic and unsustainable reality confronting most South Africans and around which we need to prioritise our mobilisation of the workers and the poor include:

A powerful, class conscious trade union movement

SACP reaffirms its support for democratic worker control of trade unions, trade union resources and workers funds. We will work to build the unity of workers in action, across trade unions and across federations.

The SACP says to the workers, together:

Let us build workers powers in the workplace and in the economy at large.

Let us fight outsourcing in the economy.

Let us fight labour-brokering in the public and private sector and build the unity of workers in the formal and informal sectors.

Let us build worker-controlled co-operatives in all sectors of the economy as an instrument of structural economic and social transformation and development.

Working-class and popular power in our proletarian communities

Proletarian communities are the historic sites of militant class struggles. However, over the past three decades, they have been ravaged by neoliberalism. We will continue to deepen our campaigns in working-class communities to win the following demands.

- The struggle for auniversal basic income grant, which should lift working-class households out of absolute poverty and help build capacity for the broad working-class to become the collective agents of fundamental change.

- The struggle for theright to work for allbeginning with the massive expansion of public employment programmes: where the work is not just temporary, but ongoing; where we care for infrastructure that makes our communities cleaner and safer places to live; where collective work rebuilds social cohesion and overcomes the huge despair and sense of alienation amongst millions of unemployed youth; where public employment work is productive and addresses the crises of social reproduction and poverty. This will include campaigning for an expansion of public employment in the caring economy, in early childhood learning, in the provision of collective food gardens and food kitchens, in sustaining places of safety for women and children.

- Build and strengthen the networks of community-based co-operatives,including organising community-owned stores and community-owned banking institutions, savings and burial societies.

- Active working-class involvement in the many institutions of participatory democracy, such as the community policing forums, school governing bodies, neighbourhood watches and street committees.

- Rebuild trade union locals in our communities as key points of focus from which we can help co-ordinate popular activism and rebuild workplacecommunity solidarity.

- Support government efforts directed at the township and village economy and the District Development Model, ensuring that these programmes impact positively on the lives of the working-class and poor.

Land reform for urban and rural transformation

South Africa needs radical land reform for both urban transformation, where 70 per cent of our people now live, and for rural development and transformation. Besides rural areas, and mainly the bantustans, the working-class and poor remain largely confined to peripheral townships and informal settlements that were designed as dormitory locations for the reproduction of cheap migrant black labour.

Apartheid legislation has been removed, but now the financialised property market acts with equal brutality in forcing the majority of workers and poor to live on the margins, in poverty traps far away from resources, amenities, and recreational facilities. While we seek to transform the reality within these settlements, we will equally strive to transform the overall spatial design of our towns and cities.

Land reform in our rural areas must be guided by the Freedom Charters clarion call for land to be shared among those who work it. Rural land reform, development and transformation must be directed to the population still living in the former bantustans as a priority.The SACP will campaign for:

- A land reform programme which focuses on providing infrastructure, water rights, agricultural extension officers and veterinary services to the most marginalised.

- Security of tenure for small and subsistence farmers, giving full recognition to a variety of tenure, including communal land tenure rights.

- Unscrupulous evictions of farmworkers and their families from farms to stop.

- The evictions of labour tenants and their families from farms on which they have lived and worked to cease. These evictions are nothing less than an ongoing colonial expropriation. As the SACP we say: EXPROPRIATE THE EXPROPRIATORSand without compensation! Return the former labour tenants as rightful owners to what are, in reality, their OWN farms.

A radical transformation of the financial sector

In the 2000s, the SACP launched the Financial Sector Campaign as part of its Red October Campaign. Through the campaign, the SACP successfully mobilised over 50 other formations.

The Financial Sector Campaign culminated in a Financial Sector Summit, convened by the government. Its most important achievements are those that immediately impacted positively on the working-class and the precarious strata of the middle class. These include transparency and regulation of credit bureaux, access to banking facilities, and the regulations of loans, clamping down on reckless and predatory lending practices, and addressing unregulated and unscrupulous home repossessions by the profit-driven exploitative commercial banks.

The National Credit Act and Regulator (now the Financial Sector Conduct Authority), which cushioned South Africa from the impact of the 2008 global crisis, were the direct achievements of the SACP-led Financial Sector Campaign. We alsodrovethe passing of legislation on co-operative banking through the campaign.

