It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Rumour has it that defeated right wing City Councilor and Stickman Mike Nickel has a new retirement villa where he has hunkered down to lick his wounds.
Meanwhile his 'progressive' replacement at city hall has taken over Nickel's old office.....
If Iveson's fashion is a work in progress, his politics remain unclear yet, as well. As he escorts me down the councillor's wing to his office, he provides a possible clue.
"First door on the left," he says with a chuckle. Yet as he points out, it's the same office used by conservative Mike Nickel last term -- the same Nickel that Iveson toppled to many people's amazement on Oct. 15.
Theories were that Nickel cooked his own goose by being such a council contrarian last term. Conspiracy theorists blamed The Journal, or an underground left-wing movement. The most credible theory, though, is that Nickel's campaign was outworked by the youth and energy of Iveson's.
All those threats about job losses in the oil patch and the bosses protest at the Leg seems to have overlooked a little fact. Job losses in the public sector in particular our hospital sector were caused by the Klein government bailing out Big Oil in the nineties.
As this letter writer to the Calgary Sun pointed out.
There seems to be a double standard in both media and government attitude regarding regular public service workers and the oil industry. In the '90s, during the Klein "devolution," health-care professionals, teachers, public service workers and their collective bargaining agents protested cutbacks to health-care, education and other public services. They warned of gross shortages and infrastructure deficits in the future (which all came true). They were written off as "special interest groups" by media and government. Now an independent panel indicates the oil and gas industry has not been paying its fair share and the industry gets closed-door meetings with the government and is regarded as a VIP by the media. They come out with a government decision that still has them paying less than their fair share. They still grumble and yet neither the media nor government disregard their threats and grumbling as "just another special interest group."
Larry Connell, RN
The attack on the public sector was the result of low royalties and tax breaks for Big Oil. The neo-con advisers to the Klein government called for cuts to public sector spending, freezes on wages and contracting out to make up for the deficit created by this give away. The deficit was caused by the failure of the government to collect its fair share, even back then, as the auditor general pointed out, of the royalties, even as low as they were; a penny on the dollar.
Well cheaper yes by driving down wages and benefits. Efficiently well no, because they low balled their bids and now the costs are rising. Unionized public sector workers may cost more in wages and benefits, the workers in the private sector, but their costs are controlled by collective bargaining. And the government has controlled public sector wages in Alberta to be below inflation for the past decade. Whereas private sector costs are now skyrocketing.
Today infrastructure costs are higher because the Tired Old Tory government spent the last decade acting like Scrooge when it came to infrastructure expenditures. Instead of spending the annual surpluses they did get, which occurred annually since the pseudo-crisis of 1993, they hoarded the money crying poverty. Now the chickens have come home to roost.
Ralph cut nurses and doctors as well as capping nursing programs in Alberta universities. The cuts over a decade created a crisis we now face in staffing. especially in the hospital sector. The result has been a decline in health care services, with deadly results. As we have seen investment in public sector jobs have been a boon to the Canadian economy. Costs of having services delivered in house are much lower than contracting out in an overheated economy. So much for the supply side economics of the Fraser Institute and it's pals.
So the next time some oil supply company workers complain that they may lose their jobs tell them to talk to the nurses in this province who left during the nineties to find work elsewhere.
Slick Eddie had hoped his TV show and Royalty announcement would have avoided any discussion of his royalty plan in the fall sitting of the Legislature which kicked off yesterday.
The Stelmach government doesn't want to discuss royalties or homelessness. Rather they want to talk about busting speeders and smokers. The best laid plan of mice and Tired Old Tories.....And it took the NDP to force the debate.
CALGARY/AM770CHQR - The fall sitting of the Alberta Legislature got off to a raucous start Monday afternoon, as oil and gas royalties became a hot topic during question period. NDP leader Brian Mason was also successful in forcing an emergency debate on the issue, by getting a Standing Order approved.
Premier Ed Stelmach told the legislature he can't see how the province was shortchanged because of the tremendous prosperity Albertans have enjoyed in recent years. But the NDP and Liberals disagree.
"The auditor general said this minister had access to information showing that their royalties could be raised without hurting the industry and he denied it in this house," Mason said. "How can you condone that, Mr. Premier, why don't you do the right thing and fire that minister?"
