Guards Within The Union

Prosecutors charged leaders and members of a small revolutionary political party, several of them active in a teamsters' union local, with conspiring to advocate the forcible overthrow of the national government and to cause insubordination in the armed forces. The party's declaration of principles called for 'social revolution', and its headquarters distributed Marxist literature. Evidence showed the party had formed a union 'defense guard' said to be meant to grow into a militia and ultimately a 'Red Army', that party leaders had conferred with a foreign revolutionary leader in Mexico, and that party material urged placing members in key industries and military positions and recruiting draftees. The defence argued that the new federal sedition law was unconstitutional under the First Amendment and that their words posed no clear and present danger.