The time has come to intensify the Financial Sector Campaign. But this time, while mobilising based on financial consumer issues (for debt relief, against repossessions, and against the high transactional costs charged by the banking oligopolies), we will more militantly address the larger structural issues. The SACP, together with other working-class formations, community organisations, sectoral organisations, among others, will:

- Campaign to stop the massive illicit flows of capital from South Africa. The SACP will deepen the campaign for tight regulation of the capital account, cross-border capital transitions, and to roll back the erosion of exchange controls to protect our economy against exposure to the unbridled volatility of the dog-eat-dog insatiable pursuit of private wealth accumulation. Our efforts will include measures to direct investment into the productive sector to industrialise our economy, create employment, drive poverty eradication, and tackle inequality and uneven development. The South African Revenue Services, the South African Reserve Bank and other key state institutions in the financial sector must up their game.

- Campaign for the enforcement of prescribed asset requirements on the banks and financial institutions, to ensure that a significant proportion of their investments goes to the productive sector to build national production and create employment and infrastructure development.

- Campaign for the consolidation of a strong, developmental public banking sector, comprising national, provincial and sectoral state-owned banks and financial institutions, which the South African Reserve BankMUSTactively support. In terms of articulation, this will be buttressed by the national democratic revolutionary imperative to achieve the Freedom Charters vision of the state banking sectorthe common property of allto breakdown the monopoly of profit-driven, commercial banking interests.

- Campaign for the mandate of the South African Reserve Bank to target inclusively economic growth and moderate interest rates.

- Campaign for a thriving co-operative banking sector at all levels, national, provincial and local.

Dismantling the networks of state capture and clamping down on other forms of corruption

As the SACP 15thNational Congress, we welcomed the submission made by the Central Committee to the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture, the fraudulent alienation of the state. In campaigning to dismantle the networks of the fraudulent alienation of the state and to clamp down on other forms of corruption, the SACP will strengthen its capacity to advance the way forward proposed in the submission.

We mandate the 15thNational Congress Central Committee of the Party to complete studying the entire text of the commissions report, its orientation, findings and recommendations, to produce a comprehensive political and strategic response, to contribute to the programme of action required to dismantle the networks of the state capture corruption and to ensure that state capture does not rear its ugly head again.

We reiterate the Partys call, for the state to move decisively with prosecutorial investigations to hold those who were involved or complicit in the state capture corruption to account, to the full extent of the law. We expect prosecutions and maximum sentences. In addition, holding to account those who were involved or complicit in the state capture must include using asset forfeiture processes to seize the assets, the proceeds, the ill-gotten wealth that they gained from the corruption

Workers of the world, unite for peace and development

We express our solidarity with the people of Swaziland struggling for democracy, against the repressive monarchy, with the people of Zimbabwe who are facing human rights violations in a country devastated by virtual economic collapse.

We denounce imperialist aggression by the blood thirsty and trigger-happy United States-dominated NATO. The expansion of NATO, which is an instrument of war, represents the greatest threat to world peace and equality in our time. At present, this is manifesting itself through the NATO-provoked war in Ukraine. The impact of the war, including NATOs weaponisation and wielding of extraterritorial sanctions, includes the global cost-of-living crisis.

We reiterate our call for a peaceful resolution of the conflict in Ukraine and for an end to the war on all fronts.

We pledge our solidarity with the people of the world amidst the United States imperialist aggression and foreign occupation, including but not limited to the people of Palestine, Western Sahara, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua.

The SACP reiterates its support for the Cuban people and government in their struggle for the United States to lift its unilateral and illegal blockade against Cuba and unconditionally end its occupation of the Cuban territory of Guantanamo Bay. The United Nations General Assembly must make its voice consistent and louder, once again, by voting for the lifting of the blockade.

Build the SACP as a vanguard party of the working-class for socialism

We will strengthen the vanguard character of the SACP in this extremely challenging national and global context. Over the years, the Party has grown in membership from around 10,000 members in 1998 to approximately 340,000 by July 2022.

Over the next five years, we will deepen our work to build and strengthen the independent voice of the SACP and strengthen our political, ideological and organisation capacity to mobilise popular forces and build a powerful, socialist movement of the workers and poor. This will include deepening political education within the ranks of the Party, to ensure that its membership growth is accompanied by a qualitative growth. We will build the SACP as a campaigning Party of the working-class and poor for socialism.

As Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels state in theManifesto of the Communist Party, the first step in the revolution by the working-class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy, to build the supremacy of the proletariat, and to organise the proletariat to become, and afterwards as, the ruling class. The questions of the class character and leadership of the state, and the societal power concentrated, organised and exercised in the state, are crucial to every working-class revolution, including the national democratic revolution, our advance to socialism.

Therefore, we directed the newly elected Central Committee to consolidate and strengthen for finalisation by the next Augmented Central Committee the roadmap of the Party on building working-class leadership of society and hegemony over the state. In carrying out this task, the Central Committee must pay particular attention to the strategy and tactics suitable for active engagement in the electoral terrain of the class struggle. This work must be guided by the key task of the SACP arising from the Congress, TOGETHER, LETS BUILD A POWERFUL, SOCIALIST MOVEMENT OF THE WORKERS AND POOR:SOCIALISM IS THE FUTUREBUILD IT NOW!

SACP 15THNATIONAL CONGRESS CENTRAL COMMITTEE

1.General Secretary Cde Solly Mapaila

2.National Chairperson Cde Blade Nzimande

3.National Treasurer Cde Joyce Moloi-Moropa

4.1st Deputy General Secretary Cde Madala Masuku

5.2nd Deputy General Secretary Cde David Masondo and

6.National Deputy Chairperson Cde Thulas Nxesi

No

Surname

Name

Gender

Total

1

Manamela

Buti

M

247

2

Mashilo

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Declaration: SACP will work to strengthen its independent voice - DOCUMENTS - Politicsweb

Sunday [ro-choice advocates rallied at the Capitol. "With Roe v Wade getting overturned they are just handing out little death sentences for so many women and children," said attendee Heidi Barnett.The Party for Socialism and Liberations organized the rally, hoping to persuade President Joe Biden and other government officials to take action to protect a person's right to abortion."We need to stay in the streets and pressure the Biden administration, and to put pressure on every level of government here, to ensure safe abortion access for everybody, not just people who can afford to travel," said Party for Socialism and Liberations Rep. Bazaleel Jupiter.Jupiter said President Biden can take action now with various executive orders to ensure nationwide abortion access."Historically, presidents have expanded the supreme court, called for national health emergencies, you know, used federal lands. I mean 5% of land in Mississippi is federal land. There could actually be abortion clinics in every area of Mississippi. So, that could mean more access before roe was overturned," Jupiter said.The organization Advocates for Youth works to teach young people about reproductive rights and how to make changes in their community. Representatives from that organization strive to be a voice for people who can be impacted by the overturn, believing it is important."Having access to equitable and affordable abortions is something that I believe would be beneficial to all Mississippians. Especially when it comes to things like maternal death rates and the increase in the rise of kids in foster care who are not protected," said Advocates for Youth Rep. Kadin Love.One person rallying Sunday says they have attended multiple pro-choice events since the Supreme Court overturned Roe."People think they can have control over women's bodies, which, uh, no, like no. It's so not right," Barnett said.

Sunday [ro-choice advocates rallied at the Capitol.

"With Roe v Wade getting overturned they are just handing out little death sentences for so many women and children," said attendee Heidi Barnett.

The Party for Socialism and Liberations organized the rally, hoping to persuade President Joe Biden and other government officials to take action to protect a person's right to abortion.

"We need to stay in the streets and pressure the Biden administration, and to put pressure on every level of government here, to ensure safe abortion access for everybody, not just people who can afford to travel," said Party for Socialism and Liberations Rep. Bazaleel Jupiter.

Jupiter said President Biden can take action now with various executive orders to ensure nationwide abortion access.

"Historically, presidents have expanded the supreme court, called for national health emergencies, you know, used federal lands. I mean 5% of land in Mississippi is federal land. There could actually be abortion clinics in every area of Mississippi. So, that could mean more access before roe was overturned," Jupiter said.

The organization Advocates for Youth works to teach young people about reproductive rights and how to make changes in their community.

Representatives from that organization strive to be a voice for people who can be impacted by the overturn, believing it is important.

"Having access to equitable and affordable abortions is something that I believe would be beneficial to all Mississippians. Especially when it comes to things like maternal death rates and the increase in the rise of kids in foster care who are not protected," said Advocates for Youth Rep. Kadin Love.