Knight and Stelmach largely dodged questions about their roles in past royalty reviews, preferring instead to focus on the government's overall performance.
Knight took issue with opposition claims that the province missed out on billions of dollars in royalties. "There are no missing billions. Those dollars remained in the province of Alberta, were invested, were a magnet for additional dollars," Knight said. "The royalty structure in the province of Alberta is a policy set by the government. The policy is not set by reports that are developed both internally and externally and are given to any minister at any point in time."
Funny that's not what the Auditor General or the Royalty Review Committee said. They said Knight and his Department had NOT collected billions in royalties.
Last month, Auditor General Fred Dunn said the Tory government knew at least three years ago that it was losing royalties from energy projects in the province.
He slammed former energy ministers and their staff for identifying, but not collecting, about $1 billion per year in fees owed by oil and gas companies.
In light of those findings, the NDP hounded the Tories Monday over why the current energy minister was unaware of what his predecessors knew about the province's royalties.
"What I'm saying is there is not billions of dollars missing any place," Energy Minister Mel Knight said. "There is no requirement for me to get a briefing from any previous energy minister in respect to the royalty structure."
The Tired Old Tories,who believe that the party and the government are one and the same, are selling Ed Stelmach to the people of Alberta in a pre-election ploy using our tax dollars rather than the Conservative Party election bankroll in a slick ad campaign.
Heck if they want an image make-over the San Fransisco Stores did that for him at Halloween.
Helping drive the speculation of an early election are ads the government placed in newspapers during the weekend. "I made a commitment and I delivered," reads the quote from Stelmach in the full-page ad that looks like something the Conservative party would publish, right down to the blue and yellow colour scheme. Except that these ads were paid for by your tax dollars
Stelmach spokesman Paul Stanway says the $277,000 cost of the newspaper and radio campaign is actually a bargain compared to the price of province-wide mail-outs used in the past.
"I don't believe it's partisan," says Stanway. "It's clearly labelled as a report to Albertans, which is the normal communications that we have with Albertans three times a year."
"I think the decision was that it would have looked a bit like overkill if we'd done this advertising campaign and then also a full mail-out of the report to Albertans."
New Democrat Leader Brian Mason says the punchy slogans and Tory party colours in the newspaper ads leave the impression that the government is preparing for an early election.
"I think (Albertans) see them for what they are. Government propaganda, Conservative party propaganda that they're paying for."
Eugene V. Debs, the leader of the Socialist Party of the United States, who ran for President of the United States while in jail for opposing WWI ,was born today.
"The old form of trade unionism," cried Debs, "no longer meets the demands of the working class ... It is now positively reactionary, and is maintained, not in the interests of the workers who support it, but in the interests of the capitalist class who exploit the workers." So long as the working class was parceled out among thousands of separate unions, united economic and political action would be impossible. The IWW provided new hope.
He was a popular socialist leader who championed the workers cause and in return even those who politically disagreed with him on the left praised him.
"When the working class unites, there will be a lot of jobless labor leaders."Eugene Debs, 1905 speech to the IWW Convention
We could use a Debs today. Especially in the U.S. Presidential Elections. There is a need for a third party and Debs recognized that it should be a party of the working people. The other two of course represent the ruling classes regardless of how inclusive they may be.
"The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles." Eugene V. Debs
Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, May 6, 2007; Page D02
NEW YORK -- The politician took the stage amid red balloons and American flags and spoke his famous fighting words: "I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don't want and get it."
With this, Eugene V. Debs last week announced his sixth bid for U.S. president
Dead man running.
The real Eugene V. Debs passed away in 1926, after five unsuccessful bids for the presidency from 1900 to 1920. But actor Brian Pickett is staging a modest, mock presidential run in his name, starting with Wednesday night's campaign kickoff in a tiny, crowded bar in Manhattan's East Village.
The actual Debs ran on the Socialist Party ticket -- the fifth time from a prison cell -- after being convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917 for speaking out against World War I. Though never even close to being elected, he became a national figure who galvanized people with his fervor and idealism. Pickett's theatrical performance, to continue in various forms until the 2008 election, "will resurrect this fiery leader from historical bondage," according to the campaign literature.
