The influential union 32BJ SEIU and dozens of progressive groups released a joint statement on Thursday in opposition to the Republican-controlled House Ways and Means Committee’s subpoena of The People’s Forum, a nonprofit leftist activist group based in Manhattan.
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“The House Ways and Means Committee’s investigation of The People’s Forum is part of a broader effort by the Trump regime and its minions in Congress to intimidate organizations whose speech they disagree with, and to threaten the very values that are essential to a free and open civil society,” reads the statement, shared first with City & State, which was signed by 71 groups. “This subpoena is an effort to chill speech and association, taking a page straight out of the authoritarian playbook.”
The New York Immigration Coalition and New York Civil Liberties Union organized the joint statement. Other groups that signed on include VOCAL-NY, New York Communities for Change, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Jewish Voice for Peace and the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.
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The powerful House Ways and Means Committee issued a subpoena to The People’s Forum on July 21, demanding information about its donors and its communications with China-based tech entrepreneur Neville Roy Singham, who is a major funder of the group. The People’s Forum must turn over the documents by Friday or risk being held in contempt of Congress.
Republican Rep. Jason Smith, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement accompanying the subpoenas that they are designed to “expose how America’s tax laws and charitable sector may have been exploited to advance the (Chinese Communist Party’s) influence operations inside the United States” – using rhetoric that NYIC and NYCLU said evoked McCarthy-era witch hunts against leftists.
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