One person rallying Sunday says they have attended multiple pro-choice events since the Supreme Court overturned Roe.

"People think they can have control over women's bodies, which, uh, no, like no. It's so not right," Barnett said.

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Pro-choice advocates continue fighting for reproductive rights at the state Capitol - WAPT Jackson

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Floyd County to consider 'First Amendment auditor' training Tuesday; SPLOST work also on the agenda - Northwest Georgia News

The Jan. 6 Committee is abusing its power by asking inappropriate questions about their fellow Americans beliefs and associates, and publicly portraying witnesses who exercise their Fifth Amendment rights as guilty all to put on a show trial.

Later on Tuesday, the Jan. 6 Committee will hold yet another public hearing, this one purportedly to focus on the role of extremists in the attack on the Capitol. While the precise script for the afternoons proceedings remains unknown, last week Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin previewed the committees plans, telling The New York Times that when public hearings resumed in July, he intends to lead a presentation that will focus on the roles far-right groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and 1st Amendment Praetorian played in the Capitol attack. According to the Times, Mr. Raskin has also promised to explore the connections between those groups and the people in Mr. Trumps orbit.

An attorney for 1st Amendment Praetorian, or 1AP, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting free speech, spoke exclusively with The Federalist about the committees questioning of 1AP, the groups founder, and another member of the nonprofit, all of whom she represents. From the framing of the questions posed to her clients, Leslie McAdoo Gordon was left with the firm impression that the Jan. 6 Committee merely wanted video capturing her clients declining to answer the questions for the purpose of impugning their character during the televised hearings.

The committee knew before the depositions that my clients would be asserting their First and Fifth Amendment rights, and also would not answer any questions because the depositions were being held in violation of the rules established by the House, McAdoo Gordon told The Federalist. So, shortly after the hearing began and the 1AP witnesses made clear they would not answer any questions, the staffers moved to general topic areas and would ask a few prepared questions, then the committee representative would note that he had more questions on the topic and inquire whether if he asked those questions, the witnesses intended to assert the same objections.

My clients would respond yes to that question, so then the committee would move forward with the next topic, McAdoo Gordon said. But after covering various topics, the committee staffer at the end volleyed a litany of individual questions to my clients, forcing them to respond to each question with Rules, First, and Fifth, the shorthand we had agreed to with the committee to convey their objections to questions posed.

Given that the committee had broadcast video of Michael Flynn asserting his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in an earlier hearing, McAdoo Gordon said she wouldnt be surprised if Tuesdays hearings include clips of her clients refusing to answer the committees questions.

In fact, she said as much to the committee in a letter last week. After calling the lawmakers out for implying to the public that Flynn was guilty of some crime because he asserted his Fifth Amendment rights, McAdoo Gordon wrote that implying guilt based on a witness asserting his rights, is a McCarthy-esque tactic that offends the Constitution and is unworthy of the United States Congress. The attorney added that she is forced to anticipate that the Committee will use the same totalitarian tactic to improperly smear 1AP.

The irony is that McAdoo Gordon was working with the committee to arrange for her clients to testify voluntarily, within the bounds of the First Amendment, until the committee concocted what she has called a cockamamie criminal conspiracy theory. The committee argued in litigation with former Trump attorney John Eastman that President Trump, Dr. Eastman, and others conspired to defraud the United States by disrupting the electoral count, supposedly in violation of Section 371 of the federal criminal code, which makes it a crime to conspire to defraud the United States. The committees pushing of what she called a preposterous legal theory left McAdoo Gordon with no option but to recommend that my clients assert their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

McAdoo Gordon told The Federalist that during her clients depositions, the committee asked a series of questions that she likely would have allowed her clients to answer if the meeting had been on a voluntary basis. Putting aside the question of whether the committee was properly constituted, the 1APs attorney noted Congress had a legitimate interest in investigating the riots and violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

What 1AP did, or more accurately put, didnt do, on Jan. 6 was relevant to the committees investigation into the riot and the violence at the Capitol, and I was working to arrange for my clients to voluntarily provide the committee with that information, McAdoo Gordon said. Likewise, the committee had questions about a couple tweets my clients sent on the sixth, and again, such questions were relevant to the Jan. 6 investigation.