The quadrennial season of windbaggery is upon us. Canned speeches, quick retractions, the same old sound bites -- we're in for months and months of it. The more we hear, the more we pine for something authentic. This small-time utopian campaign speaks to that frustration, said Pickett, 28, who teaches drama to New York public school students and has appeared in independent theater productions.
Pickett, like Debs, is tall and wiry. You could even say his gaze echoes Debs biographer Nick Salvatore's description: "piercing yet loving." On Wednesday, Pickett wore a three-piece suit with watch fob and spectacles. As the race develops, he plans to work with campaign manager Sophie Nimmannit, 27, the "Red Genie" -- who wore a short red dress, red feather hat, slash of red lipstick and a scarf printed with the word "Vote" -- in street, bar and theater performances in New York and other cities ( http://www.myspace.com/votedebs).
"I wish you were all socialists," Pickett told his audience of about 35 people. They were artists, activists, at least one Wall Streeter -- and they laughed. Even in Debs's time, many of those who came to hear his impassioned speeches were not socialists. He attracted working- and middle-class people and whipped them into such a frenzy that at one event, according to Salvatore, in the book "Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist," one woman asked another, "Is that Debs?" and the first answered, "Oh no, that ain't Debs -- when Debs comes out, you'll think it's Jesus Christ."
Debs, originally from Terre Haute, Ind., married an upper-class woman who became famous for wearing diamonds to visit him in jail, and he grew more radical as he got older. His life spanned that brief window when socialism was not yet a dirty word but rather a new idea from Europe. He tried to Americanize it, claiming Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau as precursors, wrote Salvatore. America was becoming the greatest industrial power of the world, and the questions socialism addressed were on everyone's mind. In 1912, Debs drew 6 percent of the national presidential vote.
Things have changed. The socialist demands of Debs's time -- the eight-hour workday, abolition of child labor, equal pay for equal work -- have become standard, if not always applied. The word "socialist" seldom comes up. And there are new problems.
"Oh where, oh where have my benefits gone, oh where, oh where can they be?" sang a character in Wednesday's show. The finely dressed Capitalist chimed in: "My PDA's beeping, I'm afraid I can't stay. I'm self-employed and I work all day."
"I would vote for him in a New York minute because he speaks his mind," said Andy Shulman, 34, the actor playing the Capitalist, who works a Wall Street day job. He adds that he is not interested in the radical or extreme, but in someone without the slickness and distance of the big campaign.
"Has a dead man ever run for president?" asked Nola Strand, 24, who played accordion for the show. "Dead men have voted."
Pickett's idea came from television's "West Wing," when Jimmy Smits's character, Matthew V. Santos, ran for president, and fans of the show donned "Vote Santos" shirts and bought "Vote Santos" mugs. If a fictional character could gain a constituency, why not a dead one?
But the ardors of a Debs campaign could wear on him.
In 1900, Debs crisscrossed the country and slept upright on long train trips, refusing to take a Pullman berth with a bed because of labor problems at that company. In 1908, he traveled on his own Red Special train. His speeches could run to two hours, and he would often give 10 a day.
Pickett said he's not sure he has the funds to command a 2008 Red Special. He cut Debs's speeches to something like sound bites, which often sound familiar, except for the florid language. (On war: "The working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both.")
It all seems very strange to me now, taking a backward look, that my vision was so focalized on single objective point that I utterly failed to see what now appears as clear as the noonday sun.... The skirmish lines of the American Railway Union were well advanced. A series of small battles were fought and won without the loss of a man.... Next followed the final shock--the Pullman strike--and the American Railway Union again won, clear and complete. The combined corporations were paralized and helpless. At this juncture there were delivered, from wholly unexpected quarters, a swift succession of blows that blinded me for an instant and then opened wide my eyes....
