Eugene Debs

[T.Ruth2power]

http://www.eugenevdebs.com

"No war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people."

– Eugene Debs

Eugene Victor Debs (November 5, 1855 – October 20, 1926) was an American union leader, one of the founders of the International Labor Union and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), as well as five-time Socialist Party of America candidate for President of the United States.

At the age of 17, Debs left home to work on the railroads, becoming a fireman (also known as boilerman). He returned home in 1874 to work as a grocery clerk. The next year he was a founding member of a new lodge of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. He rose quickly in the Brotherhood, becoming first an assistant editor for their magazine and then the editor and Grand Secretary in 1880. At the same time, he became a prominent figure in the community; in 1884 he was elected to the Indiana General Assembly as a Democrat, serving one term.

The railroad brotherhoods were comparatively conservative unions, more focused on providing fellowship and services than in collective bargaining. Debs gradually became convinced of the need for a more unified and confrontational approach. After stepping down as Grand Secretary, he organized, in 1893, one of the first industrial unions in the United States, the American Railway Union (ARU). The Union successfully struck the Great Northern Railway in April 1894, winning most of its demands.



On June 16, 1918, Debs made a speech in Canton, Ohio in opposition to World War I and was arrested under the Espionage Act of 1917. He was convicted, sentenced to serve ten years in prison and disenfranchised for life.

Debs made his best-remembered statement at his sentencing hearing:
“ 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, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs">Eugene Debs

[QC]

1. He is one of my heroes.

America will not see his kind again.

[MuseRider]

2. Mine too.

No we won't because if anyone even comes close they will be ostracized and very few will ever be aware that they are there. We are done.

[truedelphi]

3. Rumor has it tht he has been reincarnated as

Dennis Kucinich.

[Wilhelm Scream]

4. You must be kidding

[boobooday]

5. DK is the only one who comes close

To Debs' humanity.

[Wilhelm Scream]

6. Except Kucinich is more likely

to speak to a Yoga class than the working class

[truedelphi]

7. No that is not true. Today the working clas (Like me!!)

Are hooked up to computers, and the internet, and when Kucinich releases his articles of impeachment, we feel the same way that Debs' fans felt when he went travelling across the country talking to people from the podium of labor halls.

[Hun Joro]

12. Oh please.

Are you calling him an elitist? What point are you trying to make?

[T.Ruth2power]

13. Big difference

Debs spoke deeply to the economic ideologies that determine the politics. Kucinich speaks only to the politics.

[truedelphi]

15. There are NO Democrats speaking to the economic realities

The only person addressing those is Ron Paul.

Most people do not even know of the existence of the Federal Reserve.

But in its short inception of less than one hundred years, we have gone from a society in which people were proud to pay as they earned, and not a penny more, to a society wherein you had to always spend more than you made, just for the right of designer threads on your body. A shiny NEW car. A big big hosue you could never afford to actually be in, as you had to work around the clock to pay the mortgage.

[blindpig]

8. K&R

Debs is the kind of person that we desperately need today. That person will not be found in the halls of Congress, not in the dominant parties, nor on the TV, unless they're getting arrested.

[QC]

9. K&R

[leftchick]

10. an american icon

right there with Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler. Thanks!

K&R

[maxpower]

11. Kik kick a thousand times kick

EVD was a true american hero.

[TheFarseer]

14. has anyone read 1912?

A book about the election that year. Very interesting sections on Debs, TR, Wilson and Taft. I'd never really heard of Debs before reading.