But once the committee advanced the absurd Section 371 criminal conspiracy theory, I could no longer recommend my clients speak with the committee, the attorney explained. McAdoo Gordon did respond to the committee on behalf of her clients, however, after Raskin falsely described 1AP as a far right group with a role in the Capitol attack in his interview with the Times. All of those points are false and defamatory, she told the committee. 1AP is a mainstream, non-partisan group with no role whatsoever in the attack on the Capitol.

It isnt just the Fifth Amendment the committee has been shredding, however. Even if my clients did not assert the Fifth Amendment, I would have still objected to several questions on First Amendment grounds, McAdoo Gordon added. While some questions related to Jan. 6 were relevant, the majority of the questions posed to 1AP representatives were none of Congresss business, McAdoo Gordon stressed. And even the process reveals the warped authoritarianism of the committee, the attorney added.

At the beginning of the depositions, the congressional staff sought confirmation that we were not recording the proceedings in any way, while they proceeded to video record the questioning, McAdoo Gordon said. She then noted that while witnesses called before a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., can obtain a transcript of their testimony, the Jan. 6 Committee refuses to allow those they target to obtain transcripts of their subpoenaed testimony.

The committees hiding of the transcripts serves to cover their lies and to control the narrative of the show trial, but it also allows the Jan. 6 Committee to hide the wildly inappropriate questions it posed to the witnesses.

Do you believe in QAnon? Do you believe that Joe Biden is the legitimately elected president of the United States? Whats your understanding of what happened on 1/6?

A Committee of the United States Congress actually asked my clients those questions, McAdoo Gordon told The Federalist in an exclusive weekend interview.

Before the deposition, I assured my clients that their political and personal beliefs would not be probed, the D.C. attorney explained. While I knew from the subpoenas the Jan. 6 Committee intended to seek constitutionally protected information concerning other 1AP members, my jaw just kept dropping further when they started to question my clients on what they thought and believed.

The committee also asked Robert Lewis, who is a retired United States Army Green Beret and recipient of the Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, and Philip Luelsdorff, a former U.S. Army Ranger, to describe 1AP activities. For whom and for what purpose did they provide volunteer services? Did they provide security? Surveillance? Assistance with legal activities? What training did they provide? And how were they able to afford to provide the training and volunteer services? Where did the money come from? Who made donations? What bank accounts were used? Did the organization accept cryptocurrency?

Again, none of those questions concerned the events of Jan. 6. Rather, the committee focused on events long before the Jan. 6 events at the Capitol. For instance, it asked whether 1AP provided security for polling places. Other questions concerned 1APs security work at a Nov. 14 rally and a Dec. 12 rally.

In essence, the committee is seeking information about 1APs members, financial status, donors, and activities. None of that is relevant to the Jan. 6 riots, and all of it is off-limits to the government, the lawyer said. The Committee had no business asking those questions, so my clients werent about to answer them in violation of their First Amendment rights.

The Committee had cited as evidence against my clients that they obtained a permit for a demonstration the day before the riot. How is obtaining a permit to hold a peaceful protest evidence of a role in a riot the next day? It isnt, McAdoo Gordon said. The committee also sought to quiz Lewis and Luelsdorff on their relationship with the Trump family, the White House, the campaign, and numerous specific individuals such as Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn. The staff further asked whether they had been in contact with any of the defense attorneys representing any of the Jan. 6 defendants.

The government should not be asking a civic organization, which is what 1AP is, about its relationships, in general, with other people, much less about the organizations donors or lawyers with whom they spoke, McAdoo Gordon stressed.

Beyond asking inappropriate questions that implicated 1APs First Amendment rights, the committee framed several questions in the do you still beat your wife format. Before the election, did they provide security in order to overturn the election? Have you engaged in any activities to overturn the certified election results? Have you engaged in any activities to reinstall Donald Trump as president of the United States since Jan. 20, 2021? These questions all presuppose that the election results were sought to be overturned, as opposed to challenged.

But of course, the Jan. 6 Committees focus on the few unfounded claims of election fraud, as opposed to the numerous violations of state election law and evidence of illegal voting issues Trump and his legal team pursued aids in the narrative that the protesters wanted to install Trump or overturn the election, as opposed to protest election irregularities. And by using a guilt-by-association strategy, the committee paints not just 1AP and its volunteers as complicit in the violence at the Capitol, but every American who attended the rallies and peacefully protested the disastrous 2020 election.