An army of detectives, thugs, and murderers were equipped with badge and bludgeon and turned loose; old hulks of cars were fired; the alarm bells tolled; the people were terrified; the most startling rumors were set afloat; the press volleyed and thundered; and over all the wires sped the news that Chicago's white throat was in the clutch of a red mob; injunctions flew thick and fast, arrests followed, and our office and headquarters, the heart of the strike, was sacked, torn out and nailed up by the "lawful" authorities of the federal government; and when in company with my loyal comrades I found myself in Cook County jail at Chicago with the whole press screaming conspiracy, treason and murder ... I had another exceedingly practical and impressive lesson in Socialism.
The Chicago jail sentences were followed by six months at Woodstock and it was here that Socialism gradually laid hold of me in its own irresistible fashion. Books and pamphlets and letters from Socialists came by every mail and I began to read and think and dissect the anatomy of the system in which workingmen, however organized, could be shattered and battered and splintered... --From the New York Comrade, April 1902, in Speeches of Eugene V. Debs (New York: International Publisher, 1928)
"Will it succeed?" has been the uppermost question in the minds of thousands of people regarding the effort in co-operation at Ruskin. "Can such an enterprise be made permanent, even if it does attain material success?" and "Will the men and women engaged in it be able to hold together and work together for their common interests?" ... Ruskin HAS SUCCEEDED, and the measure and kind of its success INSURES ITS PERMANENCY and the accomplishing of greater things in the future. We are now in the material stage of development and the close of the first year of co-operation shows a favorable termination to the enterprises started in that time. The year began with the establishment of a co-operative hotel on the old site, it closes with the occupancy of the commodious and substantial structure, herewith illustrated, on the new. THE COMING NATION publishing house is the largest building in this section of Tennessee. It is a frame structure, built entirely of oak, sawed from timber taken from our own land and in our own saw mill. Everything entering into its construction that possibly could be made by Ruskinites is a product of co-operative labor.... --The Coming Nation, July 18, 1896
Not "free silver," not "free trade," not "free gold," not "free high tariff" is what the working class needs. All of these "free" things are like free coffins to be buried in. Our slogan is "Free the Tools of Production." --The People, New York, in Public Opinion, August 6, 1896
Socialist Eugene V. Debs was one of the major players in American politics at the turn of the 20th century. He made five attempts to gain the presidency - in 1900, 1904, 1908 1912 and 1920 - all as the standard bearer of the Socialist Party. He conducted his last campaign from behind the bars of a federal prison. A gifted orator, Debs rivaled William Jennings Bryan in his ability to move a crowd with his words.
Born in Indiana in 1855, Debs went to work for the railroad at age 14 but soon gave it up at his mother's urging. He became active in the union movement forming the American Railway Union, the nation's largest, in 1893. Arrested during the Pullman Strike of 1894, he served six months behind bars. In jail, Debs converted to socialism. He helped found the Social Democratic Party of America in 1897, the Socialist Party in 1901 and the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905. "I am for socialism because I am for humanity" he declared.
He opposed America's entrance into World War I and denounced the Espionage Act designed to silence all antiwar sentiment. In 1918, he received a 10-year prison sentence for his public opposition to the war. At his trial, Debs admitted he spoke the words the federal government considered traitorous and addressed the jury in his own defense. "I am doing what little I can to do away with the rule of the great body of people by a relatively small class and establish in this country industrial and social democracy." A guilty verdict sent Debs to the federal prison in Atlanta.
In 1920, the Socialist Party again nominated him as their presidential candidate and over 915,000 voted for prisoner #9653. President Wilson vigorously denied a request for Deb's pardon in 1921. Finally, Warren G. Harding released Debs under a general amnesty on Christmas Day 1921. Harding asked the old socialist to stop by the White House. "I have heard so damned much about you, Mr Debs, that I am very glad to meet you personally" Harding remarked at their meeting. Debs died in 1926.
References: Currie, Harold W., Eugene V. Debs (1976); Morgan, H. Wayne, Eugene V. Debs: Socialist for President (1973).
This speech was originally delivered in 1904 and shortly thereafter recorded at one of Edison's sound recording studios. By this time Debs was a leading figure in the U.S. Socialist party, and in this impassioned speech describes a time when the socialist party will "win the world" from the 'frenzied revelry of capitalism." "What man," Debs asks, "unless his brain be atrophied and has become blinded can fail to perceive the impending crisis of a capitalist modern age?" The central metaphor of this speech is "the machine," which refers to the the proliferation of new labor-saving technologies, inventions that Debs saw as fundamental to the social revolution. Here Debs celebrates technology as a great equalizer and emancipator of the working classes: "The mute message of the machine, could but the worker understand and could he but heed it, child of his brain, the machine has come to free and not to enslave; to save and not destroy the author of its being... The machine compels the grand army of toil to rally to its tender, to recognize its power."
