Eighty-seven years ago-on September 14, 1918- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926) was sentenced to ten years in prison for opposing U.S. entry into World War I.
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One year after the Espionage and Sedition Act was voted into law, Debs was in Canton, Ohio for a Socialist Party convention. He was arrested for making a speech deemed "anti-war" by the Canton district attorney. In that speech, Debs declared, "They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people.
"Do not worry over the charge of treason to your masters, but be concerned about the treason that involves yourselves," he concluded. "Be true to yourself and you cannot be a traitor to any good cause on earth."
"Do not worry over the charge of treason to your masters, but be concerned about the treason that involves yourselves," he concluded. "Be true to yourself and you cannot be a traitor to any good cause on earth."
"Your honor, years ago, I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
The Espionage and Sedition Act is still on the books today.
http://adreampuppet.blogspot.com/2005/09/todays-eugene-debs-moment.html
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