The committee might be using nicer language, but its questioning is Stalinist in nature nonetheless, McAdoo Gordon said.

The 1AP lawyer is correct. But because the corrupt media is effectively serving as a state-run press for its preferred politicians, most of America will be oblivious to that fact when the hearings resume later today.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist's senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prizethe law schools highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

Originally posted here:
J6 Committee Is Using Americans' Assertion Of Rights As Proof Of Guilt - The Federalist

It was not in the menu, but there was a heaping helping of irony served up one evening last week at a restaurant in Washington, D.C.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was dining at Mortons steakhouse. Demonstrators were outside, intent on ensuring he left with indigestion and not just a full belly.

At the center of this dinnertime dust-up was the right to choose interposed next to the right to chew. That is part of an ongoing debate over where such protests are appropriate.

The demonstrators oppose the Supreme Courts recent decision ending the Constitutions guarantee that women have a right to an abortion under certain circumstances.

That issue was front and center outside Mortons just as it has been in demonstrations in dozens of communities across the United States, including Iowa. People have peacefully gathered to express their views on the decision to end Roe vs. Wades protections for women.

Kavanaugh has been the target of many protesters, not only because he was one of the votes in favor of overturning Roe, but also because he assured us during his Senate confirmation hearing in 2018 that Roe was an important legal precedent that has been reaffirmed many times.

Whether you support the courts recent decision or not, we should all agree peaceful demonstrations are one of the freedoms that need to be protected in the United States. Of course, it is ironic how peoples views of the appropriateness of demonstrations and picketing change as the issues change.

About the demonstration at Mortons:

Critics of the Supreme Courts decision jumped on the symbolism of the reaction to the encounter on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. At the same time,critics of the demonstration focused on the issue of people invading Kavanaughs privacy and keeping him from dining in peace.

Mortons management criticized the unruly behavior of the protesters. The restaurant statement caused some supporters of the demonstrators to choke on the assertion that the rights of restaurant patrons should not be infringed upon.

Politics, regardless of your side or views, should not trample the freedom at play of the right to congregate and eat dinner, the restaurant said.

While some people were angered by the intrusions into the private lives of Supreme Court justices, other people mocked such concerns by using language similar to that in the Supreme Courts decision.

Alexandra Petri, a Washington Post columnist, wrote: The right to congregate and eat dinner is actually not to be found anywhere in the Constitution.

But there was much more at stake than steak in the demonstration outside Mortons.

There is that matter of peoples right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of their grievances, two foundations of the First Amendment. And there is the question of whether public officials like the justices should have to live by the same rules they set for the rest of us to follow.

This is where another helping of irony gets served up.

Some of the supporters of the Supreme Courts abortion decision have been vocal critics of demonstrators marching in front of the justices homes. These critics have expressed concern for the safety of the jurists and their families. They also have said the homes of justices should be off limits so the officials can go about their lives free of harassment.

There is irony, because the Supreme Court has for many years put the large public plaza in front of its own building off-limits to demonstrators. And in the weeks leading up to the abortion ruling, the court established a much larger buffer zone around its building, with an 8-foot-tall fence to keep demonstrators farther away.

Contrast that with the Supreme Courts past decisions in which the justices concluded that even a 35-foot-wide buffer zone around abortion clinics was an unconstitutional restriction on the First Amendment rights of abortion opponents to express their views and confront doctors and patients.

In a 1988 case, the court did uphold the constitutionality of a Wisconsin law that prohibited targeted picketing outside peoples houses. The issue then was protesters carrying baby killer signs who gathered outside the homes of doctors.

But the tables have turned now.

Then, it was people who were pro-choice who wanted targeted picketing banned. Now, it is people who are pro-life who support a ban on picketing outside homes of people like Brett Kavanaugh.

Then, it was doctors and employees of abortion clinics who feared for their safety. Now, it is judges and their families who have that fear. And both groups concerns are legitimate.

Through the years, several doctors and clinic employees have been murdered by pro-life zealots. Last month, a retired Wisconsin judge was killed in his home by man he had sent to prison a decade ago. Five days later, an armed man was arrested in the middle of the night outside Kavanaughs house.

There are other places to peacefully express our views without clogging the sidewalks in front of peoples homes, leaving occupants to fear a wacko might be in the group. Thats true whether a Supreme Court justice lives there or whether its an employee of an abortion clinic.

This is where common sense should come in.

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