In 1912, four candidates battled to become President of the United States. Republican incumbent William Howard Taft and Democrat Woodrow Wilson, a moderate governor, represented the two major parties. Former President Theodore Roosevelt, angered over what he felt was a betrayal of his policies by Taft, his hand-picked successor, abandoned the Republican party and founded the Progressive or “Bull Moose” Party. While all four candidates appealed directly to working-class voters, whose votes would prove decisive, by far the most radical platform in the campaign was that of the Socialist Party nominee, Eugene V. Debs. Running for the fourth time, Debs called for the abolition of capitalism rather than for its reform. In this speech accepting the party’s nomination he proclaimed the Socialist Party “the party of progress, the party of the future.” Debs finished last in the contest, receiving 900,000 votes.
Eugene Debs delivering his legendary speech in Canton, Ohio on June 16, 1918.
Comrades, friends and fellow-workers, for this very cordial greeting, this very hearty reception, I thank you all with the fullest appreciation of your interest in and your devotion to the cause for which I am to speak to you this afternoon.
To speak for labor; to plead the cause of the men and women and children who toil; to serve the working class, has always been to me a high privilege; a duty of love.
I have just returned from a visit over yonder, where three of our most loyal comrades are paying the penalty for their devotion to the cause of the working class. They have come to realize, as many of us have, that it is extremely dangerous to exercise the constitutional right of free speech in a country fighting to make democracy safe in the world.
I realize that, in speaking to you this afternoon, there are certain limitations placed upon the right of free speech. I must be exceedingly careful, prudent, as to what I say, and even more careful and prudent as to how I say it. I may not be able to say all I think; but I am not going to say anything that I do not think. I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than to be a sycophant and coward in the streets. They may put those boys in jail—and some of the rest of us in jail—but they cannot put the Socialist movement in jail. Those prison bars separate their bodies from ours, but their souls are here this afternoon. They are simply paying the penalty that all men have paid in all the ages of history for standing erect, and for seeking to pave the way to better conditions for mankind.
If it had not been for the men and women who, in the past, have had the moral courage to go to jail, we would still be in the jungles.
Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords who inhabited the castles whose towers may still be seen along the Rhine concluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their power, their prestige and their wealth they declared war upon one another. But they themselves did not go to war any more than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street go to war. The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another’s throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose—especially their lives.
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.
And here let me emphasize the fact—and it cannot be repeated too often—that the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace.
Yours not to reason why; Yours but to do and die.
That is their motto and we object on the part of the awakening workers of this nation.
If war is right let it be declared by the people. You who have your lives to lose, you certainly above all others have the right to decide the momentous issue of war or peace.
Eugene Debs delivered his Statement to the Court to the Federal Court of Cleveland, Ohio on September 18, 1918 after being convicted of violating the Sedition Act, a protective law passed by Congress to promote the war by banning anti-war propaganda and rhetoric. Under this new law many socialists were unjustly persecuted and stripped of their freedom of speech. As an active socialist, Debs became concerned and attacked American capitalism in an effort to protect first amendment rights. This speech was a plea in his defense for his and other socialists’ freedom of speech. Introduction by Mary Litton Fowler.
Enacts movement from rupture to constitution through identification with marginalized class
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.
