Another new release from New York University Press:
Trotskyists on Trial: Free Speech and Political Persecution Since the Age of FDR (January 2016), by
Donna T. Haverty-Stacke (Hunter College, CUNY). From the Press:
Passed in June 1940, the Smith Act was a
peacetime anti-sedition law that marked a dramatic shift in the legal
definition of free speech protection in America by criminalizing the
advocacy of disloyalty to the government by force. It also criminalized
the acts of printing, publishing, or distributing anything advocating
such sedition and made it illegal to organize or belong to any
association that did the same. It was first brought to trial in July
1941, when a federal grand jury in Minneapolis indicted twenty-nine
Socialist Workers Party members, fifteen of whom also belonged to the
militant Teamsters Local 544. Eighteen of the defendants were convicted
of conspiring to overthrow the government. Examining the social,
political, and legal history of the first Smith Act case, this book
focuses on the tension between the nation’s cherished principle of free
political expression and the demands of national security on the eve of
America’s entry into World War II.
Based on newly declassified government documents and recently opened archival sources, Trotskyists on Trial
explores the implications of the case for organized labor and civil
liberties in wartime and postwar America. The central issue of how
Americans have tolerated or suppressed dissent during moments of
national crisis is not only important to our understanding of the past,
but also remains a pressing concern in the post-9/11 world. This volume
traces some of the implications of the compromise between rights and
security that was made in the mid-twentieth century, offering historical
context for some of the consequences of similar bargains struck today.
A few blurbs:
"Donna Haverty-Stacke's Trotskyists on Trial
makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of American
radicalism, the Roosevelt administration's response to criticism of its
policies, and the Supreme Court's interpretation of freedom of speech.
Based on wide-ranging research, her analysis of legal, political, and
social issues explains the implications not only for the labor movement
but also for civil liberties in wartime and postwar America." —Richard Polenberg
"In Trotskyists on Trial,
Donna Haverty-Stacke locates the prosecutions of labor radicals under
the Smith Act in the wider national landscape of struggles over national
security, civil liberties, and freedom of speech. Crediting the
defendants with the political vision and democratic optimism, she
chronicles their role in petitioning the government and trying to secure
appeal, pardon, and exoneration for those convicted. The civil
liberties issues involved in this now forgotten case resonate in a
society that lives under the shadow of the national security state and
made vulnerable by the weakened political influence of the labor Left." —Elizabeth V. Faue
More information is available
here.
