Justice in Minnesota

In a Minneapolis Federal Court today 23 men and women are on trial for the high crime of expressing an opinion about the propriety of overthrowing the United States Government by force and violence. These people, officials of the Socialist Workers Party, and of the Minneapolis local of the Teamsters' Union, are victims of the first important attack on free speech at least since 1939. As we move towards war, the danger to civil liberties increases. If this initial battle is lost, the danger will be even greater, and we may find ourselves fighting off fascism from without, only to have it destroy us from within.

The defendants are now being tried under the Smith Act, a statue which slipped quietly through Congress a few months ago making it illegal to discuss the overthrow of the U. S. Government. They were at first accused of actual conspiracy, on the grounds that the Union had, two years ago, bought two 22 rifles and conducted target practice, very ostentatiously and publicly, in order to frighten away a Silver Shirt group which was threatening to raid union headquarters. The Silver Shirts disappeared very quickly, and the rifle practice was abandoned. Last official act of the volunteer marksmen was to act as ushers at a children's Christmas party held by the Union. The charge of conspiracy has already been dropped, and the State rests its case very simply on the fact that Marixst and Trotskyist literature was found in the offices of the union and the party, and on quotations from that literature.

If the possession of revolutionary literature is to be a crime in this country, almost every school and library is guilty. The Declaration of Independence, the speeches of Jefferson and Lincoln are fuel for another book-burning. We are back in the days of Palmer Red Raids and the Lusk Committee. The Minneapolis case is more than a test of the Smith act: it is a test of our democracy.