Invokes revolutionary tradition
I listened to all that was said in this court in support and justification of this prosecution, but my mind remains unchanged. I look upon the Espionage Law as a despotic enactment in flagrant conflict with democratic principles and with the spirit of free institutions…
oppositional
Your Honor, I have stated in this court that I am opposed to the social system in which we live; that I believe in a fundamental change—but if possible by peaceable and orderly means…
Standing here this morning, I recall my boyhood. At fourteen I went to work in a railroad shop; at sixteen I was firing a freight engine on a railroad. I remember all the hardships and privations of that earlier day, and from that time until now my heart has been with the working class. I could have been in Congress long ago. I have preferred to go to prison…
Mammon: Gospel allusion (oppositional tradition accepted by and borrowed from dominant public)
I am thinking this morning of the men in the mills and the factories; of the men in the mines and on the railroads. I am thinking of the women who for a paltry wage are compelled to work out their barren lives; of the little children who in this system are robbed of their childhood and in their tender years are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the monster machines while they themselves are being starved and stunted, body and soul. I see them dwarfed and diseased and their little lives broken and blasted because in this high noon of Christian civilization money is still so much more important than the flesh and blood of childhood. In very truth gold is god today and rules with pitiless sway in the affairs of men.
Invokes providence; expresses sense of rupture between land of plenty and suffering of millions; transfers guilt from providence to society
In this country—the most favored beneath the bending skies—we have vast areas of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most marvelous productive machinery on earth, and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labor to that machinery to produce in abundance for every man, woman, and child—and if there are still vast numbers of our people who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes to their rescue and lulls these hapless victims to dreamless sleep, it is not the fault of the Almighty: it cannot be charged to nature, but it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live that ought to be abolished not only in the interest of the toiling masses but in the higher interest of all humanity…
Radical extension
I believe, Your Honor, in common with all Socialists, that this nation ought to own and control its own industries. I believe, as all Socialists do, that all things that are jointly needed and used ought to be jointly owned—that industry, the basis of our social life, instead of being the private property of a few and operated for their enrichment, ought to be the common property of all, democratically administered in the interest of all…
I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.
Re-genesis
This order of things cannot always endure. I have registered my protest against it. I recognize the feebleness of my effort, but, fortunately, I am not alone. There are multiplied thousands of others who, like myself, have come to realize that before we may truly enjoy the blessings of civilized life, we must reorganize society upon a mutual and cooperative basis; and to this end we have organized a great economic and political movement that spreads over the face of all the earth.
Communality
There are today upwards of sixty millions of Socialists, loyal, devoted adherents to this cause, regardless of nationality, race, creed, color, or sex. They are all making common cause. They are spreading with tireless energy the propaganda of the new social order. They are waiting, watching, and working hopefully through all the hours of the day and the night. They are still in a minority. But they have learned how to be patient and to bide their time. The feel—they know, indeed—that the time is coming, in spite of all opposition, all persecution, when this emancipating gospel will spread among all the peoples, and when this minority will become the triumphant majority and, sweeping into power, inaugurate the greates social and economic change in history.
In that day we shall have the universal commonwealth—the harmonious cooperation of every nation with every other nation on earth…
Your Honor, I ask no mercy and I plead for no immunity. I realize that finally the right must prevail. I never so clearly comprehended as now the great struggle between the powers of greed and exploitation on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of industrial freedom and social justice.
Re-genesis
I can see the dawn of the better day for humanity. The people are awakening. In due time they will and must come to their own.
Re-genesis
When the mariner, sailing over tropic seas, looks for relief from his weary watch, he turns his eyes toward the southern cross, burning luridly above the tempest-vexed ocean. As the midnight approaches, the southern cross begins to bend, the whirling worlds change their places, and with starry finger-points the Almighty marks the passage of time upon the dial of the universe, and though no bell may beat the glad tidings, the lookout knows that the midnight is passing and that relief and rest are close at hand. Let the people everywhere take heart of hope, for the cross is bending, the midnight is passing, and joy cometh with the morning.
I am now prepared to receive your sentence.
Eugene V. Debs
Time Magazine, Monday, Nov. 01, 1926
As it must to all men, Death came last week to Eugene Victor Debs, Socialist.
In Woodstock, Ill., there is a boys' school, a collection of retired farmers, a prison. In the prison in the year 1895 sat a hot-blooded orator† of 40. He was Eugene Victor Debs, labor leader. He was in jail for the violation of an injunction. Back of this event was the story of an Indiana grocery clerk, a locomotive fireman, who became the organizer of the American Railway Union, who twice made the nation feel the fist of unionized labor. The second time was the great strike against the Pullman Co. in 1894 when President Cleveland had to despatch troops to Chicago to quell the riotous bloodshed. Eugene Debs and three others, indicted for conspiracy against the Government, were successfully defended by Clarence S. Darrow. Later Mr. Debs defied an injunction—and that is why he found himself in Woodstock. One day he had a visitor, Socialist Victor L. Berger. The visitor left him an unimportant-looking little book.
Prisoner Debs read it slowly, eagerly, ravenously. The book was Karl Marx's Das Kapital. In the brain of Prisoner Debs there began to simmer a more militant type of Socialism for the U. S. than the mere reading of Utopian books.
Mr. Debs came from his cell with a gospel. In Chicago, 100,000 cheered him as he roared out his speech on "Liberty." Then, strangely enough, he stumped for Candidate Bryan in 1896. A year later the Socialist party was born, and in five presidential elections from 1900 to 1920 (except in 1916) Mr. Debs was a candidate, polling almost a million votes in each of his last two campaigns.
During the World War he attacked war in general and the draft in particular; was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment for a speech made in Canton, Ohio, in 1918. Addressing the jury, he told his creed:
"Gentlemen, I have been accused of obstructing the War. I admit it, gentlemen; I abhor war. I would oppose the War if I stood alone. . ..
"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 of the 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."
On Christmas Day, 1921, President Harding pardoned a model prisoner, a broken prophet. Around him he saw his Socialist Party disintegrating; within him he felt his strength ebbing. His speeches seemed almost pathetic; his pen had lost its throb. A month ago he went to a sanitarium in Elmhurst, Ill., where he died, aged 71.
Said Arthur Brisbane, Hearst columnist:
"Eugene V. Debs, a sincere and honest man, is dead, killed by imprisonment inflicted upon him for saying what he thought about the War."
†James Whitcomb Riley once wrote: And there's Gene Debs, a man that stands And jest holds out in his two hands As warm a heart as ever beat 'Twixt here and jedgment seat.
Remember when you were young How the hero was never hung Always got away Remember how the man Used to leave you empty handed Always, always let you down If you ever change your mind About leaving it all behind Remember, remember, today
Don't you worry 'bout what you've done Don't feel sorry 'bout the way it's gone
Remember when you were small How people seemed so tall Always had their way Remember your ma and pa Just wishing for movie stardom Always, always playing a part If you ever feel so sad And the whole world is driving you mad Remember, remember today
Remember Tribute to V for Vendetta using Remember by John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band
These pages are from the confessions of Guy Fawkes. Fawkes is the most well known of the men who planned to blow up King James I and the Parliament in 1605.
In the years after England split away from the Catholic Church, most English monarchs were not very tolerant of Catholics living in England. James I was a Protestant king and English Catholics despaired of any return to the old religion. A small group decided to blow up both King and Parliament with gunpowder. They planned to place James' daughter Elizabeth ON the throne.They hoped she would marry a Catholic prince AND England would ONCE again be a Catholic country.
The king 's spies discovered the plot. Fawkes was found on the night of 4th/5th November 1605 in the cellars under the Palace of Westminster, where Parliament was due to meet. He had 36 barrels of gunpowder. On the following days, he confessed to the plot and named the others involved.
Fawkes signed 2 confessions - one after torture and another 8 days later. The contrast between them is remarkable. The first document shown here is a page from his confession under torture. His weak and shaky signature ' Guido' can faintly be made out. The second document is from a confession signed later in a steadier hand 'Guido Fawkes'.
Fawkes and the other plotters were executed on 30 and 31 January 1606. Ever since then, every 5th of November there have been firework displays and bonfires to remember the 'Gunpowder Plot '.
English playwrights and the theater loved the dramatic images of Guy Fawkes and the celebration of the Fifth of November. Bonfires...the plot itself and then there is Guy. It is hoped that the study of Fawkes as he appears from play to play throughout the centuries will provide us with insights into how the history of the plot and its celebrations evolved through time. See what you find in these works. They are certainly quite enjoyable and fun in and of themselves.
Security is the chief enemy of mortals.
William Shakespeare
Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both. Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security. Benjamin Franklin
![[Eugene Debs]](http://projects.vassar.edu/1896/Debs2.gif)
